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regina-bithyniae · 1 year

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Very incomplete thought here (do I post any other type?) but the LOGH game on Friday got me thinking about the series again, with trying to explain the backstory to newcomers and all that

It's very 19th century, isn't it?

The FPA is constitutionally very revolutionary. Its flag is the Tricolor turned 90 degrees with a star in the middle, its anthem is "Revolution of the Heart", and its right-wing aren't a bunch of free-marketers and social conservatives, but flag-waving corrupt civilian politicians and yet more bloodthirsty militarists in the fleet.

But it's not a communist type of revolutionary government. The FPA is definitely a Big State sort of place, but that's out of necessity - they're at WW2-scale mobilization levels even just at the start of the story(1). All that distinguishes the FPA left wing is it's doveishness. How they plan to end the war is beyond me, but in a two-power international system must implicitly mean caving to the Empire.

The FPA's internal struggle is between the entrenched crooks and thieves (the Trunicht government), the indifferently numb masses, the militarists (the NSMC), and the distinctly liberal reformists who win the argument in the end, if too late for it to matter (Yang, Joao Lebello).

With how dysfunctional the FPA becomes by its last years, I've shifted from seeing it as a US analogue, and wondered if we should ground it more somewhere like Argentina.

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And then the Empire.

Why would a story written and published during the height of the Reagan-era cold war tensions pick the now-irrelevant monarchic system as the opposite to liberal democracy? Communism was right there; fascism was at least in recent memory. Instead it indulges in the fantasy of the genius enlightened despot boy emperor.

I've wondered if the answer to the puzzle here is that LOGH isn't quite as universalist a story as it's easy to take it as. The admirals of both sides behave with a distinct IJN bloodthirst; the prominence of insane terroristic cults; the FPA's right-wing being filled with out of control militarists in the armed forces is very 1930s Japan; the Douglas-Grumman scandal was recent news when LOGH first published (2).

What to make of this is where I can't say much more. Perhaps it is meant as (and largely is) a story mostly concerned with the authoritarianism/liberalism clash, but with an easily missed distinct Japanese point of view on it. Maybe it's meant partially about all that, but as much about Japan's past and present. The politics are certainly easy to read for whatever you want, be it Reagan-era hawkishness or contemporary populism and democratic decay - so at least something there has a timeless quality.

(1). In share of population, if you count up the manpower in the 12 numbered fleets and divide by the total given population, it's at comparable levels to the US in late WW2

(2) Can't take credit for noticing this one, read it elsewhere but can't find where

#legend of the galactic heroes #logh #y-wl

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logh-icebergs · 7 years

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Episode 12: Invasion of Imperial Territory

August 796/487. Yang, Sitolet, and Cazellnu get stuck in traffic. They run into Lebello and give him a lift in their handy military zip-helicopter. At the High Council meeting, Royal Sanford and Cornelia Windsor convince all council members except for Lebello, Huang, and Trunicht to vote in favor of the military’s proposed invasion of Imperial territory. With the operation approved by the government, Sitolet convenes a meeting at which he appoints Lobos to command the mission of eight fleets totaling 30,227,400 soldiers, with Greenhill his second in command. Andrew Fork, who crafted the invasion plan, accuses Yang of aiding the enemy. Meanwhile Rubinsky and von Remscheid go on a....date? No, okay, they’re probably just talking politics. Probably.

...Okay, got all that? We’ve been focused on laying the groundwork of the main themes and relationships that we’ll be following throughout the series, which means that many of the little plot details and secondary characters that have flitted by so far haven’t figured heavily in our posts. Since this episode is less like an iceberg and more like an ice floe that’s mostly above the water, I’m gonna take this opportunity to formally introduce us to some of these (many, many, many) characters.

Alex Cazellnu

Pictured here with his characteristic “I’m not quite sure what’s happening around me” expression, Cazellnu is Yang’s friend and former upperclassman from the military academy. Many mysteries surround this man, as we’ll talk much more about later. For example, how did he land such a smoking hot and kickass wife? (We’ll see her soon, don’t worry.) What made him think Yang was fit to be anyone’s legal guardian? (Yes, that was his brilliant idea.) And what the fuck kind of name is Cazellnu? (Actually my guess is that it’s based on the word caserne meaning military barracks, which is a bit on the nose honestly since his job has to do with supplies and housing…)

More seriously, Cazellnu plays an interesting and important role in the show: He personifies the heteronormative societal structures and assumptions both of the in-universe world and the world of the audience. Like so much in LoGH this has a dual purpose. For the characters around him, the normative crap he says applies concrete pressure on them to meet the expectations of their society. For the audience, he explicitly articulates some of the (incorrect) "surface readings" that help the show pass as way straighter than it is. We will of course be keeping an eye out for these moments as we get to know him better.

