Anime: Last Exile: Gin`yoku no Fam 4u5u4f

Imagine your goal would be a peaceful togather of nations.. what is the untimate way to get many different people with different agenda to one table and work togather? Yes.. create an arch-evil for them to fight against.

So, the setting is just few years (two apparently) after the events in the original, now on planet Earth. However everything seems so detached you would think this is happening centuries in the future if it weren't for a couple of returning characters that have barely aged (physically; mentally they have become so dumb there must have been some pretty bad cerebral degeneration there). Still, even though you could wonder about things like how in hell Anatoray could have established a new nation on Earth in a couple years, this means the prequel isn't needed to understand the story presented here, if there was one.

The basic premise is that we have an evil space - pardon, terran - empire - pardon, federation - bent on conquering (actually exterminating would be more exact) the whole world to reclaim the land stolen by those who have come back to Earth with their super duper uber Exile ships after some sort of age of calamity brought upon by pollution. This Ades Federation, in fact, is made of those people who remained on Earth during the cataclysm and barely managed to survive. So, per se, this wouldn't be such a bad premise: it's clichéd, all right, but offers the basis for your decent run of the mill "their claim isn't inherently wrong, but they'll have to learn war doesn't solve shit and they should look at the future instead of at the past"; tell it to Israel and Palestine, one could say, but in this genre of adventure/sci-fi anime it sometimes works well enough.

Here it doesn't. First and foremost there's no actual world to speak of: we are never shown it, apart from some random city supposed to be somewhere (who knows where) and sometimes seeming to comprise a whole "nation" sometimes not. The bad baddy baddies of the Federation sometimes plan their bad bad invasions watching a random world map that utterly fails at creating any sort of ordered geographic setting, it's just there to say "this time we are conquering the north, buhahahah!". Even worse, the whole "invasion" thing is completely inconsistent: one episode they supposedly completely exterminated a nation by blowing up their capital (and seemingly only settlement), with the lone survivor of that nation crying dramatic tears for being alone in the world, two episodes later we are told there still are thousands of refugees around (though we are never shown them, as we are never shown... well pretty much anything apart cool ships and underage girls). So, how the hell is this world populated? Self-sufficient, enclosed City-States as we are told half the time, or spread out as we are told the other half?
Hard to say, when even when we happen to stumble upon a pirate city which was bombed to the ground by the Federation some days before, we are shown ruins but not a single corpse or any trace of former human life whatsoever: they all disappeared in thin air. So, btw, why should we feel sorry for them if, apparently, no freaking-one was actually living there?

Later on we are offered something that would like to add some more depth to the Federation reasons; the previous empress tried to make world peace, but she was killed by terrorists (ah, the endless chain of vengeance) and her bodyguards decided to continue her mission for peace taking the shortest path: peace through total annichilation. This would explain why the now prime minister is committing widespread genocide, but NOPE! This isn't his real goal, his real goal all along was to obtain the secret Super Exile and force everyone - Ades and the various Exiled nations - to stand down and relinquish all their weapons. Urrrr, right, why did you have to wipe out entire nations then, when you just needed to bring the 10 years old magical girl to open the door to the Doomy Ship of Doom? I know, I know, he had to first weaken the various armies to ensure his Exile would really be overwhelming, right? Well, this still wouldn't explain complete genocide, and is anyway rendered moot by the fact even though the various fleets keep being destroyed they are magically back in the hundreds of ships at the end to do just that, attack the Death Star - pardon, the Exile - send in the cavalry and save the day.

