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krpalmerThe appearance of another translated volume of Legend of the Galactic Heroes was in some ways a simple relief to me, given I still remember the days of a decade past when translated novels connected to anime series always seemed to stop appearing after their third volume, doomed by low sales. Even though some of Yen Press's translated "light novels" have run for a lot longer than three volumes nowadays, Legend of the Galactic Heroes being translated by a company connected to Viz does keep me wondering. At the same time too, the sixth volume showed up at an eventful yet controversial moment for its whole franchise over here.
Once upon a time, if a popular anime series had streamed on Crunchyroll Sentai Filmworks would seem likely to license it for release on disc, and I would be more likely to buy a copy than with the series Funimation was licensing and streaming on its own service, given how many casual putdowns of their online efforts I kept picking up on. Then, all of a sudden, Crunchyroll and Funimation were cooperating amid comments bidding up streaming licenses surely wouldn't end up well and Sentai was setting up its own private-label streaming service. As that service doesn't yet support my economy video hardware, I've held back from getting a subscription to it even with the Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime series available on it, supposing I could wait for the disc release. That release, though, turned out to be an expensive limited edition; I was just working my way through the insistences of others that going by the number of episodes in it made it a better value than modern "quasi-imports" when I happened to notice it was only available through Sentai's own online store, which wouldn't ship outside of the United States.
With long-standing suppositions of how I'd get a legitimate copy of the anime series in sudden disarray, my thoughts might have had a slight push towards what I'd heard of a new anime adaptation of the original novels. The problem there was how many people seemed ready to proclaim "I liked the original series; a new adaptation will be stuck between pointless and inferior." When I took a chance on the first episode, I had to wonder myself about whether the character designs, as much as they continued to tend towards the "realistic" side of anime, somehow not quite grabbing me and the background music, in not using the classical compositions the original series had, seeming a bit cheap. After two episodes and the resolution of the curtain-raising battle, I was all but ready to drop the new adaptation and turn to the latest volume of the novels; however, at that point I happened to be away on a trip and, when the episode of DARLING in the FRANXX I'd intended to watch streaming that night turned out to be a live-action recap and promotion, I went back to the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes and caught up with something of a sense this was a commitment to something "good enough now."
In any case, I did get around to this latest novel. I hadn't quite managed to write some comments here about the volume just previous, in which the revitalized Galactic Empire controlled by Reinhard von Lohengramm had forced the surrender of the crumbling Free Planets Alliance protected by Yang Wen-li. That very considerable development (and not quite an appealing one from my viewpoint) didn't end the story, though, even if things slowed down at the start of this new volume to the point of describing part of the backstory with Earth losing its preeminence centuries in the past. Something about that did have me thinking of the backstory that eventually accreted in Battletech, which prompted a few thoughts about how that role-playing game does suppose a multi-polar setting but, as can seem a little too familiar to me in science fiction with "military space opera" trappings, has aristocracies taking over and ruling unchallenged for centuries into the actual stories. With Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yang is at least contemplating statecraft and ways to cope with human nature, even if events sort of sweep him up along the way as history starts moving again at the end of the volume.
I can still have to struggle with a bit of a sense that "English sentences wouldn't be written this way from scratch" when it comes to the translation. Even so, in looking ahead I do see pre-order listings for the next volume in the series. Remembering the original anime there could be several more volumes to run the gauntlet, although I don't think there are quite as many to come as have managed to show up so far. Most of what I can do is keep hoping and keep buying my own copy.
Once upon a time, if a popular anime series had streamed on Crunchyroll Sentai Filmworks would seem likely to license it for release on disc, and I would be more likely to buy a copy than with the series Funimation was licensing and streaming on its own service, given how many casual putdowns of their online efforts I kept picking up on. Then, all of a sudden, Crunchyroll and Funimation were cooperating amid comments bidding up streaming licenses surely wouldn't end up well and Sentai was setting up its own private-label streaming service. As that service doesn't yet support my economy video hardware, I've held back from getting a subscription to it even with the Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime series available on it, supposing I could wait for the disc release. That release, though, turned out to be an expensive limited edition; I was just working my way through the insistences of others that going by the number of episodes in it made it a better value than modern "quasi-imports" when I happened to notice it was only available through Sentai's own online store, which wouldn't ship outside of the United States.
With long-standing suppositions of how I'd get a legitimate copy of the anime series in sudden disarray, my thoughts might have had a slight push towards what I'd heard of a new anime adaptation of the original novels. The problem there was how many people seemed ready to proclaim "I liked the original series; a new adaptation will be stuck between pointless and inferior." When I took a chance on the first episode, I had to wonder myself about whether the character designs, as much as they continued to tend towards the "realistic" side of anime, somehow not quite grabbing me and the background music, in not using the classical compositions the original series had, seeming a bit cheap. After two episodes and the resolution of the curtain-raising battle, I was all but ready to drop the new adaptation and turn to the latest volume of the novels; however, at that point I happened to be away on a trip and, when the episode of DARLING in the FRANXX I'd intended to watch streaming that night turned out to be a live-action recap and promotion, I went back to the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes and caught up with something of a sense this was a commitment to something "good enough now."
In any case, I did get around to this latest novel. I hadn't quite managed to write some comments here about the volume just previous, in which the revitalized Galactic Empire controlled by Reinhard von Lohengramm had forced the surrender of the crumbling Free Planets Alliance protected by Yang Wen-li. That very considerable development (and not quite an appealing one from my viewpoint) didn't end the story, though, even if things slowed down at the start of this new volume to the point of describing part of the backstory with Earth losing its preeminence centuries in the past. Something about that did have me thinking of the backstory that eventually accreted in Battletech, which prompted a few thoughts about how that role-playing game does suppose a multi-polar setting but, as can seem a little too familiar to me in science fiction with "military space opera" trappings, has aristocracies taking over and ruling unchallenged for centuries into the actual stories. With Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yang is at least contemplating statecraft and ways to cope with human nature, even if events sort of sweep him up along the way as history starts moving again at the end of the volume.
I can still have to struggle with a bit of a sense that "English sentences wouldn't be written this way from scratch" when it comes to the translation. Even so, in looking ahead I do see pre-order listings for the next volume in the series. Remembering the original anime there could be several more volumes to run the gauntlet, although I don't think there are quite as many to come as have managed to show up so far. Most of what I can do is keep hoping and keep buying my own copy.