The Genre: Sci-Fi

The Format: 26 episodes across 7 DVDs from Pioneer/Geneon

The plot: From one of Japan's most renowned anime studios - GONZO (Hellsing, Full Metal Panic!) - comes a richly romantic action/adventure fantsy on an imaginary planet where retro-futuristic sky vehicales permeate the sky. Against the lavish background are the lives of a young and heropic air pilot duo - Claus and Lavie - whose assignment to make a special human delivery fails. Before they know it, they become entangled in an aerial adventure between two countries gripped in an eternal war of magnificent air battleships, noble generals, and a mysterious war-mediating Guild. Last Exile takes us to a place never before dreamed of in the vast reaches of the blue heavens.

If I'm honest, there came a point during Last Exile where I realised I didn't really know what was going on.

I don't mean that in the sense that it was an intriguing mystery, or that it was abstract and took a lot of figuring out. I mean it in the sense that it was confusing, and I didn't really know what was going on.

Now, I guess that could well be my fault--I watched Last Exile in a weird way, watching about a third of it, leaving a huge gap, watching something else (My Name is Earl) and then coming back and watching the rest of it. But, to be honest, although I'm sure that didn't help, it was more that the story is just wilfully confusing.

I got the feeling that the production crew knew that the story was a little flimsy, and so they decided to take an approach of taking out little bits and pieces of explanation in the hopes that this would lend things an heir of sophistication. Certainly, the visuals are sophisticated, with great design coming from the awesome Range Murata, and the core plot has a degree of elegance to it, but the way in which that story is told is a little clumsy, in my opinion.

The specific point where I realised I didn't know quite what was going on was when a bunch of long, torpedo-like structures appeared in a desert in which our hero, Claus, finds himself stranded. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know what the relevance of these structures was, quite where they were supposed to have come from, quite what that meant and also why the young girl ended up crying.

Okay, so I pushed that metaphor so far beyond the point of breaking it got a bit silly, but you get my jist--looks good, reasonable underlying plot, poor execution.

And there are other problems with the execution than just the fundamentals. There are a couple of things that to me are just plain errors.

The main one is that they split up the core pairing of Claus and Lavie too thoroughly. Initially, these two are presented to us as inseparable. They go everywhere together and do everything together. They are the ultimate team.

And then they're split up for what amounts to no really good reason. I mean, Lavie gives a reason, but it's flimsy and poorly motivated. Indeed, when the back-story of our heroes is revealed to us, it further undermines Lavie's reasoning. Logically from the story presented, she should be just as keen on fighting as Klaus, and why she isn't, is never fully explained in a sensible fashion.

Another set of characters that gets something of a raw deal are Dio Eraclea and Luciola.

Their eventual fate is that both of them end up dead, and it's all very un-satisfactory. Luciola's death is particularly annoying and disappointing, as he seems to sacrifice himself needlessly, achieving very little of anything. Dio is put through some sort of bizarre and brutal coming of age ceremony, where he must kill a group of his peers.

But then he seems to go a bit nuts (well, he was a bit nuts to start with, but this is a different sort of nuts) and just sort of ends up hallucinating and falling out of his ship to his death. It's incredibly tragic, and I think that was meant to be the point, but it's also very unsatisfying. What the ceremony is and why it's like it is is never explained, so it all just feels random and arbitrary. So, by extension, Dio's death is just a random and arbitrary thing.

These are just two of the specific examples of things that niggled at me and made Last Exile a rather un-satisfying experience.

It's like the point I mentioned about there being 3 sides, neither of which is truly presented as being 'bad', as such. The Guild comes closest, but Dio and Luciola show us that it's more because their leader, Maestro Delphine is bad (although again, more drunk on power and 'mad', rather than 'bad'), rather than the Guild as an organisation/race being specifically bad.

By having this muddiness we loose sight of what the motivations are. Why are things happening, if the conflicts that are presented are undermined as soon as they are set up?

The above paragraph sounds like the questions that might be asked in a trailer don't they? Only the problem is I've watched Exile and I can't really answer them.

Therein lies the rub.

Overall, the disc quality is excellent, with a very high standard of animation throughout and good sound (though it would have been nice to have a 5.1 mix in there too). Extras are actually quite good for a Geneon release, with an interview and a few other things that don't normally crop up on their releases.

It was the show itself I had issues with.

The Summary: Stylistically, it's a tour-de-force, but I found the story a little confusing, and a little disappointing too.

The Score: 3/5

The Pictures:

(click for larger versions)