Finished watching Legend of the Galactic Heroes: My Conquest is the Sea of Stars (1988, Artland, Madhouse, 59mins) on 11/8/2017.
Set in a fictitious future where mankind has expanded into deep space, even having colonized other habitable planets, two factions have been waging war for years in the sea of stars - the Free Planets Alliance, and the Galactic Empire. Working under the flag of the empire, Reinhard von Lohengramm arrives at the Iserlohn Fortress, but not before he has to deal with an attack by a small Alliance force in which Yang Wen-li serves as a Staff Officer.
After having watched a handful of space-opera series, namely Captain Harlock, Yamato and Macross, I came across recommendations for the Legend of the Galactic Heroes as THE space-opera to watch. Well, why the heck not, I thought. Having looked through a few screenshots and artwork I began to fear that the series might be too serious and technical for my taste. Well... I came to find that it was, but! It did a very good job at it, thus surprising me. Well, this movie at least. The artwork is beautiful and the classical music that goes with it only emphasizes its beauty. Specially when it plays during space combat and you see the tactical plans being made on the fly. It's... oddly exciting. And for a later 80's movie, I can only imagine the animation quality must've been pretty amazing! Another thing that caught me off guard was maybe how Reinhard and Siegfried acted around each other. From the movie alone I was able to gather that they seem to be close friends but... I guess I wasn't expecting how, uhm, well, comfortable they are with each other. As if the movie is trying hard to appeal to a specific audience... perhaps. Not that it's something that bothered me, in fact I was amused by it. There's just something, graceful about them. And to further accentuate that grace there's this visual theme that the Empire seems to have adopted with the inside of their ships. The decks all seem to share this early Roman aesthetic with marble pillars and architecture. And the uniforms they wear are also beautifully detailed as opposed to the more basic, army-like look of the Alliance.
8/10 - It's definitely quite different from what I've watched so far. Then again, I don't have that much space-opera under my belt. But it was a great movie for sure and I definitely recommend it. It's not very long either, which is great in case you feel like it's not really your cup of tea. But if you're into the genre, I'm sure you'll appreciate this movie for sure. And you don't have to pay much attention to the more complicated war mumbo-jumbo to appreciate the movie. As long as you get the basic gist of it, it becomes very enjoyable.
