This is the two hours that make the 110-episode monster click, and it earns that job in the first fleet engagement. Reinhard walks off the Fourth Battle of Tiamat into Odin's hero's welcome, twenty years old, High Admiral, Count von Lohengramm, and you can already see the ambition curdling behind the salutes while Kircheis stands beside him as the only person he doesn't have to perform for. Yang gets no parade. He comes home to Heinessen, drinks with friends, and then gets shoved onto Paetta's flagship at Astarte where being the smartest man in the room means watching Reinhard eat three fleets one at a time, and the cost lands on Jean Robert Lapp. Yes, it retells ground the main OVA already covered, and the pacing sprints in places. It still nails the thing the series is actually about: old men holding power they stopped deserving, and two young men who see it and answer completely differently. That final beat where victory and grief look identical is the whole show in miniature.

The Galactic Empire stands triumphant after crushing the Free Planets Alliance at the Fourth Battle of Tiamat, and its commander Reinhard von Müsel returns to Odin a celebrated hero, raised to High Admiral and granted the title Count von Lohengramm. On the other side, Alliance officer Yang Wen-li quietly comes back to Heinessen and rejoins his close friends. Both men hope for a long rest. Instead, at the urging of the scheming Duke Otho von Braunschweig, Imperial High Command sends Reinhard to invade the Alliance with twenty thousand ships. When the Duke leaks the plan, the Alliance answers with three fleets of forty thousand ships, hoping to repeat the famed Battle of Dagon. Reinhard has a clever plan despite being outnumbered, and Yang sees through it, but he must convince his superiors to listen. The film retells the opening of the Legend of the Galactic Heroes OVA in greater detail.