Anime: Tytania

Tytania is a space opera, originally a series of novels by the same person who wrote Legend of Galactic Heroes. I happen to be a fanboy of that title and thus I was expecting a lot out of this title. And to the most part I got it since Tytania has a lot of similarities to LoGH. Other than that though everything is far inferior to the point the whole show becomes nothing more than a joke and a complete disappointment. It ended up reminding me more of Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Here are the reasons for that. I will be comparing Tytania to LoGH just for the sake of explaining why the later did it right.

1) The title. It is named after one vast military organization, which is not even the good guys. In fact, they are closer to the bad guys. The story involves a lot other sides and it is quite annoying to see the whole focus being given only to the tyrants who are there to be defeated. LoGH was so much better for having a far more neutral title, and thus allowing you to see things more objective.

2) The attitude in battles. They are not serious at all when they fight. One admiral will be drinking tea like he is going on a picnic, another one will be playing around with bubblegum, the lieutenants will be laughing while going to confront the enemy, and everything surely doesn’t feel like a war drama. In LoGH you would see them all acting serious and in horror when they are losing or dying but here it’s as if they are in a damn playground.

3) The tactics in battles. Although LoGH was silly for making space wars to appear like 2D naval battles, it was still using some really funky field tactics which to the most part were excused in-story. Tytania is unfortunately using completely unrealistic tactics to the point you can’t take it seriously. For example, the first episode shows one side disguising its laser cannons to look like ships and plans to use them in a kamikaze attack while they are retreating. You have no idea how they managed to pull this off since the cannons didn’t blow up when they were being shot and the soldiers managed to escape despite being surrounded and in the same blast radius as the enemy ships. It felt completely retarded as it was based too much on magic technology rather actual intelligence.

4) The spaceships. The hand-drawn ones in LoGH lacked variety in shapes and fluid motions but were doing their job right. The 3D ones in Tytania not only look like a stupid colourful flower field but they are also shaking and moving as if they are plastic toys.

5) The production values. They are average to bad for the year the anime was made. Too many static images and low detailed faces. LoGH was decades ahead of its time and had far better animation and facial detail. It was lacking in building and spaceship decorations (of which Tytania does a fine work) but then again weird statues and curtains do not make a show any better in context. I also didn’t like the soundtrack of Tytania, since it was a mix of average ballads and forgettable j-pop. Artland is not a major anime studio but has definitely done a far better job in other anime such as Mushishi or Bokura Ga Ita.

6) The story. Not only is the pacing far slower than in LoGH, but it also stops at a point were almost nothing of its dozens of side stories has been resolved in terms of conflicts and character interactions. Unlike LoGH which had a hell of a long duration to expose everything, Tytania covers only the prelude of sorts, which is also boring to the most part. It ends in a completely unsatisfactory way and leaves its hundreds of characters undeveloped.

7) The character appeal. Although it is mostly a result of the story being left incomplete, the characters are not as charismatic as those in LoGH. They act far cartoonier and have far less meat in their personality to care about them or take them seriously. They just don’t seem to be really trying to achieve their goals and are simply acting like they are playing like children or are too bored to get serious about it. The Yang Wenli look-alike in this show for example acts like he is Tylor, which makes him more funny than cool. This is not a surprise if you know one of the directors of Tytania was also the mechanical designer of Irresponsible Captain Tylor. Another one was the director of the original Macross, of which its cast was perky but not serious. I guess they imbued the characters based on their style and the result was rather comical for a space opera.

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is one of the best series ever so wouldn't another series based off of the same works be awesome as well? No, Tytania does not even come close.

Technical: Animation & Sound
Both the animation and sound were fairly typical for the most part. There were a few voice actors that weren't so great, e.g. Duke Zarlish's mother voice was a little over the top. The theme music was a mixed bag; the classical music was used well but the we're-gonna-go-on-an-adventure theme music felt childish. The sci-fi sounds were typical, there wasn't much creativity or technical achievement. The CGI was blended nicely with the 2-D animation. But I thought the design of the spaceships looked pretty stupid. Think skinny pyramid on it's side so that the point is the front and the widest point is the rear. And the spaceship that Hyulick's gang is in for the majority of the story (Honest Old Man) looks like a Fisher-Price toy.

Story
The aspirations of the story are epic but it falls pretty short of that. Early on it becomes clear that Tytania will crumble so it's reasonable that the plot will move fairly quickly if a man with no army is to defeat a power empire. Unfortunately, the pacing is pretty horrible. It starts off with a battle where Hyulick beats the odds and won when there everyone thought it was impossible but the rest of the series is seriously lacking in battles. On the rebel side, it takes a long while before the protagonist finally develops the resolve to fight, despite being constantly chased around the galaxy. However, the Tytania centric stories were a bit better (except for anything involving a princess who is hinted will become a major power player in a great number of episodes) because there was a lot of drama, infighting, and plotting. Compared to Hyulick, who couldn't care less about power (for a too large part of the anime), the Tytania court was pretty interesting.

Characters:
Fan Hyulick is supposed to be the awesome man who defeated Tytania, but for the most part it's hard to remember that he is some sort of tactical genius because he is not so good at everything else like using weapons or not getting beat up. At one point he was going to join Tytania, yes really, but was unwillingly rescued and, as stated before, uninterested in the continued existence of Tytania.
Most other characters were caricatures and not dynamic. Duke Zarlish was the stupid, war-hungry brute. Duke Jouslan was the Machiavellian thinker. Miranda was the Amazonian tough-woman.
Character development was mediocre. A lot of the development focused on not-too-important characters leaving the major characters underdeveloped. The princess, who we learn about a lot, could have been completely removed from the story without any damage to the plot.

Value/Enjoyment:
Overall, Tytania was nothing special. Entertaining at times, dull at others. In less than a few years, it will have already been forgotten. I wouldn't even think about buying this on DVD, watching it was an idle pastime is suitable though. Do I regret watching it? Not completely.

My advice, if you are to watch it: lower your expectations and don't watch episode 26. Seriously. The previous few episodes get a little exciting and build up but the last episode was tremendously bad. A space opera should end on an epic note, not some a flat, boring non-ending.