An army is a tool for violence, and there are two kinds of violence... Violence to control and oppress, and violence as a means of liberation.

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Attention: SPOILERS AHEAD

First things first: I think I now get the appeal of the fandom surrounding this work. The directorial differences to modern works, the reputation of the series, and sheer length of it prove as a barrier to entry to it that makes many that cross the boundary feel some kind of exclusivity to it all. There are not that many that finished the series, and having most conversations about it be in high praise about the show definitely lends that exclusivity feeling a nice air.

But, I have few but intense grievances with the show that keep me from drinking the kool aid and going full circle jerk about the work, and I'll get to them first before I'll bring the post back home to the many aspects that are genuinely great about the show afterwards. So hang on tight for the next paragraphs, I promise to end the post on a high note.

First of them: For your own sake, please please always skip the previews. The narrator spells out exactly what happens in the next episode. There's no bait and switch like with some previews nowadays. You have been warned.

In a world where we hate on works like SAO for having endless, boring, and visually bland exposition dumps; it was impossible for me to overlook this with LotGH. Watching Monogatari alongside this show likely didn't help either. And this is not necessarily a critique on the dialogue writing part. High strung aristocracy talk comes with the expectations, that's okay. Monogatari had it's fair share of technobabble and pretentious dialogue that is entirely out of place for high schoolers.
The show consists in overwhelmingly large parts of two or more characters talking at each other. But the cinematography and direction failed to stand the test of time. The visual language just doesn't carry the political and techno babble to a level where just watching the people converse would be interesting.
To be perfectly fair, most modern anime still has trouble creating great blocking and composition for exposition scenes, but some gems like the fence discussion in the first episode of The Promised Neverland (with truly great blocking from 12:00 onward), exist.
Or my personal benchmark for an interesting conversational scene would be the final confrontation between Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in the 2008 movie Doubt, where the camera and actors are like in a dance with each other.

This leads me to another directorial blunder which the series repeatedly makes. Every few episodes, there will be a scene which is entered and left without leadin and leadout time. And they're almost exclusively conversations. I once literally caught myself wondering what the fuck happened when the episode went from one conversation cutting to an entirely different one between Phezzani or Republic Alliance citizens (can't quite remember) without lead-in time jumping straight to the meat of conversation, and leaving as fast as we entered back to the scene that preceded it. I wondered: who are these people, where does this scene come from, how does it fit contextually with the scene surrounding it?
Thankfully though, this happens less than the harsh tone of the paragraph might suggest. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd call this a nitpick of mine.

The last of my big gripes, and an entirely personal one, with the series would be, that the whole package, the execution, just didn't land as well for me as it surely has for a great deal of viewers. With exception of the things I already stated above, I can't quite put my finger on why that is. I went into the series promising myself that I'd watch at least one episode per day, which I later bumped to two, seeing as it would just take too much time for me. I largely sticked to that schedule, but there definitely were stretches of time where I had dreaded the need to watch more episodes, where I already forgot all of the political babble from the day before. Never enough for me to consider dropping the series, but I'd lie if I would say I enjoyed the entire ride.

I could not help but be bugged about the stark contrast between their capacity for faster than light travel, and the large spans of time they spend traveling from system to system. But I recognize that the story structure did not provide any elegant solution to this problem. True warp would deflate any sense of tension and urgency in battles when you could just instantly call for reinforcements. But the need for the tech to exist is there, if you want realistic distances between systems, and travel within normal human lifespans between them to be possible.
But, why did they never distinguish between normal and ftl travel? Is there even a difference? If so —and the moving of Geiersburg Fortress, and the visuals accompanying it suggest so— why did no one consider using warp for escape/pursuit or use as a relativistic kill vehicle?
To be fair though, these problems plague most space operas, and in the big scheme of things it's no big deal. It's only if you break established conventions like The Last Jedi did, using that Rebel ship as a relativistic kill vehicle, which then in turn calls all preceding space battles and the lack of the use of that tactic into question.
In that regard, by never distinguishing a difference between normal and ftl travel, and never bringing relativistic kill vehicles up, LotGH at least stayed consistent with itself, hence this only being a minor gripe.

Considering that the work is set thousands of years in the future, the exclusive adherence to traditional gender roles, and at times a bit misogynistic views are a bit odd. This dawned on me by episode 100, where the new Galactic Empire higher ups debate about succession rights and women's role in that aspect. By series end it looked like Reinhard and Hilda had differing views on that though. And all in all the latent misogyny in LotGH can be chalked up to it being an artifact of the time in which the work was written.

