Ships of the Line!

One of the things I wanted to just for myself was to create a listing of the various flagships from the series of The Legend of the Galactic Heroes. I intend to do this by re watching the series and taking screen shots and talking about the ships if I have anything to say.

First what I have to say is a bit history. LOGH is sci-fi universe set I dunno at least a thousand or so years in the future, in time frame after like big Republic that unified everybody falls into a Empire that for the quirks of its leader takes on a very German feel to it. People don't like this and they revolt and flee to another portion of the galaxy and form the Free Planets Alliance and after a while the sides meet and get involved in a 150 long never ending war. The war lasts so long because there is only two passages to connect to each other, and thus the defender always has the advantage unless they completely screw up.

The series's two main characters (well technically three but there be spoilers if I talked about it now) are the Free Planet's Alliance Yang Wengli a guy who joined the military for an education is like the Robert E Lee of the FPA in terms of fighting at a disadvantage all the time against the Galactic Empire who has its Alexander the Great figure of Reinhard Lohengrim, who overthrows the corrupt nobility and becomes the Kaiser. There is also like a cast of at least 50 characters who their own back stories, plots and its all very War and Peaceish. And is a long series several novels that were the original basis, and a 110 episode series, plus movies, plus side stories OVAs, plus manga. All very big and complex.

The name of Fortress Iserlohn comes from this series, and its the big superfort on the border between the nations that is fought for several times.

A thing about this universe, the spacebattles are rather large. A normal fleet is more then ten thousand ships of varying sizes. Thus the battles are more of a combination that reminds me of Napelonic Warfare in 3d and the line of battle concept take to the ultimate extreme. Thus there is a certain amount of mass produced ships, generally the cruisers that you see exploded in all sorts of way as the battles goes on. Though to show some coolness of ship designs, generally admirals have their own unique battleship that their flagship and this what I am going to be taking pictures off.

















The Brunhilde. She is probably the most famous of the ships, and its Reinhard's flagship through the series. Its a pretty sweet looking ship, yet its really hard to see where the guns are on the damn thing. But like pretty much all Imperial ships is atmospheric capable of landing. She's probably the ultimate example of Imperial Star Fleet design of sleek ships. As a note Imperial ships take for the most part Germanic names.
















This is a standard Free Planet's Alliance battleship/flagship. The thing looks menacing no?
The FPA has for its philosophy of big boxy ships that have nothing but guns for its bow. Generally to me they seem to be more boxier and slower, but heavily armed and armored then Imperial ships. But really its hard to tell.

Also as seen by the giant Six on the side, this is the flagship of the ill fated Alliance Six Fleet that along with the 4th fleet gets destroyed by Reinhard's fleet during in the opening two episodes of the series that takes place in the Iserhlohn corridor.

Also this ship has the first of the dying admiral/hero scenes on a burning bridge. Generally in this show, when somebody who has screen time gets killed on his battleship, the show him critically wounded, commenting either about philosophy, on the nature of war, talking about old friendships or loves, or regretting the fact he failed or what have you.
















Again a standard FPA battleship. This is the flagship that Yang Wengli takes command of the survivors of the FPA fleet after the battle is joined with Reinhard's force. He pretty much forces a draw This ship is also interesting in that its the first ship to take the "Glancing blow of damage" which blows up only a portion of the bridge, and injures somebody. Generally in LOGH, when you get hit, you tend to explode, but battleships do have shields that show, and they can negate off centered shots a bit.
















Snow in space? Fuzzy screen? No. Those are all ships that are range in length of at least by guess 200 meters long to over a kilometer with some flagships. When LOGH nations go to war, they don't really fool around. And this battle was about average, and this is only a tiny portion of the fleet that is visible.

Ouch!

Hmm, I seem to accidentally deleted my longish post about Romance of the Three Kingdoms to get a couple of grammar errors. Talk about destroying a village to save it.

Giant Michael Jackson bot to threaten the desert?

It sounds like something about one his music videos, but thanks to SB I came across this gem of a story. Normally its me who has something witty to say, but my friend, from Original Cin took the cake last night, I'll leave you with what he said. " I guess he figures nothing will improve your image after allegations of molesting children like a giant death robot in your image."

