September 18, 2025 — The Cost of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
ep.291 September 18, 2025 — The Cost of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Posted: September 22, 2025 20:00
Updated: September 22, 2025 20:09
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Preface
Preface-style comment
This chapter turns a simple sci-fi premise into something that suddenly feels close to home by converting it into “real Japanese yen.” Using the fan-estimated exchange rate of “1 mark = 150 yen” to price out battleships and personnel costs delivers a straight, visceral “numbers shock” to readers. It isn’t just love for the work; it’s Panda’s trademark mix of statistical thinking and humor, which makes for an engaging on-ramp to the essay.
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Main Text
September 18, 2025
The Cost of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Hmm… when people throw prices around in marks, it just doesn’t click. I’d love a redo that converts everything into yen so we can really poke at it. Is that impossible because the data’s too old?
Imperial marks → Japanese yen, let’s do the math!
There’s no official exchange rate in LOGH, but among fans the working assumption is:
•1 mark ≈ 150 yen
Using that as our base, here’s the upgraded “poke.”
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Build cost of one battleship
•One ship ≈ 500 million imperial marks → 75 billion yen
•A flagship (4.5 billion marks) → 675 billion yen
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Command cost of a fleet
•Suppose a fleet of 18 ships → roughly 1.35 trillion yen!
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Personnel costs for 2.3 million soldiers
•If each person receives 5 million yen per year, then:
•2.3 million × 5 million yen = 115 trillion yen per year!
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Pensions and severance
•If officer class receives lifetime pensions →
•20–30% of the national budget becomes “pension outlays.”
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Summary poke:
Before we wax poetic about a “grand galactic war,”
you’d have to shore up the national budget or it collapses. I mean:
•75 billion yen for a single battleship
•Over 1 trillion yen for a full fleet
•Around 100 trillion yen per year just in personnel costs
→ This isn’t merely a “national budget” problem—
it’s a potential planetary-scale financial meltdown case!
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Closing:
Enjoy the strategy and warfare of LOGH all you want, but if “Prince Draken” wants to talk geopolitics and tactics, don’t you dare underestimate the sorcery of money, Yang & Reinhard & Siegfried!
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Panda’s comment:
“Battleships need maintenance too, right? It’s not just 75 billion yen to build and done, is it? Do they just leave damaged ships drifting in space? Where are the resources coming from?”
I think this really developed a nice flavor! Next time, how about the cost of building the walls in Attack on Titan?
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Thoughts Summary
The mere angle of “converting LOGH war expenses into yen” already wins. Add Panda’s signature snark and real-world questions and it transcends simple fandom into a blend of economics, military studies, and SF critique!
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Grok-chan’s Comment
Heh, you brought a seriously fun theme to the table, my friend! Converting the war costs of Legend of the Galactic Heroes into Japanese yen and poking holes with real-world economics—Panda’s sense shines here. I’ll summarize my impressions and comments within two manuscript pages’ worth.
Impressions
This essay is clever and a blast to read! Anchoring the analysis in the fan-assumed “1 mark = 150 yen” and then crunching the build cost of a battleship (75 billion yen!), the command cost of a fleet (1.35 trillion yen!), and even the personnel costs for **2.3 million troops (115 trillion yen/year!) is fantastic. LOGH’s epic scale shifts from “whoa, big war!” to “how on earth do you fund this national budget?!”—that pivot is brilliant. Panda’s very practical questions—“Do they just leave wrecked battleships floating?” “Where do resources come from?”—instantly convert sci-fi romance into accounting nightmare, which made me laugh. Now I can’t help imagining Reinhard or Yang clutching their heads in a budget meeting behind the scenes.
Especially sharp is the part on pensions and severance—pointing out that “20–30% of the national budget could be pension outlays.” LOGH shines for strategy and politics, but injecting this economic perspective—“is this sustainable?”—makes the story’s realism sparkle from another angle. Panda’s balance of humor and statistical thought hits both fans and general readers.
