Building on the foundation of a fourteen-volume novel series published in the 1980s the anime version confirmed the maturation of the OVA format, successfully sustaining audiences who paid subscriptions for a full decade to follow its 110-episode space odyssey between 19 with more than fifty volumes of laserdiscs, VHS tapes, and Video CDs, with a sense of lineage as well as scale from being directed by Noboru Ishiguro who also helmed the original Macross.
The very title is redolent of an assured grandeur, and it has the scale to match such loftiness. Legend of the Galactic Heroes is intimidating to approach.
Legend of the Galactic Heroes would seem at first glance to do everything right - it's an elaborate and detailed discourse on weighty matters of society and politics with a radical tint, and the original author Yoshiki Tanaka is a bona-fide scholar, a Doctor of Language and Literature who graduated from the prestigious Gakushuin University.
Another title that often comes up when looking for titles to justify 'Anime As Art' is Legend of the Galactic Heroes, originally a novel series but with a memorable anime adaptation. The continuing search for coveted Mainstream Acceptance for anime is a long and hard uphill struggle, but still like Sisyphus we roll that boulder on.
