[Anime] Last Exile

I am by no means an anime expert. I've seen the classics - Nausicaä and everything else Ghibli, Akira, Ghost in the Shell and some more, mostly feature length movies - but especially serialised anime never really appealed to me. So I surprised myself a bit when I picked up the first Last Exile DVD (containing Episodes 1-5) on a whim, just because the description on the back cover was intriguing and the art style looked interesting.

Last Exile is set in a steampunky world, where Victorian era steam engines power WWI inspired flying machines and two warring factions battle each other adhering to a strict code of honour, overlooked by a seemingly all-powerful "guild". The protagonists are two 15 year old youths, Klaus and Lavie, who fly their steam-powered vanship on courier missions, trying to survive in their harsh world. Their first mission is the delivery of a message to an Admiral of one of the factions. This episode sets up the world and its laws and introduces the main players. In further episodes the two youths run across a hunted courier and take over his mission, delivering a young girl to a mysterious ship namend Silvana, which doesn't seem to be allied with any of the other parties and pursues its own agenda.

The world building going on in the series is interesting, the blending of WWI aesthetics and Victorian technology works quite well, even if the guild's technology seems to be a bit too advanced to fit in seamlessly. The story is rather straightforward in the first episodes, but managed to keep me interested. The characters are introduced ok and overall likable, although Lavie tends to get annoying (which could well be because of the shrill voice she got in the German dub I watched).

What didn't work for me was the blending of traditional animation for the character scenes and CGI stuff for the battles and flight scenes. The transition is jarring and takes from the enjoyment of the thing as a whole. Traditional animation all the way would have been a better choice in my book. The quality of the DVD is flawless, although it is quite short on extras. I can't comment on the quality of the dub, since my Japanese has gotten a little rusty in the last years. Overall quite interesting, but no masterwork. Maybe I'll get the following volumes someday.