Quite a few characters were toned down and made more ‘normal’ as opposed to their characters in the older series. For instance, at this point in the story of the older series, Neidhardt Muller was an aspiring and somewhat reckless commander who was worried about his military glory to a large extent, which contrasted with his character later on in the series where he became much more diligent and almost more ‘pleasant’ in that his overly sly and ambitious attitude was gone. With his character in this series, there is not really that much recklessness but rather focus, and this is the case for a couple of other characters in this series. I think that this is a reasonable choice, but one dictated by the creators thinking that perhaps the characters of the original were over exaggerated and as this anime has a more serious theme akin to something like Psycho-, the characters needed to fit in and be serious. This is not a bad choice, but it does make the characters redundant and almost cliche.
The plot follows the novels to the letter at almost the same points as the earlier series. It is somewhat sluggish in its pacing. The current arc of Landesherr Rubinsky is rather boring. He and associated characters are not shown too often, but they don't really add enough to the plot in this season, I feel
The opening sequence is notable in this season. As per usual the OP is very similar in all aspects to the previous ones, but the opening shows the Imperial fleet orbiting an accretion disk of a black hole that seems to be specifically taken from Christopher Nolan's film Interstellar (2014), with the actual depiction in the film being developed by Nobel laureate Dr. Kip Thorne. In the very least I believe Thorne was the first person to make a rendering fit for a movie of this specific type of disk. It makes for a very nice opening that fits with the theme, though perhaps a bit unoriginal considering the popularity of Interstellar.
By this point, it seems that the series is picking up its pace; the creators are improving their direction and the viewer has gotten used to the animation and the anime in general by now after 2 seasons. Unfortunately, the core issue of trying to fill the same niche as an already extant adaptation never goes away once you have seen the earlier anime. Regardless whether you have or have not seen the earlier series, this anime is worth the watch as it does have the scale and ambition that is absent in a lot of modern anime, while retaining the general style and direction of such.