During this "epic" we are a couple of times offered some supposed personal crisis for some of the secondary characters from the Ades Federation, precisely two irals and a... dunno, minister or something? The whole political apparatus is never explained (again). This minister/caretaker for the kid empress is originally from an Exile tribe, long ago annexed by Ades. She lets Ades do whatever they please and she actually endorses it and is very proud to be a part of it, 'till when the "provincial army" from her formerly independent state is used as a diversion on the battlefield and 100% destroyed. Then she gets all bitchy since she now is the last of her race (because, of course, the whole population from her nation was enlisted in the provincial fleet, men, women, children, grannies... that's how it works, right?), explains to the holy empress that the prime minister is evil, and with her as a unifying flag organizes the Rebel Alliance to bring down him and then live happily ever after with Obi Wan's spirit. Or well, sort of.
The two aforementioned irals, who are friends, are sent to crush this alliance and take the empress back, but thanks to a 10 seconds long "genocide is bad, 'mmmkay" conversation, end up firing at each other as one decides to the alliance out of loyalty for the kid empress. The other one is then overwhelmed and his fleet sunk, but fret not, he is of course going to be resurrected in a while to magically come back (fleet and everything) during the last showdown. Not that there was any reason for him to be resurrected (he has maybe 5 minutes of total screentime during the whole show), it's just like that, out of spite for your intelligence.
Of course, I'd like to add, in all this supposedly thought provoking (not!)... urr... stuff, there's not a single simple crewman who wonders about what the hell is happening; an iral, or a ruler, always embodies in real time the sentiments and opinions of a whole fleet/nation.

The underlying theme behind all this random warring is how to build - through morally acceptable means - a long lasting peace. Force, though somewhat effective, isn't morally acceptable, but pure ive hippie spirit seems to not work that well either (which is to an extent probably the only slightly redeeming point of the whole mess), so how will they pull it off? Simple: they won't. They'll manage to thwart the pitiable villain's plans and find themselves all fuzzy inside after having cooperated to defuse the big crisis (with your run of the mill conceited speech "I know we're still immature and shit may happen again, but that's no reason to stop trying" which obviously will convert the suicidal villain, who's anyway satisfied seeing how he brought everyone together by being, basically, a dick just for the fun of it), so they'll live happily ever after. Until the next guy decides he has to take revenge for the loss of his whole family. But maybe it won't happen: even though supposedly thousands (if not millions) have died during the series, at least on paper, they seem to all be invisible (or shifting in and out of existence as need be, who knows), so there might be no one really angry left around.

Is there really any need for me to openly say how much sense this meatloaf makes, or how much depth it has? Thought so.

The Ades Federation isn't however the starring of the show, the story is about the dumb chicks I mentioned before, so maybe even though the wider scenario is lacking, the individual stories will be poignant, engrossing, emotionally involving. Yeah, right.
The main characters are Fam Fan Fan (the only thing about her dumber than her name is... well, her), her ive-masochist-lesbo-slave-please-die-useless-bitch best childhood friend and while she's at it co-pilot Giselle, and Millia, the crybaby princess that will be saved from the downfall of her nation to grow big and strong and determined by facing a catharsis and end up... being as useless and pointless as she was in ep1.
Fam is an orphan, brought up by Giselle's father as a sky pirate, which obviously means she really is of noble offspring, orphans from a peasant family are killed on sight by any anime producer who knows his stuff, as we all agree genetically poor people can't become heroes. She is your classic dumb 15 years old anime girl who thinks love and friendship trample and solve all, and her bright and cheerful personality make even the russian frigid top-guns (who by the way are of course hot no matter how frigid) melt with sweetness and blush from cheeks to buttcheeks. You see, even though on balance she does absolutely nothing that matters to the world scenario until the very end, she is a badass. She is an extremely skilled vanship pilot, the vanships being these awesome fighter-crafts everyone but Ades uses (they do have a couple of them, they just don't use 'em: why spend 10 on a small ship that can sink 10 capital ships when you can spend 10000 on a capital ship and earn your pay as dumb anime villain empire?). With her unarmed vanship she manages to capture dozens of battleships with just a couple of harpoons, and be back in time for cake. You might ask how - even itting with a couple of harpoons fired from a fighter craft it is possible to immobilize a hundred times bigger flying battleship - they actually capture the ship itself when it's supposed to have a crew of hundreds of soldiers armed to the teeth, but you would be naive. There's of course an obvious explanation for this. Oh you silly, it's so obvious, blatantly obvious, that you are never shown it...

