released 25 sep 05 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* At the outset of the anime series LAST EXILE, we see a world that seems badly polluted, where two great nations -- one stylistically like Napoleonic France, the other with a Slavic flavor -- have long been at odds, engaging battles with giant flying battleships powered by electromagnetic "Claudia" drives. The "rules" are in principle enforced by a race of albinos, the "Guild", who possess advanced technology.
After setting up this scenario, the story focuses on Klaus and Lavie, two adolescent orphans -- they have different parentage but function as brother and sister -- who are trying to get by using an old "vanship" -- sort of like a flying 1920s roadster with a Claudia drive -- to run courier missions and fly races. Their work leads them into the intrigues of the Guild, with Klaus and Lavie effectively adopting an adorable little girl named Alvis who everybody seems to be after with murderous earnestness, which in turn brings them to the mysterious black "sky rebel" battleship SYLVANA, under the command of the enigmatic Alex Rowe.
The splendid production values of LAST EXILE are evident from the outset, with the series featuring imaginative designs, pretty artwork, screaming air battles and STAR-WARS-type race scenes, plus excellent soundtrack work. Unfortunately, the production values have to contend with a script that was written completely on autopilot, with indifferent character development, dull dialogue, and aimless plotting. In fact, after a time LAST EXILE seems basically like a redrawn GUNDAM series, just with the props changed, complete with stony-faced commanders (Alex Rowe), cold-blooded Zeon enemies (the Guild), adolescent hero and heroine (Klaus and Lavie), the usual sort of roughneck hangar crew, and so on.
What is particularly frustrating about LAST EXILE is that it has the makings of a very exciting story, full of imaginative details in a world very much unlike our own. The reality is that it never bothers to do more than toss those details out, making very little attempt to tell the audience much about them, instead spending most of its time in a narrative that seems like wasted motion. It's like being thrown a pile of parts that are never assembled into a working machine. It is very frustrating to sit through a story that doesn't bother to explain important things that all the characters in the story clearly understand, preferring instead to simply fly in circles with cardboard characters, tedious dialogue, and pointless action scenes.
For all its prettiness, LAST EXILE doesn't come close to hitting the mark. In the end, it turns out to be a forgettable bore. Try FULL METAL ALCHEMIST instead: it's nowhere near as pretty, but it has characters who actually are alive and a story that, at least up until the end, is firing on all cylinders.