Okay then, with the depressing stuff out of the way, let's get to the main dish.

While I was indifferent to the classical score of the show for most parts of it, while most everyone loves the idea of it, there were times when they chose a fitting piece, where it really hit me. E97's use for Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 3: I. Kräftig. Entschieden is such a case for me. Perusing Gineipaedia (where does this name from?), where they noted down the name of the pieces used with timecodes in every episode entry, turned out to be a nice classical music learning experience too.

Let's face it. You're practically bound to cry, or come close to it, at least once if not more during the runtime of the show. With over 100 episodes of time to spend with some of the characters, and the high body count nature of the setting, you will have plenty of opportunity to get a window into the characters. You'll share their joys and sorrows, and will inevitably get heartbroken when they die.
For me, considering my gripes with overall execution of the series, this was mainly only the case when Yang found his end. It was so sudden, un-glorious, and painful to watch. Bleeding to death in total solitude alone with his resting thoughts. Killed by an unnamed character without a fight.
But what made this one character death stand out from among the prominent ones was how this was the only occasion where the atmosphere shift really reached me. The show really took a bunch time for us to share some intimate moments of mourning with the bereaved.
Especially with Frederica, long having deduced Yang's demise from the behavior of the people surrounding her, took me by surprise with her calm demeanor at first. But the emotional breakdown when after she had the confirming conversation with Julian and the viewer gets to be alone with her and her tears, was all the more painful as a result.
They were torn apart from each other after less than a year of marriage, with only a few short months of quaint and peaceful family life together in that time. And what Yang told to her about not being deserving of familial happiness because of his tremendous guilt and inflicted death and destruction as a military commander —also where his drinking "problem" stems from— turned out to be a prophecy. I like to imagine that this tragic thought swirled around in Frederica when she finally broke down.
Thankfully though, my heart was then mended in return when the Cazelnu family invited her over for a wholesome dinner.

Although I lost interest in the political aspects of the show when It became obvious to me that by necessity of needing Reinhard to remain in the plot, the show would be a bit less critical of authoritarian forms of government than I would have hoped, the main messages that the show is not shy of hammering into the audience's head over and over and over again are timeless, and arguably really relevant in this exact time.
Seeing how many nations across the globe are somehow regressing back into nationalism, LotGH is certainly a great way to remind oneself of the pitfalls of it. The creators dealt with nationalism and religious extremism in a straight forward manner and were not afraid to show what they thought about it. They're shortsighted schemes that thrive on hate to mute and control the populace. The nationalistic leaders of the Free Planets Alliance doom their nation into collapse through a failed invasion into the Empire —for which they built public support by feeding nationalistic zeal— losing millions of soldiers only for the sake of remaining in office.
Or during the episode where Julian is watching a documentary about the Goldenbaum Dynasties history, to which the quote of Yang Wen-Li in the title of this post alluded to: An army is a tool for violence, and there are two kinds of violence... Violence to control and oppress, and violence as a means of liberation. You know what we call a national army is fundamentally the former example. It is a pity, but history does not lie. When those in power confront popular opposition, there are not many examples of the army siding with the people. Far from it, in the past in country after country, the army itself evolved into a power structure and came to control the people with violence.
We get a pretty good display of what can result when nationalistic demagogues abuse military power.
In the end, while almost all characters show a certain patriotic pride for their nation, by the final episode, all the hardliners and zealots got the short end.

And then there's the best character in the show, Paul von Oberstein, because he is just such a brilliant antihero. Hidden behind his calm and stoic attitude and these cybernetic eyes was always the pure intent to bring and end to the Goldenbaum Dynasty and see Reinhard thrive. He used the apparent ambiguity of his intentions to serve as a bearer of blame and hate for despicable things that, in the end, Reinhard made the final decision on most of the time. This happened most prominently with the massacre on Westerland, which turned out to the most beneficial result it could have for Reinhard and his followers. This had the result of rallying the entire population of the empire behind him against the remnants of the Goldenbaum Dynasty, but leaving Reinhards image of the benevolent dictator largely unscathed, as Oberstein took the full brunt of the blame.

So, that's it. These are my thoughts on the show that I could scramble together at this point. I don't care too much about making some deep point obscured by flowery prose to make this seem way more interesting than it is, but for everyone that read the whole thing I want to thank you!

Have a lovely day.

Disclaimer: I'm not a friend of scoring, therefore I left the score at the default setting. The text alone should speak to my judgement, and I don't deem that possible to be condensed in a single number. See my profile Bio for more reasoning.

The score is not representative of my judgement!