@Robby:
I'm still working my way through the old series… very slowly. I watch an episode while I do my excerise bike. I'm at about episode 20 and its just not doing much for me... it's okay but not amazing by any means. But basically everyone says that the first season is meh and then it picks up crazy from there... but there's too much setup in the first 26 episodes to just skip them.
Is the new show a retelling, prequel, sequel, side story, what?
I can't say it's exactly everyone's cup of tea, but having read the first novel, I can say they padded out the first season a good bit to kind of both flesh out the season more as well as kinda give some depth to different parts of the different political factions and common day to day stuff (the farming episode, Friedrich IV's old bae's episode, the noble guy who tried to blow up Braunschweig's shindig's episode, and Jessica Edwards hanging out with Yang a lot aren't really in the novels, although some are in the side stories, also how Iserlohn plays out and a bunch of other things are stretched out considerably), and the animation budget in the first season was probably its worst given the number of redraws that happened with the 720p release. Also chose sensible endpoints for each season, so that's probably part of why they stretched a few things out. Season 1 and 4 basically adapt two novels whereas seasons 2 and 3 adapt three novels each are more fast paced with some cool-ass space battles. I can definitely say that you absolutely need to watch Season 1 though. The series is great in the context of everything as a whole, and it's completely true that there's a lot of setup that's required to enjoy the series (which is presumably why they keep flashing character names every two seconds even when we've been introduced to them in season 1, although that substantially decreases in season 2 and beyond). The novels, likewise, move at a much quicker pace than season 1 because they don't have as much fat
It's kind of funny because I was describing the series to Femme and Robo a few days ago and was talking about when I started watching the series and thinking "wtf is this series" because season 1's animation is hilariously stiff, people are fighting with axes in space which looks so cheesy, an entire side of the galaxy is entirely German with old school dress, the engrish of the FPA anthem is pretty cringey, and there's a lot that you can expect of how this'll play out as just a war between a pretty shitty democracy and a pretty shitty autocracy. But it gets way bigger and much more engaging later on because the animation improves, people are (still) fighting with axes in space, but you kind of get used to it and understand why this is a thing, you learn more history that explains all the quirks of each faction, the engrish of the FPA anthem is (still) pretty cringey but considerably more endearing when you hear it again, and the series does tend to keep you on your toes on what happens next. It's really a true space opera that is much more "Star Wars" in the literal sense than "Star Wars" is.
Anyway, the new show is a retelling with character designs by the guy who wrote kuroko no basuke. Which is pretttttttyyyyyy questionable when Kircheis doesn't have as soft of a look as he does in the OVA where he's the nicest guy around, but it's not too bad in actual motion. The style still doesn't quite fit for the series but it's okay. Think they're aiming for 100 episodes total or so divided up into 12 episode cour or something like that.