Legend of the Galactic Heroes always seemed like the longest of long shots only behind Sazae-san, Kochikame, and Anpanman in “The League of Anime That Will Never Get Licensed.” It was always the most popular of the League but that only made it the least likely series to be licensed with the biggest fanbase. Your not going to see Kochikame on lists of Anime You Have to See Before You Die but you will find Legend of the Galactic Heroes on quite a few top anime of all time rundowns. But then the Summer of Miracles occurred in 2105 with insane E3 and the crazy licenses at Anime Expo. Two of those little miracles were the licensing of both the Legend of the Galactic Heroes anime and then the novels on top of that. Just getting one of them was unthinkable but both of them was a planetary alignment. While the first box set for the anime has yet to come out the first novel has come out from VIZ.

The thing is the anime is a fairly known quantity. You can find blog posts, podcasts, video reviews, wikis that will tell you all about the series. There are even looks at the board game. We did a whole bunch of posts on the anime ourselves. While it is not that you can’t find any information about the novels, because the info is out there, but overall it is a scant amount of info and mostly just general summaries at best. That has all changed and English fandom can finally read novels and see how they stack up to the original. Will everyone go around saying how much better the books are than the TV series or will this be more of an The Irresponsible Captain Tylor situation?

While a lot of anime is based on manga, there are countless titles that have been adapted from books as well. As a person who enjoys reading the book before or after the movie, I’ve often lamented not having the same opportunity when the source material for anime titles is a book. And certainly I never would have imagined having the chance to read the original Legend of the Galactic Heroes novels.

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