Tytania Could Suck a Golfball Through a Garden Hose and Here’s Why

Author: nova

This is my Tytania-face.

Because of Fan. Well, not only because of Fan, but mostly yes, because of Fan. Fan Hyulick is a worthless excuse of a main character whose existence makes the show look bad…well, worse than what it already looks like. I signed up for fleet battles where cunning strategists and tacticians clash, where men are iron and ships collapsed-core molybdenum and where only the witty and resourceful survive. I looked forward to galactic-scale story with multiple points of view on things and no clear good or evil. A gritty story, if you will. This description might remind you of something – yes, Legend of Galactic Heroes. It’s unfortunate for Tytania to end up being compared to this behemoth of an anime series but one can hardly be blamed for comparing the two no matter how big difference there is in scale.

And what did Tytania give me? Apparently something that George Lucas might have written but decided that it’s too witty for Star Wars-nerds and too stupid for everyone else. Some have called Tytania the Legend of Galactic Heroes Lite and I still absolutely disagree with this. More accurate would be to say that Tytania is somewhat of an equivalent to Star Wars Holiday Special. You know, the brain fart Mr. Lucas has stored in some underground vault wishing for a nuclear war to bury it forever. Tytania has shitty animation in every possible aspect, but that’s not even the problem. Legend of Galactic Heroes wasn’t all that shiny either – the battle scenes were mostly semi-static images of ships moving slowly, the same repeated explosion animations and weapon effects that anyone with MS Paint could draw. Tytania’s true reason for its miserable state lies in the same thing that was the strongest point of LoGH.

YEEAAAHH!

Tytania’s character cast is mainly good. Characters are likeable, lifelike and have distinct personalities. The four Tytanian dukes and their respective struggle for power is very well executed and interesting to watch. In fact pretty much all scenes in Tytania that take place within the court of Uraniborg or otherwise focus on the dukes’ antics are well worth watching even with the lame-ish animation. I might even go as far as saying that if the show would only focus on the four dukes, it would be very good. Unfortunately it doesn’t.

Fan Hyulick. A relaxed soldier of fortune who doesn’t take things too seriously. A man who happened to be in a wrong place at a wrong time. Sound like Yang Wenli? That’s where things start getting sour. The problem is that the show keeps building Fan’s character so that it becomes obvious how he’s meant to be Tytania’s equivalent to LoGH’s Yang. Unfortunately eventually it becomes apparent that his character has taken a turn to a completely different direction. He isn’t the unwilling but talented and careless Yang who’s doing his thing simply because there is nobody else who could. He is somewhat watered-down version of Han Solo, a self-confident hero with divine luck and personal reasons to fight on. However Fan lacks any of the Han’s GAR and overall coolness, not to mention the credibility. You see, Fan isn’t a very convincing hero. He managed to defeat a Tytanian duke in one single battle mainly because his opponent was too full of himself and careless. I did not witness any of the actual tactical and strategical talent of Yang Wenli – simply blind luck. Fan doesn’t give a damn about Tytania or fighting and I could sympathize with him on that. But then comes Lira.

This is my Tytania-face up close.

Tytania tries hard to convince us that Fan is very important. But why? Where is the fucking proof that he’s of any actual use? Nowhere. The story also seems to be unable to decide whether it’s Star War-styled good guys vs. bad guys-story or LoGH-type where there is no clear division between the good and evil. Tytania, its clan lord and the four dukes are not demonized (personally I found Jouslain to be much likeable character than Fan), at least not enough to allow the viewer to support Fan with his quest to destroy it. Fan got his bitch killed by Tytania, sure, but so what? I didn’t find Lira’s death much emotional at all, mainly because there wasn’t even any convincing bond between her and Fan. Seriously, did it even feel like Lira and Fan were deeply in love? Of course the show did what it could to try to convince us of that and it might have been successful with a viewership of middle schoolers. Maybe it’s just me getting old and cynical, but I couldn’t feel any kind of actual emotional depth in the relationship of Fan and Lira. PROTIP: If you kill off a character and make a big deal out of it, at least kill a character that the viewership cares about. I didn’t care about Lira. Nobody did. She died, though shit. Now Fan is mad because his wimmin was KIA’d but since nobody really cared about their relationship or even Lira herself, I find it easier to just side with Tytania.

Fan is a failed hybrid of Yang Wenli and Han Solo, that much is certain, but the failure of Tytania doesn’t end here. Fan’s crew is carved out of the same wood (and carved with a fucking chainsaw by the looks of them), a bunch of insignificant and unlikeable morons who think Fan is Serious Business. Well, the old dude isn’t bad but maybe it’s because at least he’s mute. The battles I looked forward to are an equally big let-down. Obviously due to budgeting reasons the battles are scarce (I think around 4 or 5 by the episode 16) and rather…clinical experiences whenever they happen. CGI work is nice and ships designs look cool, but that’s about it. The battles have no tension to them at all, to the point that they might as well be intended as computer screen savers. Battles look nice but lack the oomph that would make them actually worth remembering. It’s like getting a PS3 box filled with socks for christmas.

Especially when you’re watching Tytania.

TL;DR: Tytania is shit and you shouldn’t be watching it. There simply is no need to because LoGH has done it all already and many times better.