tollie01's avatar

tollie01

  • Netherlands
  • Joined Jan 16, 2011
  • 49 / M

Allright. It's been a while since I've done something like this so bear with me as I try to find my way again. I did quite a lot of them in the past on a different website which you can find here: http://legendsofsatura.net/index.php/forum125/6-reviewing-guild.html

....They probably aren't very good though but please do stop by if you have the time and inclination. Originally the site was for writers, mostly original but also fanfiction.

Also I'm Dutch so there will be spelling errors. If you find them annoying give me a shout and I'll try to fix them.

Oh, I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum but there will be some. Usually the worse I rate an anime the more spoilers this will contain. You have been warned

So, you have probably already read what the animation is about in the discription given by Anime-Planet, which is the same as on the box. I will therefore try not go into the story that much unless I'm ranting about something (spoilers).

For this review I'm going to forgo my usual method of reviewing and lay into this piece of crap from the start. Know that my hatred for this garbage knows no bounds and I will be going into heavy spoiler territory for this one. Unfortunately I can't do that without mentioning the first series, the original Last Exile, and use that as a reference. There will therefore also be spoilers for the first series as well. Please, if you have not seen the first series stop reading here and go and watch it first. Last Exile is one of the best series I have seen and well worth your time.

Read on if you have seen it and want to know how they fucked up a sequal to one of my most beloved anime series of all time.

ART: Yeah, I gave the original series a 10/10 but this one gets a 7/10. The reason for this is the truly attrocious CGI used. It's bad, very bad. They try their best to cover it up and in quite a few scenes they get away with it but in many scenes they do not.

Essentially every sequence that has fast vanship action is pure 100% CGI and it shows. I have seen better CGI in Final Fantasy X and that was on PS2.

What truly annoyed me is that the normal animation is simply gorgious and pure heroin for the eyes. You want more only to get a CGI spike to the skull instead.

SOUND: This was one of the few things where I had no complaints but like everything else it suffered from my rage. I can't get myself to give a higher rating although it probably does deserve it.

CHARACTERS: Yep, I gave it a 1 and it is one of the very few anime's that came close to making me rage quit watching. Let me explain here.

The original Last Exile series had some of the best characters that I had ever seen in an anime. When a character did something they did it for a reason. A reason you understood and related to because you knew the character.

Claus joins the Silvana to join the fight because he wants the war to end and help Alvis.

Lavie is horrified by the war and does not want the vanships to be used as weapons yet she helps Claus because he is her partner and she cares for him.

Alex went rogue with the Silvana because the Guild murdered his fiancee and he wants revenge

Sophia was the sister of the fiancee and supports Alex as his first officer because of it. She also is in love with him but does not act upon it because he loved her sister and is still in love with her.

Dio is focused on Claus because he is fascinated by him and his piloting skills. He yearns for a rival and a friend because he is alone. He is even willing to defy the Guild to some point because of this.

Lucciola is Dio's bodyguard and only Guild friend. When Dio gets brainwashed he sacrifices himself to get Dio released.

Mullin is a low ranking soldier on a Anatory battleship. He does not want to be a soldier but has no choice in the matter. He fights because he has no choice and he later finds out that the other side is the same.

Disith is not just attacking Anatory because they want to but because they have to. Their country is suffering major food shortages and they have nowhere else to go.

The Guild is pictured as the major bad guys of the story but then you see Dio get brainwashed as a right of passage. This is something that many members go through and it changes Dio from a kindhearted boy into a vicious psychotic killer. This brings new light to the Delphine, who leads the Guild and is Dios' sister. What was she like before she went into the machine and became the monster she is now?

So with this in mind, how do the characters of the new series come off? Well, badly.

Main characters Fam and Giselle are fine and so is Millie. Their characters get established in the beginning and they stay true to their characters. Fam is a vanship pilot who wants nothing more than to have a Grand Race with all nations participating because that was the last time everyone had geniune smiles.

Giselle is her navigator and supports her through thick and thin although she is not happy with all the fighting. Neither is Fam for that matter.

Millie is the youngest member of the Turan royal family and all she wants is to end the fighting, save her people and get her sister back.

The Augusta is the leader of Ades, a powerful nation bent on conquering the world. She is 11 years old and wants nothing more than that her people are happy.

So far so good but here shit starts to go wrong. We get introduced to 2 important characters in the first episode. One is Liliana, Millie's older sister, and the other is Luscinia, the prime minister of Ades.

Luscinia is the driving force behind the Ades war and his reason is to create the world that the previous Augusta wanted. A world of peace where people lived beside each other. How does Luscinia accomplish this? By mass genocide. Yep, you read that right people. Mass genocide. He makes it his mission in life to kill as many people as he can by blowing them the fuck up.

He does this many times and he gives 3 reasons for soing so. The first is that it was the wish of the former Augusta to bring peace to the world. The second is to bring lasting peace and the third is that there are to many people on the world for there to be enough food. In other words: Lebensraum. (<--- oh, look. One of the reasons Hitler used to start WWII but I'm sure that he was a nice dude who had nothing but the best of intentions as well)

They later try to pose him as this tragic figure who only tries to do the things that needed to be done for the good of humanity but..... seriously?! We get to see him wipe cities of the map with many people still in it and we are supposed to care about this motherfucker?! Really?! Are you insane? The only thing I feel is utter contempt and I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire.

