LEGEND OF THE GALACTIC HEROES SERIES COMPARISON
Book Vs. Show: The new show follows the structure of the books somewhat closer than the original did. It rarely makes large changes from the book. And it rarely adds anything. It follows the books very closely with no filler at all, but it does cut out a lot of little details and reorganizes some events. In this way, it is much easier to follow what is going on at the beginning. For example, the first few chapters of the first novel go directly into the backstories of Reinhard and Yang before the Battle of Astarte is over.
The new show, like the books, also slowly introduces characters, and only when they are important to the story do they appear. For example, Poplan and the Spartanians are only introduced when their actions will be vital to a battle. This is also, however, a disadvantage that the new show has when compared to the original. In the old show, we are introduced to basically every character in the first episode, which is very hard to follow at first, and we are hard-pressed to figure out where to get invested. However, the introduction of all of the characters early on makes it much easier to care about them later. There is more buildup to eventual deaths and difficult military opperations.
Another thing the old show did was show events play out, even when none of the central POV characters were present. For example, there is an episode where the Free Planets Alliance is "liberating" planets for citizens of the Galactic Empire. The Empire takes away the people's food in order to force the FPA to run out of rations feeding the starving people and thus to cause unrest and distrust of the "liberators" if they try to take back the food for their troops. In this episode in the old show, an FPA soldier truly believes that he is helping liberate the planet from tyranny, but his own troops are ordered to seize back the food from the people for the troops. This causes unrest. It illustrates some themes in the story. In comparison, just like the book, the new show does not depict this event; it is just reported to Yang Wenli.
Other things the old show does is show the last moments of random soldiers who die on the battlefield, making the anti-war message more direct and obvious. The new show chooses persectives to focus on, again more like the books, back and forth between only the key players, which definitely makes the narrative feel more focused and precise.
Something else the old show did was add a few more conversations about philosophy, politics, morality, governance, etc. To some audiences, this might feel a bit too on-the-nose with the themes and ideas which are actively being explored already, but I like them. It is a constant reminder to the audience what is being explored. The new show only adapts those conversations which were already in the books, which is still a lot, by the way. The books do, however, have longer inner monologues about those subjects and even the narrator points out some stuff about them, so in a way, you could say the old show just presented those things in a different format, while the new show chose to discard them, which is also fine.
So, when it comes to book vs. Show, the remake is somewhat closer, but the old show did an amazing job of adding stuff that actually worked well and helped the story expand on its themes and ideas.
Art and Animation: This is a contentious one. Obviously the old show is completely hand-drawn with less frames and a LOT more repeated images, which makes battles hard to animate. The new show uses CGI for the space battles, which makes them much more exciting and easy to follow than the old show. Yes, anime fans hate the word CGI if it's in an anime, but trust me, this is not Kingdom-style bad CG. Production I. G., who made the new show, do a great job of ONLY making the spaceships and sci-fi hologram schematics CGI, which honestly works really good. Characters are all 2D as are most of the backgrounds. If you've seen other Production I. G. shows like Psycho-Pass and Ghost in the Shell: Standalone Complex, you know how good they are at incorporating CG with 2D.
The space battles in the original show have always been to me a big drawback as space always looks the same and most battles reuse explosions and ship movements, and when the ships move to attack, it's hard to tell what is happening or how the formation works. I always found myself wanting them to end so that it could get back to the story and political conversations. Battle strategies were very well explained, but I had a hard time seeing that actually play out. In the new show, however, those complaints are gone. The ship movements are smooth, the battles are intense, and there is the same amount of discussing battle strategies. So, even though I love the nostalgic 2D ships and explosions, I think the remake clearly has an edge over the old one when it comes to combat. Also, the new show makes space look different for many battles. Instead of a black void filled with tiny stars, the new show is more creative. They design colorful nebulas in the distance and the stars are brighter. It feels more like a background than the old show.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Character Designs and Apparel: This is by far the smallest issue when it comes to the old vs. The new show mainly because both shows are based on books, not manga. If you were a fan of the original show to begin with, it's a little jarring at first to see your favorite characters looking different, but trust me, you get used to it after a while.
Siegfried Kircheis looks a little weird, but he is still as the novels describe him---tall, red-haired, compassionate. Personally, I feel that he has more life in the old design, with a kind almost imperceptible smile on his face and compassionate eyes that radiate life. The new one feels duller. And his kind of hooded eyes make him feel more militaristic, which is still a good thing, but I feel he lacks the life and personality of the old design.
Reinhard von Lohengramm is almost the same; the new one just lacks a bit more personality in his design, particularly with the eyes, which are pretty good most of the time, but they don't explain his whole character the way they did in the old one. These gripes are very small, though, because I am a dedicated fan of the old show, which proclaims some bias.
Yang Wenli's design, I think, has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages compared to the old one. For one advantage, his hair is jet black (as it should be!); in the old show it always looked blue, which never stopped distracting me. For a disadvantage, I don't quite feel the languid laziness of the guy that is obvious in the original design. Frederica Greenhill's design is actually, I think, better designed in the new show. In the old show, she has almost the exact same generic face of every other female character and her hair was the exact same messy 70's mop that is on everyone, both the guys and girls, which annoyed me. In the new show she has a particular hair-style that is feminine, but not super impractical, and her face and eyes radiate her vivacity, kindness and good sense of humor. It was hard for me to feel it in the old show, but maybe that's just me.
Now, Walter von Schonkompf's new design is an abomination! His old design looked like a rough, handsome, devil-may-care middle-aged scoundrel, but his new design looks like the 19-year-old shonen "tough friend". That's all I need to say on that.
Detail on character faces is better in the old show. The faces have age-lines and wrinkles; this gives the audience a better idea of their ages. The new show makes many of the characters look like generic ageless anime characters.
Overall, the character designs follow the books' descriptions, but some don't quite resonate with me in the same way. I think when it comes to hair, especially with the female characters, but even with most of the male characters, the new show does a good job making the hair unique to the characters, rather than just giving everybody the same 70's messy mop as the old show tended to do.
As for costumes, I actually like the military uniforms much more in the new show. The Free Planets Alliance in the old show wore skinny jeans, high-heeled pointy shoes, and those jackets that puff out and their length never drops lower than the belt, which feels so 70's, like a bunch of disco kids. In the new show, their pants have lots of pockets, their coats are modern military style and their shoes are combat boots. All of these make their costumes feel more like they are military grade.
The uniforms of the Imperials in the old show feel like they came out of a Flash Gordon serial, which is kind of fun. They are really tight at the chest with a silver collar and their pants are tight with pointed shoes. Their new design is more militaristic. They have silver shoulder guards like Prussian soldiers, and their shirts look more like coats with silver or gold buttons, and they have shiny black boots.
Music: While I will always miss the classical music from the old show, this one has a great score composed by Shin Hashimoto and Yasuhisa Inoue, and Hiroyuki Sawano does some of it, too. The music in the new show improves in the editing and sound mixing department over the old one. In the old show, the music editors did not seem to figure out how to apply the pieces of music to specific action. For example, a really exciting or desperate moment is taking place and calm, content music is playing in the background. This often pulled me out of it.
In conclusion, although I prefer the old show to the new one, I think both are even on what they lose and gain. If we bring the books further into this, both adaptations change some things, remove some things, and add in some things, but not to any extent where it is a big deal.
I highly recommend Die Neue These whether or not you are a fan of the old show.
