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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3301 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 10, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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There's this somewhat 1990s famous anime series* "Legend of Galactic Heroes". It's based on a series of Japanese military SF novels. The novels are of the kind that deal more with command, strategy and tactics rather than the actual pew-pew/aargh of SF combat.

I learned about it when someone posted a meme dissing 'lore' of some other series and well, look for yourself:. Piqued my interest.

No spoilers at any of the links here.

Haven't gotten around to watching the series - it's rather long and quality of visuals is not up to modern standards, but I'm enjoying reading the first book.

Like with Three Body Problem, there's a distinctly alien quality to the book despite it being translated and populated mostly by people descended from Europeans. It's sort of a military space opera I guess, but with a more serious tone. The books and the series is complex but not too impenetrable like certain anime. I suspect a lot of the harder to understand anime series are that way because Japanese correctly understand if you make something that makes little sense, people will still try to make sense out of it and impute deepness to it.

The first book is not bad at all. The writer has a good turn of phrase and the characters / organisational dynamics are described realistically. It's not boring or too predictable.

A flaw in the first book is that the strategic issue with the first battle were a bit ridiculous- e.g. professional soldiers in long running war making the kind of error a schoolboy wouldn't make after five games of Stellaris! Specifically they allow themselves be defeated in detail, which is just .. ugh.

*no. 11 on that list, which is mostly new stuff.

Great series. Expect a fair amount of caricature-level commanders and silly politicians to be a common thread in the stories. It's not all like that first battle, but it will recur, especially for side characters.

I've only watched one season of the new series/remake (Die Neue These), but it's actually not bad. It might be a classic in its own right. It has a kind of modern-yet-glacial pace which grows on you, like an old novel.

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