Some PSA Stuff and the Best Anime Ever

Author: NovaJinx

Finally back online. I have spent the past week and a half walking in circles waiting on the ISP to activate the internet connection at my new apartment. It’s been a while since I’ve been without the information lifeline for such a long period and it struck me how many hours there are to spend in a day. But anyway, the torture has finally ended and I could return to blogging, among other things. The salvaging of the sorry-excuse-of-a-backup database was apparently successful for the most part and all the old posts have been restored. Categories, tags and comments on the other hand are gone and there seems to be no safe way of getting them back, so I’ll consider it as a price I have to pay for all this mess. In any case Jinx! is back in action, waiting for the next season to start so I can get back into the rhythm.

As the graduation day is looming uncomfortably close, I’ve been growing more and more frustrated with my situation. Due to my exchange term in the US I dropped a grade and thus all my friends have already graduated. That’s also the reason why I decided to get a single apartment – during my first two years at the uni I learned that it’s not really worth the trouble sharing your apartment with someone you have absolutely nothing to ever talk about with. The situation in the industry looks bad and it’ll take years for it to restore. Pretty much the worst time to be graduating. I could continue my degree on to M.Sc but doing that in Finland would be a waste of time and doing it anywhere else would drive me into poverty before graduation. Such a pain in the ass. Okay, I’m sorry for all this emo shit so let me post some moe Yuki as compensation…

HHHNNNNNNNNNGGGGG

But since this is primarily a blog about anime, let me proceed with some hype about a series I just finished. No less than clearly the best piece of TV entertainment I have ever witnessed – Legend of the Galactic Heroes. LoGH isn’t all that extraordinary as a science fiction story – in my opinion it can hardly match such classics as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Robot series. But the amazing part is that a story of this type and caliber has been successfully adapted into visual format. As we know, deep and complex science fiction stories rarely get any attention from the visual entertainment industry due to their limited target audience and the difficult task of adaptation without losing too much of the depth of the original story. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a testimonial that as difficult as it may be, it is not impossible to carry out. That said, it doesn’t mean that the show will be a hit. LoGH was never licensed for distribution in the English-speaking world and as far as I have understood, it wasn’t exactly a smash hit in Japan either. Which isn’t surprising – the series takes a long time to gather momentum and the mainstream viewers expecting pewpew’ing lazors and Star Wars-style swashbuckling with a spoon-fed story of clearly defined good and bad guys will soon be gone.

Indeed, in addition to the long-windedness and the sheer amount of character-building the biggest strength and weakness of LoGH is the unclear division between good and evil. It describes a conflict between an autocratic empire and a democratic alliance and neither side is portrayed as absolute good or bad. Although democracy gives people freedom, the apathy that results corrupts the very core of the system as crooked bureaucrats take over and people won’t give a damn. Meanwhile the autocratic system is entirely dependent on the benevolence of whoever’s wearing the shiny hat. As Reinhart progresses with his goal of taking over the universe, he is faced with this dilemma – already described back way back when in Ecclesiastes, 2:18-19:

I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.
And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.

Ahem. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is essentially a huge moral analysis about whether or not at the end of the day it is better for people to be governed by a benevolent dictator or a crooked but not all-powerful democractic system. Of course, in addition it features the most exciting space fleet battles that I have ever seen and enough character development to make Kalle Päätalo look like a generic light novelist sought by JC Staff. There hardly is another anime series that can claim to be as comprehensive experience as Legend of the Galactic Heroes. If you haven’t seen this show yet, now it’s about fucking time you check it out. It’s like the FDF service – you’re not a man until you’ve seen it through. For great justice, let me post some memorable moments…

No wonder he can’t hold himself from charging in like crazy.

Female GAR right there.

Hell’s yeah!

This one’s a classic.

Can’t really argue with that.

In middle school?

And now, some of Poplan’s best…

I’ve always like my bananas greenOHSHI-

Famous last words of many, I’m sure.

They work that way too.

Tags: beer, legend of galactic heroes, picspam, PSA