End of a Era

Since I gotten my desktop all those years ago, I been running the ye olde version of Mozilla, just Mozilla not Mozilla Firefox. However, due to the fact that my old browser was unable to defeat the log in process of Blogger, I decided in interest of my sanity to update. And with this successfully done, I shall make a bookkeeping statement in that this will be the only blog I use now that I eliminated the problem.

My Home Town Discovers the Intertubes!

It started with Skeptical Morris, which spawned now three other Morris blogs, Positive Morris, Sledgehammer Morris, and now Hypocritical Morris. It is intresting looking at what I know of Morris through the cracked-out viewpoint of the internet in which everything becomes 100% more angry and anonymous (who proves that even if they are not on 4chan, they don't forgive)

Well due to some strange mix up, I seem to have two blogs. So I therefor I shall make this one be the one about reviews of anime I have seen.

And let me start off by rambling.

Gundam Seed Destiny
I knew going into this it would be a trainwreck judging from the sheer amount of bad talk it got during its run over in Japan, and the fact that it still attracts negative attection on /m/ on 4chan on a daily basis.

However the true tragedy of the entire affair was that it started off really good. I liked the first eight or so episodes better then I liked the majority of Seed that I saw. The action scenes were done excellent, and there was good amount of plot movement and direction going with the hunt of the Girty Lue by the hero's ship Minerva.

Then it hit like around episode 12 or something with the first recap episode and things began to slow down and fall apart, and then picked up again with the introduction of a bit character who was while awesome fated to die, and then things slow down again. I have now seen about 3/5s of the show, and the last two dvds I had to will myself to watch pass the recaps and stupid characters doing stupid things.

A sad series, but one that I am giving a tenative 2 out of 5 at the moment.

Now for a quick take of other gundam outside of SEED I have seen.

Turn A Gundam: By far the best Tomino Gundam show, and its by far the most unique one. Unlike Tomnio's previous works most of the characters get a happy or at the very least an ending in that they live. Its also the most character driven show I have seen in a long time, and the ending does hurt a bit in a bittersweet movement.

Zeta Gundam: Which alot of people claim is the best of the UC gundam. It has some whackyness in it, but again seeing 3/5s of it so far its been good. The main character in that show does grow up a bit, and so does his main rival for the villians Jerrid (who has probably the best 80's hair ever) and the show has some pretty intense battles and cool designs. The Rick Dias which shows up here is by far my favorite UC mobile suit design.

There is also three movies that were releashed recently that had some new animation to it as well as drastic editing. The movies were cool but rushed, which can be expected from a 50 episode series turned into 3 2 hour movies.

0083 Stardust Memory: The first UC Gundam series I have bought. Its a OVA that deals with the events that occured between the first Gundam and Zeta Gundam. And it was made after the two. It deals with the remants of the villianous Zeon from the first series and their plan after they steal Gundam from the Earth Federation. Its a remarkable series in that the main characters are actually over 17 for once, and are military officers. Its also a fun show to see the cameos of future Gundam villians, such as Haman of Axis, and Bask Ohm of the Titans.

Char's Counter Attack: The movie that is the last Gundam to have the main characters from the first series of Amuro Ray and Char. Char after helping defeat the Titans has now become a genocidal leader of Neo-Zeon and plans to drop a giant asteroid on Earth to kill Earth and make space free. Amuro Ray his rival plans to stop him as part of a special Earth military force to deal with the space colonies. The movie good parts is that its really well done in terms of apperance and even has one of the first use of CG graphics. The bad part is that plot is pretty out there. At one point the Earth Federation sells Char the asteroid that has nuclear thrusters on it he is going to hit them with, after he already hit them with one rock at the begining of the movie, has stated intentions of not liking the Earth, in return for a promise to disarm Neo-Zeon and for a ton of gold to pay for their welfare policies. I am not joking.

Gundam Wing: Well what can be said about it. For many myself included it was the gateway into the world of Gundam. Though its more superrobots running rampage in a field of poor, poor mobile targets called Leos, then anything else, it still had this quirky awesomeness to it. Its notable for insane politics, super bishie boy pilots, and in my case villians more awesome then the heroes, it was 50 episode ride of super gundamness. The movie that came out to finish that universe was a good movie, and actually put closure on that crazy alternate universe.

Ahoy Mateys!

Welcome to the good Fortress, where I ramble on about whatever interests me!

That is all.