Last Exile is a steampunk anime involving aerial dogfighting, riflemen on flying ships, and teenaged pilots. Or leads are a pair of kids named Claus and Lavi, who deliver messages in their messenger plane, including in the middle of battles. After successfully delivering a commander named Mad-Thane a message in the middle of battle...ok, must digress. "Commander Mad-Thane?" I could not take it as seriously as I should have because I was hearing "Commander Mad-Saxon Retainer/Warrior." Anyway, after delivering a message in rather suicidal circumstances to a commander, they enter a race with other ships, only to drop out of the race when they see a downed ship and go to help the pilot. There's they learn he's on a mission to deliver a cargo, which turns out to be a little girl named Al, to a captain named Alex Row. The mission is ranked as being over twice as
suicidal dangerous as their last, and Claus accepts the mission and is determined to carry it out himself, despite Lavie's very sensible protests that they should turn it over to someone better equipped to deal with it. Naturally, they find themselves the targets of the same machines that killed the other pilot in doing so.
Ok: It is pretty. Prettyprettyprettyprettypretty. And has great music. I'm not sure I'm in love, but I'm entertained. Claus and Lavie are ok, but not incredibly interesting. Lavie needs to tone it down a notch, but she has common sense, unlike Claus, who, while nice and pretty decent in the "naive coming of age young hero" way, is currently in the running for the series's TSTL(Too Stupid To Live) award by taking on a mission he's amazingly outclassed for, and not passing it on to someone who is qualified for it, despite having this fact pointed out to him many times by Lavie. Al is ok, but hasn't done much yet. I have been told several times, but mostly in the comments of
this post from a little over a month ago that Alex is angstier than angst. Specifically, that he had enough angst to power his ship. Earlier today,
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kingcrankycattold me that "galaxy" was probably more appropriate than "ship." He has not yet had the opportunity to properly display his angst, but he has already shown that he is a master of looking angsty and broody in a soft, glowing lamplight, and of looking very Byronic and broody when giving orders. I haven't caught his second-in-command's name yet, but she seems quite interesting and capable. There's also a rifleman who's tired of getting shot at named (I think) Shetland Mullen from the first two episodes. He shows promise as a fun future ally, but I don't know if he'll be in any more episodes(he seems destined to show up again, but I've been proven wrong about these things before.)
As an aside, the race gave me unnecessary
Star Wars: Episode 1 flashbacks. Though I suspect the fact that Tokyopop translated Kamanosuke Yuri's dialect to make her sound like Jar Jar Binks made me notice even more.