Sigh. Anyway, Fam and her slave Giselle end up in the middle of an Ades attack towards Turan, a random, generic kingdom which exists only as an excuse to make princess Millia fall into their laps. Millia is really sad her people have been exterminated, her sister kidnapped, and so on, and she shows all her emotional drama dres as a sexy maid to convince the crew of the ship she is kept on to give her a couple rooms to found a "government in exile". Fam is of course so moved by this tragedy she instantly, at the first glance of tears, decides to become Millia's devoted lackey and save the world for her sake. Giselle the slave, of course, follows (she actually has a brief moment of jealousy seeing her master so in love with another chick, but a couple of yummy pancakes will sweep away every strife).
They end up on the super battleship Yamato (also known as the Sylvius, but it's the Yamato, really, the only difference is that it has no purpose at all apart from floating around looking cool) when they try to steal it and fail, but of course they are so cute they are soon to become full fledged crew . From there they will steal some Ades' ships, avert a couple of crisis, and then end up lost somewhere else so the Yamato could make an awesome reappearance at the most critical time later on, in the middle of the winning enemy fleet, just to jump one cut later to being docked while the enemy fleet is still there, unscated, and has seemingly just decided to let the Yamato dock out of respect for how cool it looks.

Yes, let's be less sarcastic for a while to point out another flaw of the series: the pacing of the cuts. A cut, be it a middle one or an end of episode one, often ends on a cliffhanger, but the next one jumps in the future several hours, if not days, later, once everything has happened. And sometimes, nothing has actually happened at all, as the previous example of the reappearance of the Sylvius points out. One episode ends with our heroines being chased by 3 enemy vanships (the only time Ades manages to actually - ohmygosh ohmygosh ohmygosh - launch a couple of them), and the next begins with them being stranded in unknown territory and taken care of by a Glacia (the Russians) officer. And mind me, there's no flashback of sort: all we are offered is the line "well, I still can't believe we managed to escape from that pinch!". You have been gonzoed!
This kind of thing happens a lot during the show (the super uber Exile descends from orbit to blow shit up -----> shit has been blown up off screen and people are sad), and is a blatant example of cutting corners. High production values my arse.

Fact is, incoherent cuts or not, everything evolves randomly, without any clear reason or motivation. Cameos from the previous series are there just to be that, cameos, they have no purpose, Fam's reasons to dedicate herself to Millia are non existent (it would have needed very little effort, you see: let them be clichéd, but show them; a desperate Millia, then cut to Fam in bed thinking about and being moved by it, maybe talking about it with that baggage of a best friend she is carrying around... just that would have been enough to be at least barely able as storytelling), the villains and the neutrals reasons and goals keep changing out of the blue, even the battles themselves serve no purpose at all and evolve randomly. There are no tactics to speak of: two fleets facing one another, open fire, BAM BAM BAM BOOM, "ahh they have a new weapon! But we do too!", KABOOM, battle ended, the winner is - peeks at script - team A! Strategy is missing as well: they battle for ownership of a supposedly strategically relevant and almost impregnable fortress, even though we are shown from ep1 it would just take an Exile to blow it up to smithereens, and there's no mention as to why that fortress actually should be strategically relevant. After all, what could possibly be strategically relevant when the world itself isn't clearly laid out, nobody knows who lives where and why, and anyway anything can be suddenly destroyed by an unstoppable Deus Ex Machina superweapon?

Flow of time is messed up too: while a fleet battle goes on (and even though they seem to take few minutes to resolve, let's imagine they actually take hours), a character has all the time to reach the north pole, take over the Super Exile whatever, and interrupt that same battle with a shot from the super duper cannon.

All this, believe me, is just the tip of the iceberg. Examples such as these are countless throughout the series, incoherent from the foundations (how come the exiled tribes, as they've for long been the only ones with the super Exile weapons, didn't just, you know, wipe out Ades - which itself still is a single city-state, and even a pretty poor one at that - from the very beginning instead of letting it become a frigging superpower? They had more than a whole century to do it, and they could do it with just a snap of the fingers) up to the most marginal details.

