Thursday, January 31, 2008

LastEXILE

Full Title: LastEXILE
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Steampunk
Episodes: 26
Uploaded By: Mavrik
My Age Rating: PG (Mild Language, Violence)

Claus Valca and Lavie Head are the pilot and navigator of a rather old and beat-up vanship (sort of a wingless WWI two-seater) working for the Norkia Vanship Oraganization running messages of varying importance in and out of danger zones. Although they are a fairly successful duo, they barely get by. That is until the pair accept a mission by saving a little girl from a star-shaped killing machine. To complete the mission, they deliver the peculiar girl to an infamous rouge airborne capital ship called the Silvana. Only to be inducted into the crew and become key players in a bizarre war...




Vague as the main plot may sound, this anime is actually quite the watch. Fascinating ideas and concepts are strewn throughout the series in the form of gadgets and gizmos. The artists' love for filling everything in to the finest detail is obvious and much appreciated. Also, big concepts like chivalry, war, love, and evil are all fully explored throughout the course. Each of the episodes is named after a chess move and usually elude to an action one of the main characters will take in that particular episode. (Also, if you don't like Mullin Shetland, there's officially something wrong with you.. just a personal opinion...) Don't watch this anime for action, although it exists, many of the episodes are spent with the characters arguing verbally and watching major political events unfold, especially near the middle of the series.


Production wise, this anime stands heads and shoulders above most of its kind. The animation is always flawless, the art is always incredibly detailed, and the special effects blend oh-so-smoothly with the drawing style (the budget for this thing must have been huge). The opening and ending credits are both top notch, not the best you'll ever see, but well worth watching. The voice acting is great, well, great if you can stand the voice of Lavie that is. Although the storyline is a little bit unexplanatory as too what actually is going on, it's very well written. This anime definitely does not spoon feed you any information. At the end, you'll probably understand what happened, and you might even understand how it happened, but you may not fully comprehend why it happened (not an anime for first timers.) Overall, a beautiful and very interesting effort, but to me, it falls just a little bit short of being a masterpiece.




My Rating: 8.7/10 (Excellent)

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