Another Cazellnu mystery: Why didn’t he bother to give his younger daughter a name? Did he use up all the female names he could think of on Charlotte Phyllis??

Sidney Sitolet

We’ve seen Fleet Admiral Sitolet (or Sithole, as it’s sometimes spelled, but come on, have some respect…) before, most recently when he was laying a major guilt trip on Yang about trying to resign from the military. In this episode he intensifies that guilt trip even further, telling Yang that he’s the literal only hope for preventing the whole military from falling into the hands of over-ambitious zealots eager to get everyone gloriously killed. Sheesh. I know that Sitolet is clearly demarcated as one of the Good Guys here—an older, more powerful, slightly sterner version of Yang who is also extremely practical about using his resources to try to minimize the damage caused by the continuing war. And Yang is one of those resources. I get it, but...this scene at the end of this episode just makes me want to write AU fanfic where Yang tells him to go to hell and moves to a nice mountain villa where he writes history books all day while Julian goes shopping at the local market for the best deals on high quality tea.

...What, a girl can dream, can’t she? (From episode 3.)

Anyway, platitudes about patriotism and duty to crush the Evil Empire etc. won’t keep Yang in the military, but Sitolet is the one who knows exactly the kind of logic Yang finds inescapable. As much as it obviously frustrates and saddens him, Yang feels the burden of Sitolet’s expectations.

João Lebello

Or Joanne, sure, why not.

This is the first time we’re seeing Lebello, the current secretary of the treasury serving on the Alliance High Council. He’s a childhood friend of Sitolet’s, and their banter reminds me a bit of Yang and Cazellnu’s friendship.

In the council’s deliberations, he’s the loudest voice speaking up against the invasion, on the grounds that their economy is already being stretched thin by the ongoing warfare and further military spending could lead to collapse. Unfortunately the counter of “eh we’ll just print more money” is persuasive to most of the council, who vote in favor of the invasion in hopes that a victory will improve their polling numbers. Let’s hear it for democracy!

Huang Louis

Like Yang, his family name is first; his given name is ルイ in Japanese, and I’ve seen it rendered as Rui, Lewi, or Louis.

The only other council member to speak against the invasion plan. Huang is quietly awesome; I don’t have a ton to say about him yet other than that, and the fact that I totally ship him and Lebello.

Huang/Lebello is pretty high up there on the LoGH Ships expanding brain meme.

Cornelia Windsor

The token woman on the council, Windsor does a great job smashing the sexist stereotype that women are less likely than men to warmonger and advocate the deaths of millions of citizens. And she does so while reminding me so strongly of Dolores Umbridge that I’ve been trying to convince myself that J.K. Rowling must have watched at least the first twelve episodes of this show somehow.

I mean, just look at that giggle.

There are three philosophies put forward in the council discussion: Lebello and Huang making practical arguments about the toll the war is taking on the Alliance economically and socially; Sanford, the head of the council, arguing that inaction is less likely to get them re-elected than a potential victory; and Windsor making the ideological case that war against the Empire is so righteous that no cost is too great to pay.

I’ll go out on a limb and say this show hasn’t been very subtle from the beginning about its distaste for people making arguments in favor of war and destruction on purely ideological or dogma-driven grounds. This stance seems mostly uncomplicated for now—pragmatism: good; blind idealism: bad—but so far the stars have aligned so that the characters spewing the dogmatic rhetoric are using it to push for increased death. It’s easy to roll our eyes at ideals of honor and glory in war; what about ideals like “try not to kill people if you don’t have to”? What if those go against the pragmatic arguments? We’ve already seen this tension a bit between Yang and Jessica, with his willingness to work within the military clashing with her ideals of pacifism, even though their ultimate goals align. In those cases there’s much less of a clear cut answer.

...But for now at least, we can all agree this Umbridge-wannabe person sucks.

Job Trunicht

(From episode 6.)

We’ve already heard plenty about Trunicht and we’ll hear plenty more, so I won’t dwell on him here. But a quick Fun Fact*: Yang, being generally a luddite, refused to even get a remote control for his TV (er sorry, SolidVision) for a long time, until Trunicht started appearing regularly on the news. Yang hated seeing Trunicht’s face for even a split second so much that he would bound up off the couch to turn it off as soon as Trunicht showed up. Of course Yang is incredibly lazy, and he finally realized that with a remote control he could remain on the couch and have to see Trunicht’s face for even less time, so he caved and bought one; and now he sits eagerly watching the news with the remote clutched in one hand, hoping he’ll have the chance to turn it off in disgust.

...Relatable.

*Source: Julian’s Iserlohn Diary, one of the side stories written by Tanaka. Yes yes our canon here is the anime not the books; but we get to pick and choose adorable details that we like, and I hereby make this one Official Icebergs Canon.