It's a shame, really, that a story taking place in what could have been a really fascinating setting, as the one in the prequel was, was so lazily lumped together. We aren't just facing a plot that can't live up to the standard set by the pretty awesome original series, we are facing a plot that is actually even inferior to the plot of many fanservice driven watch-and-forget comedies.

2. (ep.2) People have superpowers that magically stop bullets and summon moons to drop on the planet. OH MY GODS, THEY TURNED THIS FROM A WAR DRAMA TO A MAHOU SHOUJO!
3. (ep.3) They try really hard to convince us there are battle tactics in this show by making the naval fleets performing weird formations. Well tactics my butt if most of it happens out-of-screen and we don’t even see the outcome of all this mess. Seriously, you hardly see how they fight; all they show is bullets and explosions. Plus, a thousand warships can easily be fooled, infiltrated, and destroyed by an animal-themed loli holding a flashlight, so all that are pointless from the get-go. Jeez, I have seen ten times more tactics in the otherwise naval space battles of Legend of Galactic Heroes. They barely felt this retarded.
4. (ep.5) The lolis do cosplay to move the hearts of men, steal their ships by using your mother as an excuse, and demand a new kingdom while dressed as maids. I WAS PULLING MY OWN FEW REMAINING HAIR WHILE WATCHING THIS!
5. (ep.7) An enemy fleet is chasing after the good guys. They claim they gather information on how to improve their technology by copying that of others. So after they see the good guys’ fleet getting their asses kicked, they decide they have gathered all they can from them and throw a volley of shots which will destroy them. Since they have gathered all they needed, that volley should have wiped them out entirely. But no it didn’t because the loli heroine tells the fleet to duck and all the ships easily avoid the attack. IF IT WAS SO EASY THEN WHY WEREN’T YOU DUCKING BEFORE? AND IF THE ENEMY GATHERED ALL THE INFORMATION ABOUT THEM THEN WHY DIDN’T THEY KNOW HOW EASY THEY CAN AVOID ALL THEIR ATTACKS?
6. (ep.8) The heroes’ flagship is chased by the enemy fleet. They reach a mountain which blocks their flight. Instead of going higher to over it, they decide to blow a hole through it with their super weapons. So the question here is WHY ARE THEY BLOWING UP MOUNTAINS IN ORDER TO ESCAPE AND NOT JUST USE THE SUPER WEAPONS ON THE ENEMY? WHY ARE THEY EVEN RUNNING AWAY FROM THEM IF THEY CAN WIPE THEM OUT EASILY WITH THOSE?
7. (ep.8) The lolis sink a humongous warship by firing a single shot with a hand pistol at its weak spot, the belly. IF WARSHIPS SINK SO EASILY THEN WHY DON’T THEY USE A FEW TINY SABOTEUR UNITS IN EVERY BATTLE? Jeez, and then some say the Death Star which was destroyed with a simple torpedo was far-fetched.
8. (ep.8) A tiny ship is stuck on the heroes’ flagship and the pilots inside are unconscious. The lolis decide that the best way to save them is to risk their lives by lifting the ship with their own hands and hope for something completely random to happen instead of just CUTTING THE ROPE AND SAFELY TOWING THEM AWAY.
9. (ep.10) Dio can apparently teleport anywhere he likes because he popped out of nowhere and blocked that lightsaber aiming at the lolis… Nah, I’m kidding, it is clearly BS of the storyboard for the lulz.
10. (ep.11) Terrorists attack the empress and everybody are standing still and watching them idly for minutes instead of running away or trying to help. Clearly, the director had no skills to show more than two people walking around at the same time.
11. (ep.11) When one of the bodyguards kills the terrorists in an aircraft, he jumps out and lets it crush anywhere it randomly drops onto. Even if he didn’t care about the hundreds of spectators near by (who all this time are standing still and watch the battle instead of just running away or at least taking cover) but it could have easily dropped on the empress and anyone on board the platform. Retarded!
12. (ep.12) It could have been great if we would get an epic battle between Dio and the assassins but this is GONZO we are talking about. The battle ends in a few seconds and without letting us see anything. The rest of the episode is tired loli fan service and bad Russian.
