lonely_hunter

[	Tags	|	alex, claus, delphine, dio, discussion, review	]
[	Current Mood	|	curious	]

My budget edition of Last Exile arrived, and I just played through the whole series in a weekend marathon. I'm surprised at how engaging I found it; even if I like a show, it usually doesn't hold up to more than four episodes per sitting. But I kept watching Last Exile for hours, even though I wound up not liking the protagonists very much.

(Warning: the following review greatly exaggerates the negatives. If I really disliked the show this much, I wouldn't bother writing about it. Precisely because I mostly enjoyed it, I can't resist pointing out how it could have been even better.)

The main character is a bland sort of clod. He's not particularly annoying to start with, and I assumed that the story would show his personal growth into someone more admirable, but he stays a bland sort of clod. Yet the other characters are all inexplicably attracted to him, and the last few episodes consist of everyone else being useless and just calling his name adoringly. For some reason this makes him more annoying to me, even though he hasn't changed.

And the person he admires -- a tall, dark, and taciturn maverick airship captain modeled on Harlock -- is worse. We're told early on that he lost the woman he loved ten years ago, and has been on a campaign of revenge against the evil queen ever since. But it turns out that the evil queen had nothing to do with it. She didn't shoot them down, she didn't sabotage the engine (although she could have). He was simply trying to fly in conditions that were too difficult for him, and she witnessed his failure. He's not a righteous avenger at all; he has a misplaced grudge that he is childishly taking out on an innocent bystander. (Let me clarify that she is evil in many other ways, but this is the one case in which she's actually innocent.)

The clod and the captain are presented as if they are heroic characters, but I find them annoying and immature. There's a white-haired bishounen supporting character who's also annoying and immature, but he's presented that way, so at least he's honest about it, which is kind of endearing in a way. Actually he has a misleading scene early on: we see him on a high throne playing chess, and it looks as though he will be the cool beauty, calculating adversary type of character. But he turns out to be playful and bouncy and likes to hug people. So what was that chess scene all about?! Did someone give him tranquilizers to get him to sit still that long?!

Finally, the resolution of the story is far too facile. The characters have been seeking a means of escaping their war-torn homelands and reaching a world without conflict. No world will be without conflict if they are on it! They take conflict with them!

Maybe I wasn't listening closely enough, but I don't think we're ever told why the colony ship is called "Exile". I take it literally. My personal speculation: I think these people are the descendants of a prison colony for the useless and violent.

The budget edition I have contains no extras at all, but I understand that the deluxe Japanese boxed edition included a big book of background information, which I'm now very curious about (日本語が読めるよ!). I wonder if I can find it anywhere.