The first Last Exile (LE) is considered by many as one of the best anime GONZO ever made. Which doesn’t mean anything since it never made many great shows to begin with. In fact, for me the only great shows it even made are NHK and Kaleido Star. Anyways, the years passed, GONZO went almost bankrupt because of the shitty shows it was making, and now all of a sudden tries to make a comeback with a follow up to LE. Impressions? IT’S SHIT!The first LE wasn’t ever super great but at least retained a basic feeling of maturity and seriousness. Fam, the Silver Wing (FSW) though makes a drastic change and turns to something far worse. IT BECAME LOLI MOE CRAP! You don’t believe me? Think of the first episode of LE. Two armies clashing in the sky. Motivational screams, dread, fear, and death. Nobody is certain of who will win. And then a third ship appears from above and with its superior technology trashes them, proving how this is a cruel world where ideals and sacrifice mean nothing before raw power and cynicism towards life. Amongst this chaos was a pair of kind hearted boy and girl mailmen, trying to earn their living while delivering important messages. I never liked most of what followed but the basic concept of the show was there and was clear from the beginning. The tragedy of war, the unjust ruling of the nobles, and the loss of innocence. Now let’s look at the first episode of FSW. It begins with an underage girl undressing while sleepwalking and jumping off the airship she is on. Everybody comments “Man, she is totally stupid.” Then the scene changes to a lake where a naked woman bathes, and a cute kid slips and falls in the water. “Man, he’s totally stupid.” Then a fleet of airships invade and try to capture alive that said woman and her sister, because they are important princesses. The stupid girl, along with a group of immature and annoying kids intervene because she feels like stealing ships for the lulz. After using the most snotty and vulgar behaviour to her elders, she creates major damage to the invading fleet with a few childish tricks and even fool it to think the princesses died. All of which happen in 10 minutes, while using tiny ships, and their tools being nothing other than a few smoke bombs and flashlights. After that, as if it was all a game, they laugh and she hangs like a monkey from the window and shows everyone her underwear. WTF did I just watch? The few shreds of decency the show had are now gone. This is not the follow up to LE; it is closer to a goddamn Strike Witches spin-off! The lolis wear clothes with animal ears and tails for crying out loud. And I’d be damned if all the characters ain’t a rehash from their earlier total failure that was Shangri-La. Awful, tasteless, immature, fan catering BS! Well done GONZO, you prove how you will never improve if all you do is replacing decent characters with shitty ones. You deserve your fate. I didn’t drop the series right there; I wanted to see how they will handle this catastrophe. 2. (ep.2) People have superpowers that magically stop bullets and summon moons to drop on the planet. OH MY GODS, THEY TURNED THIS FROM A WAR DRAMA TO A MAHOU SHOUJO! 3. (ep.3) They try really hard to convince us there are battle tactics in this show by making the naval fleets performing weird formations. Well tactics my butt if most of it happens out-of-screen and we don’t even see the outcome of all this mess. Seriously, you hardly see how they fight; all they show is bullets and explosions. Plus, a thousand warships can easily be fooled, infiltrated, and destroyed by an animal-themed loli holding a flashlight, so all that are pointless from the get-go. Jeez, I have seen ten times more tactics in the otherwise naval space battles of Legend of Galactic Heroes. They barely felt this retarded. 4. (ep.5) The lolis do cosplay to move the hearts of men, steal their ships by using your mother as an excuse, and demand a new kingdom while dressed as maids. I WAS PULLING MY OWN FEW REMAINING HAIR WHILE WATCHING THIS!5. (ep.7) An enemy fleet is chasing after the good guys. They claim they gather information on how to improve their technology by copying that of others. So after they see the good guys’ fleet getting their asses kicked, they decide they have gathered all they can from them and throw a volley of shots which will destroy them. Since they have gathered all they needed, that volley should have wiped them out entirely. But no it didn’t because the loli heroine tells the fleet to duck and all the ships easily avoid the attack. IF IT WAS SO EASY THEN WHY WEREN’T YOU DUCKING BEFORE? AND IF THE ENEMY GATHERED ALL THE INFORMATION ABOUT THEM THEN WHY DIDN’T THEY KNOW HOW EASY THEY CAN AVOID ALL THEIR ATTACKS?6. (ep.8) The heroes’ flagship is chased by the enemy fleet. They reach a mountain which blocks their flight. Instead of going higher to pass over it, they decide to blow a hole through it with their super weapons. So the question here is WHY ARE THEY BLOWING UP MOUNTAINS IN ORDER TO ESCAPE AND NOT JUST USE THE SUPER WEAPONS ON THE ENEMY? WHY ARE THEY EVEN RUNNING AWAY FROM THEM IF THEY CAN WIPE THEM OUT EASILY WITH THOSE? 