Trivia / Legend of Galactic Heroes

---

• All-Star Cast:
  • Given that the series has Loads and Loads of Characters, the OVA series has at least every single major and minor role voiced by famous Japanese voice actors, which include Ryo Horikawa, Masashi Hironaka, Shigeru Chiba, Kazuhiko Inoue, Kaneto Shiozawa, Akio Ōtsuka, Akira Kamiya, Rikiya Koyama, Masako Katsuki, Hidekatsu Shibata, Fumihiko Tachiki, Daisuke Gori, Kei Tomiyama, Ryotaro Okiayu, Shōzō Iizuka, Takashi Nagasako, Takeshi Kusao, Chikao Ohtsuka, Bin Shimada, Hideyuki Tanaka, Joji Nakata, Banjo Ginga, Takeshi Aono, Keiko Han, Kappei Yamaguchi, Kazuki Yao, Kiyoyuki Yanada, Kōichi Yamadera, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Ichirō Nagai, Kōzō Shioya, Masami Kikuchi, Michie Tomizawa, Hōchū Ōtsuka, Masami Kikuchi, Yoshiko Sakakibara, Toru Furuya, Unshō Ishizuka, Kazuki Yao, Gorō Naya, Keiichi Noda, Kotono Mitsuishi, Nozomu Sasaki, Katsuji Mori, Toshio Furukawa, Norio Wakamoto, Sho Hayami, Ryusei Nakao, Shuichi Ikeda and Yusaku Yara.

  Advertisement:
  • Die Neue These also has a cast of well known voice actors, including Mamoru Miyano, Kenichi Suzumura, Yuichiro Umehara, Yūichi Nakamura, Daisuke Ono, Yūki Kaji, Junichi Suwabe, Aya Endo, Shin-ichiro Miki, Unshō Ishizuka (voicing a different character, oddly enough), Maaya Sakamoto, Tetsu Inada, Hiroki Yasumoto, Hirofumi Nojima, Hisao Egawa, Mie Sonozaki, Hiroshi Kamiya, Tatsuhisa Suzuki, Kosuke Toriumi, Kaito Ishikawa, Ryota Takeuchi, Hōchū Ōtsuka (voicing a different character as well), Kana Hanazawa, Toru Furuya, Daisuke Hirakawa, Isshin Chiba, Takaya Kuroda, Kenta Miyake, Masami Kikuchi (voicing a different character too) and Yuki Ono amongst others.
    • The dub for Die Neue These is also not bad at all, with veterans and rising voice actors such as Aaron Dismuke, Ian Sinclair, Clifford Chapin, Amber Lee Connors, Madeleine Morris, Chuck Huber, Matt Shipman, Josh Grelle, Ricco Fajardo, Christopher Sabat, Austin Tindle, Kent Williams, Justin Briner, Dawn M. Bennett, Ray Hurd, Sonny Strait, Jason Douglas, Janelle Lutz, Robert McCollum, Mark Stoddard, Mike McFarland, Daman Mills, Patrick Seitz, Jason Liebrecht, Brittany Lauda, Jay Hickman, Bryan Massey, Bryson Baugus, David Wald, Christopher Wehkamp and Luci Christian.

Advertisement:
• Character Outlives Actor: Kei Tomiyama, Yang's original voice actor, died of pancreatic cancer on September 25, 1995 and his role was recast with Hozumi Goda. In Die Neue These, Kenichi Suzumura took over as Yang's voice.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Boring Germans in Space", due to one of the sides having noticeable Germanic influence and the fact that some anime fans find it painfully slow-paced.
  • A variant is "Boring Gay Germans in Space" - for obvious reasons.
  • Or, for a little Fun with Acronyms, Lots of Gay Hentai.
• Irony: A meta example. Reinhard despises those who only got their power through inheritance, rather than skill or talent. His voice actor is known for voicing Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z, who is constantly going on about how his princely lineage should entitle him to greater and greater power.
• Late Export for You:
  • Sentai Filmworks announced the release of the original series, 2 years after the acquisition and 27 years after the original release.