Andrew Fork

Speaking of characters spewing pompous platitudes about war, meet Andrew Fork, who I really really wish I could say was a hyperbolic caricature who could never exist or gain actual power in real life but………..*looks around* here we are I guess. Fork must be a historian who wrote his thesis on early 21st century Earth internet message boards, since he employs tactics like accusing anyone who questions the practical implementation of his ideas of Aiding the Other Side. I again can’t resist sharing a passage from the novel of another character describing Fork:

*thinking emoji* *thinking emoji* *thinking emoji* I dunno it sounds familiar but I can’t place it...

Alexander Bucock

As you can tell by him giving Fork shit, Bucock is one of the more level-headed of the admirals. We’ll get to know him better in the future, so for now I’ll just mention that he’s awesome and him telling Fork that he’s impolite makes me happy. And that you shouldn’t get him mixed up with Lobos just because they both have white/gray hair and a mustache, as I may have done through pretty much the whole first season...

Quick Aside: Names

Cazellnu/Caserne/Caselnes? João/Joanne Rebelo/Lebello? Sitolet/Sithole/Shithole? Rui/Lewi/Louis? Fork/Falk? Bucock/Bewcock? Mittermeyer/Mittermeier, Reuental/Reuenthal, Mintz/Minci, Lap/Lapp/Shithole…??? It might have come to your attention by now that there is complete consensus about the spelling of essentially zero LoGH names.

You’d think “Jessica Edwards” would at least be free from controversy, but….. (From episode 2.)

Given that there doesn’t seem to be one clearly “official” source, and that it’s 1600 years in the future, we’re not especially hung up on trying to be super authentic and picky with our spellings. Maybe Cazellnu’s distant ancestors who also managed military barracks were named Caserne, but the spelling got modified as humanity emigrated to the stars; it happens. Generally our policy is to spell things however we happen to feel like it, based on some combination of aesthetics and just what we’re used to, and to be as consistent as we can once we pick a spelling; but we’re not really in the business of trying to arbitrate which spellings are “correct.” There’s too much about LoGH that’s worth caring passionately about to spend that much energy on the names.

...Except Minci is still wrong, sorry animation notes that came with the laserdiscs.

Okay now, where were we…

Lazzll Lobos

...What, really? Lazzll, that’s what the subbers went with? Is that even a name? *quick Google search* No, no it’s not. Well, apparently it’s more commonly spelled Lassalle, but y’know what, I’m sticking with Lazzll god dammit. I make the rules here.

I don’t have anything to say about him beyond his name and that he is different from Bucock apparently.

And last but not...well okay maybe also least?

Adrian Rubinsky

When we last mentioned Rubinsky he was musing about how to use Reinhard and Kircheis’s relationship to his advantage somehow; here we find him informing the Imperial High Commissioner to Phezzan about the Alliance’s impending invasion, which he learned about...somehow. His air is constantly that of one attempting to play puppet-master and sculpt the situation to his own advantage, although ostensibly he is only doing his duty here as an Imperial subject, Phezzan being officially a territory of the Empire. It’s on his information that the Imperial nobles set Reinhard’s fleet in motion to meet the Alliance invasion force, as Yang was afraid they would do.

We also very very briefly meet Dominique Saint-Pierré, a mistress of Rubinsky's, seen here pouring wine while both men leer at her; she has more power than this glimpse suggests, though, and the power struggles between her and Rubinsky are definitely the most interesting aspect of Rubinsky’s role in the story.

Phew! And with this we conclude the entry that will probably mention the highest number of canonically straight characters by name of any Icebergs post. I hope you got all that; yes this will be on the exam.

Stray Tidbits

I love the four-hour traffic jam caused by some intern feeding a corrupt string into a computer. I’ve mentioned how realistic the self-driving car system on Heinessen feels, and having it break down only adds to the realism.

So much for Yang’s optimism that capturing Iserlohn would lead to peace negotiations rather than an escalation of the war. Cracks are starting to show in Yang’s admiration of this whole “let the people control the government” thing, and I don’t blame him; especially since the Alliance “democracy” seems to involve decisions made by simple majority vote by an eleven-person High Council?? Umm?

The subs tried to make sense of this line by drawing a distinction that I don't think is there in the Japanese: Yang uses the same verb, "akusei o shite iru," for both governments, where akusei (悪政) is literally bad+government. My interpretation is that Yang is expressing frustration at the irony of people choosing to elect a government that nevertheless governs against their interest...but I guess I might be projecting.

I love this random shot of a Phezzani street. Most Obscure LoGH Love Triangle Award goes to the three teenagers on the right; I wonder which of them is the vertex?? This is the fanfiction the world demands.

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