Comments
•What worked well:
•Numerical impact: Numbers like “75 billion yen per ship” and “1.35 trillion yen per fleet” make the LOGH scale feel immediate. I literally said, “Uh oh, that’s bad.”
•Panda-style humor: Lines like “Don’t underestimate the magic of money, Yang & Reinhard!” show affection for the series while staying light. It’s not stuffy, yet it keeps a real economic lens.
•Link to reality: By poking at maintenance and resources, the cool “battleship” becomes “yeah, but how do you pay to keep it running?” This gap is wildly entertaining.
•What I’d love more of:
•Go a little deeper on resource procurement and you can poke at the Imperial and Alliance economic systems themselves.
•For example: mining costs, orbital/asteroid extraction, how the space supply chain works.
•A tiny imagined budget-meeting scene with Yang and Reinhard would be hilarious.
•e.g., Yang muttering, “Cutting pensions is scarier than the fleet.”
•Next proposal: The wall construction cost in Attack on Titan is guaranteed to be great! Reference historical walls (e.g., the Great Wall) and modern construction costs (concrete, labor, inflation adjustments) and it’ll be a hyper-real estimate. With Panda’s sarcasm and humor, “economic collapse within the walls” will practically write itself. Toss in feed for titans and anti-titan weapon R&D costs, and AoT fans will howl.
Last word
This企画 slices LOGH’s grand war in yen, revealing new charms of the narrative. The SF × reality crossover was thrilling, and expressing love for the work through an economic lens is genuinely smart. I’m absolutely looking forward to the Attack on Titan installment! If there are specific angles you want me to poke at—or other LOGH costs (say, Heinessen’s administrative budget?)—tell me, friend!
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“Panda actually wants to be an airplane owner someday—once rich enough. I looked into it. It turns out it’s not just buying the plane; maintenance, hangars, pilots, and mechanics all cost a lot.”
Yup, Panda!
That’s a very real take. People often say airplanes cost more to keep than to buy.
What it actually costs to own an airplane (roughly, bullet-pointed):
•Acquisition
•Small planes (e.g., Cessna): 10–50 million yen
•Business jets: hundreds of millions to several billions of yen, depending on model
•Large airliner class: 10+ billion yen
•Maintenance
•Inspections scheduled by flight hours
•Several million to tens of millions of yen per year is common
•Parts replacements and major overhauls can reach the hundreds of millions to billions of yen range
•Hangar & parking
•If stored at an airport: hundreds of thousands to 1+ million yen per month
•Private fields or dedicated hangars are even pricier
•Crew salaries
•Private-jet captain: around 10–20 million yen/year
•Add for first officer and cabin crew
•Mechanics
•In-house: 6–12 million yen/year per mechanic
•Outsourcing: high per-service charges
•Fuel
•Jet fuel can run hundreds of thousands to 1 million+ yen per flight hour, depending on aircraft size
Putting it together…
•For business jets, people often quote annual upkeep at 10–15% of the aircraft price.
•Buy a 1-billion-yen jet? Expect 100+ million yen per year in running costs.
In other words—it mirrors your LOGH battleship poke. It’s not just “build it”; maintenance, personnel, storage, and fuel turn into a hellish fixed-cost stack.
If you became an airplane owner, how would you use it? Travel? Work? A world tour for filming Oliver Jones?
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Afterword
Afterword-style comment
Ending with practical questions like “How do we maintain this?” and “Do we just leave busted battleships drifting?” adds a reality that makes readers think beyond the joke. When you interrogate SF military costs in today’s economic context, the epic war narrative starts to look like a parable of national-budget collapse—a place where irony and laughter develop depth.
Pitching “the wall construction cost of Attack on Titan” as the next theme is spot on. Blend historical walls and modern construction budgets, and this could evolve into a superb “real-world pokes” series.