7. (ep.8) The lolis sink a humongous warship by firing a single shot with a hand pistol at its weak spot, the belly. IF WARSHIPS SINK SO EASILY THEN WHY DON’T THEY USE A FEW TINY SABOTEUR UNITS IN EVERY BATTLE? Jeez, and then some say the Death Star which was destroyed with a simple torpedo was far-fetched.8. (ep.8) A tiny ship is stuck on the heroes’ flagship and the pilots inside are unconscious. The lolis decide that the best way to save them is to risk their lives by lifting the ship with their own hands and hope for something completely random to happen instead of just CUTTING THE ROPE AND SAFELY TOWING THEM AWAY. 9. (ep.10) Dio can apparently teleport anywhere he likes because he popped out of nowhere and blocked that lightsaber aiming at the lolis… Nah, I’m kidding, it is clearly BS of the storyboard for the lulz. 10. (ep.11) Terrorists attack the empress and everybody are standing still and watching them idly for minutes instead of running away or trying to help. Clearly, the director had no skills to show more than two people walking around at the same time. 11. (ep.11) When one of the bodyguards kills the terrorists in an aircraft, he jumps out and lets it crush anywhere it randomly drops onto. Even if he didn’t care about the hundreds of spectators near by (who all this time are standing still and watch the battle instead of just running away or at least taking cover) but it could have easily dropped on the empress and anyone on board the platform. Retarded! 12. (ep.12) It could have been great if we would get an epic battle between Dio and the assassins but this is GONZO we are talking about. The battle ends in a few seconds and without letting us see anything. The rest of the episode is tired loli fan service and bad Russian. 13. (ep.13) The battle in this episode is another desperate attempt to make us think there is strategy in this show when it is all random weapons that nobody saw or could defend against, unless they have more random weapons. It reminds me of the games we were playing as little kids (My laser kills you. – No, my shield deflects your laser and kills you. – No, I teleport and kill you instead. – No, I block your teleport with my magic talisman. – No, I order my invisible dragon to eat your talisman). 14. (ep.14) At this point you realize Fam and her lolis no longer have a role in the show. They are looking idly at events, just like those spectators. Despite being the protagonists, they are doing nothing but offering retarded moe slice of life. So you end up watching a completely random war and boring lolis.15. (ep.15) All the nations gather around to talk about ending the war. At the same moment, the villains find the ruins of some new super weapon. Yeah, screw politics, and dialogue. The only thing that matters in this show is random superpowers. 16. (ep.16) Two fleets are fighting in the sky and the battle ends when the flagship of the heroes just appears out of nowhere in the middle of the enemy fleet and uses its super weapons to destroy it. See what I meant by random superpowers? And why the devil doesn’t anyone try to copy THAT technology? 17. (ep.18) The security during ceremonies still sucks, despite losing their important leader some years ago. Anyone with a pistol can still kill anyone he wants. 18. (ep.19) The loli princess faints (conveniently when the villain must carry her around) and wakes up (conveniently when the villain must talk to her) numerous times. And the lame part is that it always occurs out of screen. As if he was secretly knocking her unconscious and then waking her by making her sniff ammonia or something. 19. (ep.20) Oh the age-old cliché of mortal enemies cooperating in order to defeat a greater threat. Too bad all they were doing is storming the enemy ship without any strategy at all. I mean they knew they had that super beam so why didn’t they just spread out their forces to minimize the damage? And don’t let anyone say anything regarding strategy such as “They wouldn’t be able to support one another if they were scattered.” They never supported anyone in the whole show, ok? All we see is them doing is storming in, that’s it.20. (ep.20) And what a surprise, they manage to block the super weapon with another super weapon. Great tactics as usual GONZO. So much for teamwork and cooperation; all it took was to have a loli princess with superpowers. 21. (ep.20) GONZO, you even contradict anything you showed us so far regarding its use. The falling moon needed several minutes to come down from its orbit and towards its target but now all they do is making the loli princess magically teleporting it in an instant right in front of them, without even having the slightest clue of how she did it. So cheap!22. (ep.20) Hey you idiotic villain general. Don’t tell me you never thought the loli princess wouldn’t try to do that. You went to all the trouble of getting all the other loli princesses but you just left this one? Nicely going. 23. (ep.20) Physics anyone? You cannot ram and pierce to pieces a mechanical tentacle ten times your size, density, and speed, without being pushed back a single meter from where you are standing in the middle of the sky. That ship should have been kicked back a thousand kilometres. 24. (ep.20) At this point one wonders what was the villain’s plan all along. “To unite the world through the use of weapons” is the easy answer. Well, if that is true then why didn’t he just use the Exile superweapons all along and wasted tens of thousands of soldiers in pointless battles? And don’t tell me it was because they could be used only a few times; they had infinite fuel and those tentacles and laser guns could be repeared easily. Thus you realize he deliberately alled his army to be decimated for no reason. Even if he thought a cooperation of fresh fleets would be enough to destroy even the Exile weapons, we still know that is not true since an Exile can be defeated only by an Exile. And just look at the last battle; all the fleets were down to a fraction of their original power and still kicked his ass. SO WHAT WAS HIS PLAN? To die as a tyrant and make the others form an alliance? He could have done that since the very first episode. 