Not to mention that it goes against EVERYTHING that the former Augusta wanted. Sure, her hands weren't clean either but she tried hard to bring everyone together peacefully. Her future dream world had a lot more people in it so Luscinia is the greatest douchebag on the planet.

How does Liliana fare against this? Roughly the same. In the first episode she is shown as a caring woman who wants what is best for her people and is well liked for her kind and gentle nature.

She is abducted by Luscinia who then uses her to summon an Exile, as she is a key able to summon it. As she is completely helpless, Luscinia, uses her to destroy the capital city of Turan, killing her father and many innocent people.

Next time we see her she is not only fine but actively helps Luscinia in his effort. Even going to far to willingly summon the Exile to wipe another city off the map. The reason she gave to Luscinia for this was this: "My hands are already sullied."

How? How are your hands sullied? You were helpless as Luscinia pulled your strings and you had NO CHOICE in the matter. She literally had no choice as the Exile completely overruled her mind and she was menatlly unable to refuse Luscinia's orders.

So to compare here. If I were to kidnap someone like Mother Teresa. Tie her to a chair. Put a gun in her hand in such a way that she is unable to let go or aim at anything else but what I chose to put in front of her. Put someone in front of her. Then all I have to do now is shock her arm so that her muscles spasm, thus allowing the gun to go off and kill the person in front of her and I've now succesfully created someone willing to wipe a city off the face of the Earth because 'her hands are now sullied'? Huh.... who knew.

STORY: Aaaaand here is another problem of mine. The world. It will not surprise you that it takes place in the same universe as the first series. The setting is on the same planet just a different section of it. This is no problem at all and can be used to further expand the world and its people. The fact that the previous characters are not in it should be no problem as their stories were completed but they are in it.

Both Dio and Alves appear in the anime as major side characters, especially Dio. This is where the trouble starts because now we have a timeline and proximity to the places where the previous events from the first series took place. And it falls apart.

First up is Anatory who again plays a major role in the new universe in the form of the battleship Sylvius.

Current location is centered around the Grand Lake and all nations are clustered around it. Here is where all the story telling takes place while Anatory is mentioned as being far to the east. It even shows up on the map that the Ades' military uses but there has been no contact between the Grand Lake nations and Anatory.

This is bullcrap. People travel, they explore, there would have been contact long before and since it is on a map there has been. This is a problem since in Anatory the Guild ran everything. Even the engines used in the war ships were Guild supplied AND operated. This was a major plotpoint in the first series as it was the Guild who decided to abondon ship and not its captain. The captain crew would be fighting to save the ship and someone in the engine would decide "Nope, fuck that noice. We're out of here!" The engine would disengage from the ship and fly off while the captain and crew plummet to certain death. Major plotpoint.

None of that is mentioned around the Grand Lake. In fact there is NO Guild presence at the Grand Lake area. This despite the fact that Luscinia is clearly of Guild descent and a Guild trained assassin/bodyguard. He even recognizes Dio for what he is, a Guild member. Yet while Anatory and Disith were completely at the mercy of the Guild none such thing is present at the Grand Lake.

Looking back on the first series and Meastro Delphine I do not buy this one bit. She would have known about the Grand Lake and put it into her stranglehold the same as with Anatory and Disith.

So putting the timeline so close to that of the first series is a bad mistake as it simply does not add up. So what would have worked?

This is surprisingly simple and I'm surprised that they didn't go with this in the first place. As mentioned several times in the new series there was a massive cataclism that almost destroyed the world. Those who could left on the Exiles, massive ships capable of space flight.

Those left behind struggled on untill things finally died down again. Slowly the world became habitable again and they spread out around the Grand Lake. Then, 100 years ago, the Exiles returned with many people on board. The people already living around the Grand Lake were displaced by the returnees and taken in by Ades.

This was the cause of all the wars in the past century untill the Augusta tried to stop the fighting. Unfortunately she was assassinated after the Grand Race a decade before current events.

This is the current timeline of the two series. The events of the first series and about 5 years after the death of the former Augusta and as I said this is to soon. If the first series had taken place after the return of the Exiles, say 2 to 3 decades, then it would fit much better.

Current Dio and Alves are grandchildren of the characters of the first series and you can tie the Sylvana crew into it as well with descendends of the first series characters.

It would explain Dio and Alves being there and even them having the same names, It would also explain why there is no Guild presence at the Grand Lake because they were destroyed many decades before.

It won't save everything as you still have Luscinia and Liliana but it would have made me give a higher rating.

You wouldn't believe how happy I was when I learned that a new series was being made. The first series was from 2003 while the new series was made in 2011. That is 8 years! Yet this was the best they could do? There are 5 year olds who can write a better story than this.

It would have been better if they had cut all ties with the first series and created a whole new world but even that is not possible because they gave in to a cardinal sin. They referenced the first series in the new one.

Worse is that they had one entire recap episode about the first series! Yes, they recapped the entire first series in one spisode near the end of the anime. "Never show a better movie in your own movie" That is a rule you must never break and they did it.

It drove home just how bad this was and what it could have been.

4/10 story
7/10 animation
7/10 sound
1/10 characters
2/10 overall

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