(All content is taken from my personal copy of the 1st edition of Legende Der Sternhelden: Legend of the Galactic Heroes Reader - 15th Anniversary Staff Compilation. Released by Tokuma Shoten on March 3rd of 1997, this text has very obscure and hardly documented staff interviews as well as unreleased scripts, illustrations and even merchandise.
As cheekily noted on the cover "Includes Yoshiki Tanaka's works that are not included in the books! "Dagon Star Zone Battle Chronicle" "Silver Valley" "Morning Dream, Night Song" "Disgrace".)
This book compiles famous scenes from Legend of the Galactic Heroes that were visualized in films, video games, comics, and more. Crisply printed and holding up years after it was first published, this text features an assortment of color scenes of the main characters as well as important battle scenes that defined the plot in the OVA. Uniquely, this is a first printing of works by Yoshiki Tanaka that weren't included in the mainline LOGH sneaker bunko series. While I've read over these, I found the inclusion of staff interviews and even that of mangaka to be important, especially the very personal aspects of how several of them read.
Katsumi Michihara (道原かつみ) was given a very lengthy interview and even a dialogue with Tanaka himself, however, I was really taken with the breakdown of her work schedule, personal design ethos as well as her more-or-less down to earth approach as a creator. As a professional illustrator myself, I was really inspired with her tone and approach to her day to day at the time, especially in the realm of focus and self care. Below is a translation of the few pages of Michihara that cover her studio practices:
Katsumi Michihara's "The Great Galactic Battle" (銀河大奮戦)
On serialization finally resuming:
At first, I was drawing the story to have a beginning, plot development, twist and a conclusion all in one volume. However, I've come to think that it might be okay to draw as much as I can and then end it with a long pause. So, I can't really say anything about how the story will develop after the resumption until I actually draw it. (laughs) I draft each chapter, but it's all done at the spur of the moment, and I change the order of the episodes, so I often miss something in the process and get really frustrated. I end up it regretting later, thinking, "I had such great lines."
On eating and sleeping properly:
I get up at 8:30 in the morning. I work until 11:30 at night, and go to bed at 12:30 am. I never stay up all night because it means I'll end up working very late. I think people who can stay up all night and work quickly have a lot of stamina. I eat three proper meals a day. No, I don't have the appetite I used to have. (laughs) In the past, I needed to eat about five meals a day to last, that's about it. That's all is took to get me working. Lately, my working pace has slowed down, so I haven't really been eating much. I guess it's because I'm getting older and my concentration is getting worse and worse. During my breaks, I turn on aerobics on TV and dance for about 5 or 10 minutes.
On her time spent in an isolation ward with dysentery:
When I was confined to the isolation ward due to dysentery, I actually continued working quite diligently. I figured, “If I just sit around doing nothing, I’ll start feeling worse, so I may as well work.” The symptoms weren’t severe. I wasn’t in pain, and I didn’t have abdominal cramps, so working felt relatively easy.
“Did you really?” you might ask. Yes, I had a fever approaching 40°C, but I was in such high spirits. It was almost euphoric. I even turned toward the other patients in isolation and said, “Since we’re all stuck here, shall we draw a manga together?” (laughs)
They responded with, “A draft? Are we doing storyboards?” and I said, “Let’s wait for a bit. Once I’m discharged as scheduled, I’ll draw it properly at home.” I did, in fact, complete it after I got out.
At the time, I really thought, “My editor is a demon!” But looking back now, I can laugh. (laughs)
I wasn’t getting enough physical activity, so my legs were weak. I had been doing some light exercises, but still... I relied heavily on my assistants. One of them even said, “I’ve never seen a sensei this panicked before,” which made me realize just how much I was leaning on them.
Scene from Michihara-sensei's Workplace:
("My beloved cat Ku-nyan is taking a nap in Naka Ward.")
On her favorite characters:
People who die and corpses are always loved. It happens often, doesn’t it? You hear people say things like, “That character shouldn’t have died,” or “Why did they have to kill him off ?!” But I believe that when death is depicted well, it can be the most beautiful moment in a story.
In Legend of the Galactic Heroes, I personally think it was Ovlesser’s death that stood out the most.
Without any emotional weight behind it, a character’s death loses a lot of it's meaning. If a death doesn’t leave the audience with something, what was the point? Even if a character dies dramatically in a pool of blood—it must still resonate. When I saw that episode, I was tired and couldn't draw well, so I ended up crying to my editor, "I can't draw Ovlesser's corpse pretty." (laughs) It was a wonderful corpse, but it was fun with all the blood.
As for deaths, I think Oberstein's is the one who stood out the most. That was a truly powerful scene. His emotions were always rooted in an ideal vision of a better world, and precisely because of that, when he died, I found it deeply moving. His emotions were with Reinhard himself, and he has no interest in a world without him. I think it's cool. Reinhard is definitely the easiest character to draw. I didn't pay him any attention at first, but recently I've found him even cuter. (laughs) I've liked Yang from the beginning.
When I think back on it... (思えば遠くへ... /
Omoeba tōku e...):Legend of the Galactic Heroes is truly a grand narrative, but being able to work on it has been an extraordinary experience. I sometimes think that it was purely by chance I was given the opportunity. Had someone else been assigned, the result might have been entirely different. If someone faster had drawn it instead of me, the main story and the spin-off would have already been made into manga.
Maybe that would have been the case. But there are benefits to this, too. The volumes won't be discontinued. (laughs) What's more is that when new volumes are released, especially when a series is long, existing volumes are often reprinted. Some people say, "You have to work quickly. You're not a professional," but I shrugged and thought, "Oh well."
I was quite worried about being slow at work and not being able to create much of a good story, but I realized that if I had the time to worry about that sort of thing, that meant that I should have been working instead, so I just rushed towards the final climax. No matter how many times I read the part in the original where Kircheis dies, I cry, but I'm a little skeptical as to whether I could draw something of that caliber myself...
(Views of Katsumi Michihara's studio in the closing page.)
Final thoughts from yours truly:
In these collected reflections, Michihara steps a bit beyond her notoriety for her adaptation of Legend of the Galactic Heroes. While offering a rather candid account of her creative proces and emotional investment in the act of drawing, I really found myself thinking about the breakneck schedules that many mangaka and animators still face til this day. I can't help but note Yoshinori Kanada and Yoshikazu Yasuhiko in particular, who wrote Seattle Brawl Elegy while hospitalizd with pleurisy, for instance. While Michihara seemingly rebounded from her bout of illness, woven through her anecdotes is a recurring theme: the inseparability of art and emotional sincerity., something that I feel is personally lost on many.
Whether illustrating under the duress of illness in a hospital isolation ward or grappling with the narrative weight of a character’s death, Michihara demonstrated in these passages a real devotion to her craft that transcended the mere scope of professionalism. For her, the work was not simply just that, but a meaningful form of engagement with the series itself, no matter how slow she claimed to have been in creating manuscripts.
I can speak frankly about the physical and mental costs of artistic labor - I myself tend to work 16 hours a day and still finagle in time for illustrations, commissions and more. Yet despite these setbacks, her tone remains warm and humorous, even self-deprecating. In a creative landscape increasingly dominated by algorithms and content turnover in the present day, Michihara’s perspective is both grounding and profound for me personally: art is not just about production, it’s about connection, and the act of caring enough to see something through, even when no one is watching. In this case, everyone's eyes were and still are on Michihara's contributions, and that alone is the magic to me.
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