13. (ep.13) The battle in this episode is another desperate attempt to make us think there is strategy in this show when it is all random weapons that nobody saw or could defend against, unless they have more random weapons. It reminds me of the games we were playing as little kids (My laser kills you. – No, my shield deflects your laser and kills you. – No, I teleport and kill you instead. – No, I block your teleport with my magic talisman. – No, I order my invisible dragon to eat your talisman).
14. (ep.14) At this point you realize Fam and her lolis no longer have a role in the show. They are looking idly at events, just like those spectators. Despite being the protagonists, they are doing nothing but offering retarded moe slice of life. So you end up watching a completely random war and boring lolis.
15. (ep.15) All the nations gather around to talk about ending the war. At the same moment, the villains find the ruins of some new super weapon. Yeah, screw politics, and dialogue. The only thing that matters in this show is random superpowers.
16. (ep.16) Two fleets are fighting in the sky and the battle ends when the flagship of the heroes just appears out of nowhere in the middle of the enemy fleet and uses its super weapons to destroy it. See what I meant by random superpowers? And why the devil doesn’t anyone try to copy THAT technology?
17. (ep.18) The security during ceremonies still sucks, despite losing their important leader some years ago. Anyone with a pistol can still kill anyone he wants.
18. (ep.19) The loli princess faints (conveniently when the villain must carry her around) and wakes up (conveniently when the villain must talk to her) numerous times. And the lame part is that it always occurs out of screen. As if he was secretly knocking her unconscious and then waking her by making her sniff ammonia or something.
19. (ep.20) Oh the age-old cliché of mortal enemies cooperating in order to defeat a greater threat. Too bad all they were doing is storming the enemy ship without any strategy at all. I mean they knew they had that super beam so why didn’t they just spread out their forces to minimize the damage? And don’t let anyone say anything regarding strategy such as “They wouldn’t be able to one another if they were scattered.” They never ed anyone in the whole show, ok? All we see is them doing is storming in, that’s it.
20. (ep.20) And what a surprise, they manage to block the super weapon with another super weapon. Great tactics as usual GONZO. So much for teamwork and cooperation; all it took was to have a loli princess with superpowers.
21. (ep.20) GONZO, you even contradict anything you showed us so far regarding its use. The falling moon needed several minutes to come down from its orbit and towards its target but now all they do is making the loli princess magically teleporting it in an instant right in front of them, without even having the slightest clue of how she did it. So cheap!
22. (ep.20) Hey you idiotic villain general. Don’t tell me you never thought the loli princess wouldn’t try to do that. You went to all the trouble of getting all the other loli princesses but you just left this one? Nicely going.
23. (ep.20) Physics anyone? You cannot ram and pierce to pieces a mechanical tentacle ten times your size, density, and speed, without being pushed back a single meter from where you are standing in the middle of the sky. That ship should have been kicked back a thousand kilometres.
24. (ep.20) At this point one wonders what was the villain’s plan all along. “To unite the world through the use of weapons” is the easy answer. Well, if that is true then why didn’t he just use the Exile superweapons all along and wasted tens of thousands of soldiers in pointless battles? And don’t tell me it was because they could be used only a few times; they had infinite fuel and those tentacles and laser guns could be repeared easily. Thus you realize he deliberately alled his army to be decimated for no reason. Even if he thought a cooperation of fresh fleets would be enough to destroy even the Exile weapons, we still know that is not true since an Exile can be defeated only by an Exile. And just look at the last battle; all the fleets were down to a fraction of their original power and still kicked his ass. SO WHAT WAS HIS PLAN? To die as a tyrant and make the others form an alliance? He could have done that since the very first episode.
25. (ep.21) Nothing extremely wrong with the final episode. Other than being anti-climactic as hell, that is. YOU CALL THAT A CONCLUSION? Nothing we couldn’t guess from the earlier one.

