Review -- Last Exile

In the country of Anatoray, Claus Valca and Lavie Head are a pilot and navigator pair, following in their fathers' footsteps. They fly a Vanship, a sort of flying car that looks like something you'd see in a Miyazaki movie. One day they find a fellow vanship pilot grounded and injured. His cargo is a little girl, and he is to deliver her to the Silvanna, the most feared warship in the skies, captained by the stoic Holland Novak--I mean, Alex Row. They accept the mission, deliver Al--the girl--to Alex and the Silvanna and are thrown into a war between the Guild, the elite alien ruling body of this world, and the countries of Anatoray and Disith. Last Exile has great potential, but in the end, it's lousy. At first, I thought it was a combination of Eureka Seven and Fullmetal Alchemist. That observation is based purely on setting and character types. In terms of quality, it's more like a combination of Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lover (Pocketful of Rainbows) and Conqueror of Shamballa.

The series starts off well enough. Claus and Lavie are likable enough. But once the plot shows up, everything gets confusing, quick. Said plot does its best to hide itself in cryptic one-liners and references to some MacGuffin called "Exile". Once revealed, the plot is actually very simple: Maestro Delphine, leader of The Guild, is evil. Exile is super powerful. Al is the only one who can control it. (for reasons that are never revealed) Alex wants revenge on Delphine. There's also some feuding between Disith and Anatoray, but really, Exile is the only important thing. And no one knows what the heck it is!

Meanwhile, there's lots of shoddy character development. Claus and Lavie start off like Ed and Winry, best friends from childhood minus any romantic undertones.... but then they randomly don't like each other about halfway through the series. I understand the whole "I don't want to fly a fighting vanship" thing that Lavie goes through, but they never resolve their conflict, they never EXPLAIN their conflict, and I'm supposed to believe that everything can go back to normal? No, sorry show, I need more than that. Dio, runaway younger brother of Delphine makes no sense. Why does he go to the Silvana? If he hates Delphine so much, why didn't he run away before? Sophia has a huge spoiler-y backstory that... kind of makes sense. I would think she'd run to somewhere less obvious if she wanted to run away from home, but whatever, I can deal. What I CAN'T deal with is her randomly kissing a man that is not Alex, and never explaining why.

I also can't deal with Tatiana's errant behavior... she's mean to everyone, she's mean to Alis, she's having a nervous breakdown, she's nice to Claus, she's mean, she's nice, she gives no explanation.

I could continue with all the character "development" that I hate, but there are a couple of good characters, Mullin and Dunya. Mullin is a soldier of Anatory, and has survived 18 times. If he survives two more battles, he can be assigned to any ship he likes. The class struggle really comes out in his character. He and the other soldiers are forced to shoot at each other from their airships. There's no point to it, though. It's like the old-fashioned fighting that lost the British the Revolutionary War. Meanwhile, the higher-ups sit safely on the bridge, preaching about "honor" and not caring for any loss of life. It's this conflict between the upper and lower classes that make the first few episodes really good, for it is a mission to Mullin's ship that introduces Claus and Lavie's job as Vanship couriers.

Dunya is a Disith soldier, and she doesn't show up until later in the series. I recommend not watching that far, so I might as well not even talking about her.

The backstory of the world itself is never fully developed, either. There's some kind of feud between Disith and Anatoray. Claus and Lavie's fathers were trying to deliver a peace message via Vanship, but failed because they could not cross the Grand Stream. Why didn't Anatoray just send a warship? Why didn't the Vanship fly lower and take its time? Why didn't they travel by land or sea? What is the geography of the land? How far away are Disith and Anatoray? Why is the Guild all-powerful? Why are they aliens? I should not have this many questions. Everything's just presented as factual, and the audience is supposed to accept it. I've seen shows where that works, but sadly, Last Exile is not one of them.

On the plus side, animation is great, because this was done for Gonzo's 10th anniversary. Even the obvious!CG is far ahead of its time. The style isn't my favorite, but it suits the series. Everything is very realistic, with muted, industrial colors for the human characters, and flashy bright whites, silvers and golds for the Guild. Battle scenes can get a little confusing, but for the most part, animation is fluid and easy to understand. I say "on the most part" because in the last episode, I had NO IDEA what was happening. The ending itself is weird and stupid, and I hate it. It's not even that bad, I just hated it.

Acting is okay, but nothing extra special. I watched in Japanese, so I can't comment on the dub much. I watched the trailers, and half of the actors are just type-cast from Eureka Seven. I can't take the show seriously when the actors don't even change their voices significantly. From the trailer, I hate the dub.

Overall, Last Exile is visually pretty cool... and a train wreck with everything else. Story and characters make little sense, and don't really try to.

+Cool CG, interesting concept, good first couple of episodes

-Story is too complicated, setting isn't properly introduced, characters are inconsistent, ending is crazy and off-putting

Rating: C-. Even a cheesy average shojo high school fluff piece can make you feel happy, but this mess is just depressing.