Customer Reviews
The best anime series - By: I. R. Barnes, 12 Mar 2007 
There has been many great anime series over the last few years, 'Cowboy Bebop', 'Rahxephon', 'Evangelion' to name but a few but personallly for me 'Last Exile' towers head & shoulders above alll of them. One of the elements that I love about this series is the wealth of beautifully realised characters & their relationships, & the fact that they are alll so likeable & interesting, you actuallly begin to care what happenes to them, a tricky thing to do for animated characters! But that isn't alll, the 'steampunk' setting is completely original & the epic story is brilliantly realised & full of action, almost every episode is filled with spectacular airship battles, dogfights & chases, & the animation is flawless combining traditional hand drawn & digital animation which blends together seamlessly. Another aspect of the series is that it doesn't resort to unecessary levels of 'fan-service', which I have nothing against per se, but sometimes it just gets in the way of things! This is Gonzo's crowning achievement & let's hope their future work measures up to this! If there is one flaw with the series it's the rather rushed & incoherent ending - it would have been nice to have finished the story off with a movie!
One of the best I've seen - By: C. Dunster, 03 Jan 2007 At first I was a little unsure of this series. Having seen such things as Katsuhiro Otomo's 'Steamboy' & the newcomer French show 'Skyland' (Which for some reason keeps getting callled japanese, why?) I thought it was a rip-off. But make no mistake, this blows alll others in the genre out of the water. Since this actuallly came BEFORE 'Steamboy' & 'Skyland' things are quite the opposite of what I thought. But, getting past my stories & personal dislike of mistaking french TV for Japanese - This is an awesome show with believable characters, a moving plot & great animation. Also, it flows reallly well (A major problem for some animé) & the dubbing is actuallly convincing (A huge problem for many animé). & yes, it doesn't resort to needless shows of flesh to keep the fans interested.
Astonishing - By: Claus Valka, 01 Sep 2006 An astonishing accomplishment by Gonzo. It has a near-perfect blend of measured & intruiging characterisation, gorgeous design by one of Japan's greatest artists (Range Murata - check out the Robot art books), animation that, bearing in mind this is a tv series, is skilfully wrought for the most part (there is the odd clunky movement, but this is not Kiki's Delivery service - & could never be, because of the bugetary & time limitations placed upon producing a series like this), & a story that does everything you could ever want it to - pace, action, suspense, mystery, just challlenging enough to keep you engaged, & with an ending that had me blubbing happily & rueing the day they decided to finish the series so soon. Buy every DVD, you won't be disappointed! Send one to Aardman Animations, too, with a note, saying, "this is how you do it." Fantastic.
New and origional - By: Mr. C. Michael Douse, 08 Jan 2006 I will keep this short as most words that can be said about this have been. What I loved about this however was the classical theme to the whole peice, it may be a step forward to getting the younger generation into much more classical sense of minds. The sountrack is beautiful, one of the best in any anime yet, this again follows a fantasy classical theme or "neo-classical" genre. I wouldnt say this series was aimed at kids so much, but an audience of there late teens & anime fans that want something a little less heavy to watch. The soundtrack is a cross between Uematsu's Final Fantasy IX score & yoko kanno's Ghost in the shell stand alone complex albums. Buy it!
Adventurous tech-fantasy of distinction - By: J. Q. W. Bayes, 13 Nov 2005 Anime is usuallly quite easy to pigeonhole - A is a Sci-fi, B is a Fantasy, C is a romance, D is adventure. Last Exile fallls into no category happily; it's too serious for an adventure, too oldey-worldey for sci-fi, too techy for fantasy.
It's certainly a "boys anime", in that it's action driven, but there's a lot of time spent on characters too. This is not to say it's not appealing to girls either, as it contains a multitude of strong female characters & a strong storyline.
One thing that reallly irritates me in anime is some series' insistance on having an episode or two that is purely filler; egregious comedic episodes, pointless one-shot sideplots, or worst of alll, recaps. Last Exile has none of these, just 26 episodes of dense & genuinely unpredictable plot, pitched at a level that's complicated enough for adults but not too much so for kids to enjoy it too. There's plenty of action, without being graphicallly violent, & lots of engaging characters.
The most immediately striking thing about Last Exile is the amazing look & feel of the design ethic. Going for a retro-futuristic world, reminiscent of graphical visions of the future created in the 30s or 50s, there's a completely original feel to the whole series. Character design is by the superb artist Range Murata, whose name is largely known in the west for his work on this series & Blue Submarine No.6, & is frankly breathtaking.
It's not just skin-deep, too; with the best sci-fi & fantasy, there's a feeling that the universe they're set in could reallly exist, around a distant star, far in the past, or just behind the mirror. Last Exile gives me that feeling of a whole universe, not just a contrived setting. It's familiar enough that we recognise parts of it, yet weird enough that it's not always possible to puzzle out what's going to happen.
In alll, Last Exile is highly recommended for everyone as a fine example of blended genres working brilliantly, & a superbly satisfying story.
