Finished watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes Gaiden 2: Spiral Labyrinth (1999, JC Staff, 14 OVAs) on 11/29/2017.
After his father's death, young Yang Wen-Li wasn't left with much to fend for himself, and his plans to study history at Heinessen Memorial University were made impossible by his lack of funds. He finds an alternate option by studying history through the War History Studies Department of the Free Planets Alliance Officer Academy where his tuition fees are waived in the condition that he join military service upon graduation. Left without much choice, Wen-Li agrees and later becomes the centerpiece of a fated event that would change his life and career in ways he could have never imagined.
After watching the first entry in the series of adaptations of the LotGH novels, I decided to start watching the rest of the series in the chronological order of events. And if I don't have the order wrong, this should be the first one to hit.
These 14 OVAs were extremely interesting to watch despite the lack of action and the crazy amount of monologue and dialogue present in the episodes. It sort of reminded me of Death Note. Lots of dialogue, but still interesting. In this case it's not about meticulosuly plotting supernatural death, but uncovering the intriguing truth behind the suspected murder of a great historical war general. But what makes it even more interesting is how Wen-Li's higher-ups move him around from assignment to assignment, landing him chance encounters with people somehow connected to his investigation.
Another thing to note is the visual quality of the show. The design of the characters seem to be pretty good and have a nice visual consistency throughout. But I think that's because there was perhaps little to animate as most of the time characters are just sitting around talking or thinking, so the resources were spent mostly on keeping each of the few frames from looking like crud.
8/10 - I'm really surprised at how I never got bored listening to Wen-Li just do his research and listen to war veterans reminisce for most of the episodes. Well, I guess there were the flashback sequences as the stories were revealed, so there was some action going on, specially later in the episodes. Either way I really enjoyed it.