25. (ep.21) Nothing extremely wrong with the final episode. Other than being anti-climactic as hell, that is. YOU CALL THAT A CONCLUSION? Nothing we couldn’t guess from the earlier one. And now some mistakes that happen throughout the show, so they are omnipresent and can’t be marked in a single episode. 26. No matter how many cities or ships get destroyed, we never see dead people or even have a clear picture of how many died or survived. One episode a fleet is damaged severally, the next one is again ready by the thousands. One episode a whole nation is wiped out, the next one we get thousands of survivors. Also, the male/female analogy makes no sense since we either see men or women (or lolis) but never both. All the devastation this war is causing never manages to mean anything since we never see any actual or lasting damage. People and ships seem to regenerate overnight, so why bother to feel sorry for anyone? 27. As a follow up to the above, the directing is so sloppy that it constantly takes out lots of action and war scenes. Battles, pursuits, mass destructions, most of them happen out of screen and we just have someone telling us afterwards what exactly happened. And even when he does, it still means nothing since by the next episode people and ships have magically re-spawned. Do you know how stupid it looks when you are told an amazing battle took place without ever seeing anything, only to see the exact next day it had no significance at all? 28. As if that wasn’t enough, there is absolutely nobody taking things seriously in this show. You will get people doing some really atrocious acts and are not punished, or even as stupid as it sounds, they are instead rewarded. Such as in the case of the main lolis constantly causing havoc but are just rewarded afterwards by the very people they damaged and even joining their cause. Or a female pilot killing the leader of a nation and the next day is forgiven and even allowed to join the war with the very people who massacred her whole nation and whose lovable queen she killed as revenge. Or a general who just out of nowhere decided to betray his superiors without any foreshadow at all for that. Or the villain boss trying to present himself as a good guy in the end and the lolis forgive him despite the fact he massacred millions of people with the sole reason being “I want to bring peace by killing everyone”. And are we supposed to just accept there is peace and happiness for everyone in the ending after all this mess? Have they all forgotten how many of them were killed by other nations without ever doing anything bad or does it not matter because they all re-spawned by the next day? 29. The reason for the above is because the retards over at GONZO tried to combine two genres that simply do not combine. How the devil do you expect to mix retarded moe-moe that is meant to be silly, light, and aimless, with a war drama that is supposed to be the exact opposite? One second they are killing people, the immediate next they are eating cake with the very people they killed (and who have magically regenerated by then). And mind how it is supposed to be a serious scene and not comedy. Do you see it working in any way possible? OF COURSE NOT! I mean can you imagine a cute loli named Fam Fan Fan (seriously, that is her name) taking part in a war where people are constantly killed out of screen and still like it? 30. Continuing from above, try to imagine how most of the show is wasted on moe fan service and light everyday moments instead of fleshing out the characters and the setting. Over half of the events in the anime have absolutely no importance in a huge and seemingly complicated world. You hardly see the motivations of the characters or the style of life in each nation. You mostly see retarded bath and cooking scenes and wonder what the devil is going on with the war on the other side of the continent. 31. There is another thing which indirectly counts as a mistake. Why is this show a sequel to begin with? Where are the connecting points with the first season? We are told it happens a few years later and there are some recurring names and terminology but other than that there is absolutely nothing to see this show as a sequel. It happens on an entirely different world, with an entirely different cast of characters. And the few recurring ones from the first season are there just as cameos, since they have absolutely no significance over the events of the show. Fam and her lolis are less important that Dio the assassin from the first show, and even he is doing nothing but stalling time by not allowing the attackers to kidnap or kill someone, which will happen anyway later on but the makers of the show needed to somehow fill 21 episodes. But I bet GONZO thought it would increase the sales if they threw the name Last Exile on the cover instead of making a completely new title. And thus they didn’t even bother to try having some actual continuity in the show since the fans of the first show would just watch it for the same names and a few cameos. Nice trick you greedy bastards.
Yeah, ok, artwork and animation look great. SO WHAT? No amount of quality visuals can save this abomination from trashing one of the few remaining decent (but not great by a longshot) anime this ridiculous studio ever made. Watch it only if you are a 2D petafile or still enjoy brain dead shows with coocoo lolis. The rest keep away.Oh, and GONZO? DON’T YOU DARE MAKE A SEQUEL TO NHK OR KALEIDO STAR! Please, you only made TWO great shows in your life span. DON’T trash them as well.