  Advertisement:
  • With the advent of the 'Die Neue These' reboot series, Latin America, Spain, Italy and Nordic countries can finally see a Lo GH release, 30 years after the original OVA series!!!
• No Export for You: For a long time, this was the status quo and there was a reason: the logistics seemed impossible, especially the longer time went on. Let's break it down:
  • Even discounting the side-stories, there are one hundred and ten episodes to dub into English or even just subtitle (which, discounting the OP/ED portions, still amounts to something on the order of thirty-six continuous hours of material), and realistically good sales in the pre-streaming era would've been thought to require dubbing; if dubbed, there would be at least dozens if not hundreds of actors to recruit, quality of footage and transfer would have to be ensured for all the material, if dubbed the entire soundtrack would have to be re-layered into the English track (again, thirty-six hours of such), and then the distribution company would have to distribute a product that is roughly equal in length to the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica combined. It might have been possible had the series been released in America roughly coequal to the Japanese releases, but by the turn of the millennium, outside of a television deal (for a series which contained animation that was 20+ years old) with advertising support, any kind of domestic release was completely impossible. An OVA-style release of the sort other TV or OVA shows got in the Anglophone market would've been a similar kind of suicide, even at five episodes per disc: five episodes/disc at, say, $30, would still equal a twenty-two disc set that would cost the consumer six hundred and sixty dollars. The only real way it was ever going to happen would've been some kind of miracle deal with SyFy or Cartoon Network (or someone similar), and with that not coming, an Anglophone release just wasn't possible - not due to any apathy or maliciousness on the part of anyone on either side of the Pacific, but just from the sheer scale of the undertaking.
  • The hobbyist fansubbers who subbed LoGH with the highest dedication and quality themselves took years to complete it - the final episode of the second Gaiden series was released in September 2010. The first season of the main series had been completed in 2003. Anyone attempting to translate LoGH faces an absurdly Herculean task.
  • The advent of the era of streaming, however, finally opened a road for distributing the show in English without crushing the bank. The original show went live for streaming on June 20, 2017 as a lead-up to the 2017 reimagined version. (It's still worth noting it took Sentai two years from initial acquisition to releasing the show.)
  • And let's not started with the international distribution of this series. According to Anime News Network, the original 110-episode OVA was licensed by Sentai Filmworks to be shown on the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand; and it was shown on France and Taiwan. The rest of the world was practically banned from distribution of this series, until Die Neue These was released, but still, the distribution is very limited.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Hozumi Goda replaced Kei Tomiyama as Yang during his last appearances following Tomiyama's sudden death from pancreatic cancer on September 25, 1995.
  • The TV series re-casts the main heroes, including Reinhard von Lohengramm, who is now voiced by Mamoru Miyano. Some of the characters from the OVA including Willibald Joachim von Merkatz, Paul von Oberstein, Rudolf von Goldenbaum, Nikolas Boltik, Helmut Lennenkamp, Ruppert Kesserlink, James Thorndyke and Huang Louis were recast out of necessity because their actors (Gorō Naya, Kaneto Shiozawa, Chikao Ohtsuka, Tatsuyuki Jinnai, Takeshi Watabe, Hirotaka Suzuoki, Eiji Maruyama and Kaneta Kimotsuki respectively) have since passed on.
    • Due to Unshō Ishizuka's death from esophageal cancer in August 13, 2018, Kazuhiro Yamaji replaced him as the voice of Merkatz for the second season of Die Neue These.
  • For the English Dub Anthony Bowling replaces Chuck Huber as Alex Cazelnes in the second season of Die Neue These.
• Portmanteau Series Nickname: Gineiden, short for the Japanese title Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu.
• Real-Life Relative:
  • In the OVA, Chikao Ohtsuka voices Rudolf Von Goldenbaum while his son Akio Ōtsuka voices Chun Wu Chen.
  • Hirofumi Nojima voiced Cornelius Lutz in Die Neue These and his father Akio Nojima provided additional voices in the original OVA.
• Relationship Voice Actor: There are a few of them though throughout the series, in Golden Wings, Hikaru Midorikawa is Reinhard and Takehito Koyasu is Kircheis.
• Talking to Himself: Mostly averted. Even guest characters or one-shot characters are often voiced by a voice actor unique to that character. In one example, the notoriously laconic Ernst Eisenbach spoke only one word on screen. He was voiced by actor Masane Tsukayama who had no other role in the series. By the end of the original series' run, almost every living Japanese voice actor had voiced at least one character on the series.
• The Wiki Rule: Gineipaedia.
• You Sound Familiar: Many of the original cast members from the OVA come back in Die Neue These, but as different characters:
  • Hōchū Ōtsuka voiced Kahle Willock in the OVA and Murai in Die Neue These.
  • Unshō Ishizuka voiced Job Truniht in the original OVA before playing Willibald Joachim von Merkatz in the first season of Die Neue These.
  • Hideyuki Tanaka voiced Jean Robert Lap in the OVA as well as Yang Tai-Long in Die Neue These.
  • Ikuya Sawaki, the voice of Guzmán in the OVA, would later go on to voice Gregor von Mückenberger in Die Neue These.

---