After announcing back at the end of March your plans for the sprawling Legend of Galactic Heroes classic series that’s being done as a $800 box set limited to 1000 units, you know you have to sell it just right. Sentai Filmworks has had this in their stable trying to figure out how to release it with the licensor since back in 2015 and they’ve at least been streaming it through HIDIVE for awhile now. Sentai’s now found the approach to promoting it and… I have to say, if the first thing the trailer does is remind you of the Master of Martial Hearts series, you may be on the wrong track.
This sprawling 110 episode OVA series ran between 1988 and 1997 and had several spinoffs have been highly sought after (and hard to acquire for many years). It’s set for a limited edition release for July 2018 through Sentai’s shop only and not through any traditional retailers while noting that this is the only release they’re doing – no regular editions coming later. It’s being done as the entire series and movies spread across 26 Blu-ray discs with four chipboard boxes and a hardcover book. It’s being individually numbered and limited to 1,000 units through the Sentai shop priced at $799.
It does sound a little familiar…
Plot concept: For 150 years the galaxy has been locked in an interstellar war between the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance, fighting battles with thousands of spaceships and millions of soldiers on both sides. The crumbling Goldenbaum dynasty rules the Empire while the Alliance is an increasingly dysfunctional democratic state.
Two new commanders enter the stage: Imperial Admiral Reinhard von Lohengramm and the FPA’s Yang Wen-Li. Reinhard is a talented minor aristocrat given a high station—and a powerful grudge—after the Kaiser took his older sister as a concubine. Wen-Li originally joined the military only to fund his university education, but has become a brilliant though reluctant leader. Each begins to attract a circle of similarly gifted soldiers, generals and thinkers around him, and in time the rivalry between these two very different men will shatter the existing stalemate. As they deal with superiors and subordinates, maneuver through personal and political problems, plot strategies and fight battles, both will bend the course of events to their will and, in turn, be tested and changed by the greatest war in human history!
Legend of the Galactic Heroes is a vast, sentimental and thoughtful military space opera. This 110-episode OVA is the central part of the franchise, and the other connected titles are supplements to it.