And now some mistakes that happen throughout the show, so they are omnipresent and can’t be marked in a single episode.

26. No matter how many cities or ships get destroyed, we never see dead people or even have a clear picture of how many died or survived. One episode a fleet is damaged severally, the next one is again ready by the thousands. One episode a whole nation is wiped out, the next one we get thousands of survivors. Also, the male/female analogy makes no sense since we either see men or women (or lolis) but never both. All the devastation this war is causing never manages to mean anything since we never see any actual or lasting damage. People and ships seem to regenerate overnight, so why bother to feel sorry for anyone?
27. As a follow up to the above, the directing is so sloppy that it constantly takes out lots of action and war scenes. Battles, pursuits, mass destructions, most of them happen out of screen and we just have someone telling us afterwards what exactly happened. And even when he does, it still means nothing since by the next episode people and ships have magically re-spawned. Do you know how stupid it looks when you are told an amazing battle took place without ever seeing anything, only to see the exact next day it had no significance at all?
28. As if that wasn’t enough, there is absolutely nobody taking things seriously in this show. You will get people doing some really atrocious acts and are not punished, or even as stupid as it sounds, they are instead rewarded. Such as in the case of the main lolis constantly causing havoc but are just rewarded afterwards by the very people they damaged and even ing their cause. Or a female pilot killing the leader of a nation and the next day is forgiven and even allowed to the war with the very people who massacred her whole nation and whose lovable queen she killed as revenge. Or a general who just out of nowhere decided to betray his superiors without any foreshadow at all for that. Or the villain boss trying to present himself as a good guy in the end and the lolis forgive him despite the fact he massacred millions of people with the sole reason being “I want to bring peace by killing everyone”. And are we supposed to just accept there is peace and happiness for everyone in the ending after all this mess? Have they all forgotten how many of them were killed by other nations without ever doing anything bad or does it not matter because they all re-spawned by the next day?
29. The reason for the above is because the retards over at GONZO tried to combine two genres that simply do not combine. How the devil do you expect to mix retarded moe-moe that is meant to be silly, light, and aimless, with a war drama that is supposed to be the exact opposite? One second they are killing people, the immediate next they are eating cake with the very people they killed (and who have magically regenerated by then). And mind how it is supposed to be a serious scene and not comedy. Do you see it working in any way possible? OF COURSE NOT! I mean can you imagine a cute loli named Fam Fan Fan (seriously, that is her name) taking part in a war where people are constantly killed out of screen and still like it?
30. Continuing from above, try to imagine how most of the show is wasted on moe fan service and light everyday moments instead of fleshing out the characters and the setting. Over half of the events in the anime have absolutely no importance in a huge and seemingly complicated world. You hardly see the motivations of the characters or the style of life in each nation. You mostly see retarded bath and cooking scenes and wonder what the devil is going on with the war on the other side of the continent.
31. There is another thing which indirectly counts as a mistake. Why is this show a sequel to begin with? Where are the connecting points with the first season? We are told it happens a few years later and there are some recurring names and terminology but other than that there is absolutely nothing to see this show as a sequel. It happens on an entirely different world, with an entirely different cast of characters. And the few recurring ones from the first season are there just as cameos, since they have absolutely no significance over the events of the show. Fam and her lolis are less important that Dio the assassin from the first show, and even he is doing nothing but stalling time by not allowing the attackers to kidnap or kill someone, which will happen anyway later on but the makers of the show needed to somehow fill 21 episodes. But I bet GONZO thought it would increase the sales if they threw the name Last Exile on the cover instead of making a completely new title. And thus they didn’t even bother to try having some actual continuity in the show since the fans of the first show would just watch it for the same names and a few cameos. Nice trick you greedy bastards.

ART SECTION: 7/10
General Artwork 2/2 (looks nice)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic loli crap)
Backgrounds 2/2 (fitting with the feeling of the series)
Animation 1/2 (rather fluent but there isn’t a single scene with great choreography)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 5/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 1/2 (loose)
Complexity 1/2 (not much)
Plausibility 0/2 (none; this is GONZO we are talking about)
Conclusion 1/2 (cheesy)

CHARACTER SECTION: 3/10
Presence 0/2 (the protagonists are ive spectators)
Personality 0/2 (dull)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)
Catharsis 1/2 (overblown but it’s there)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (people will pretend this sequel was never made)
Rewatchability 0/3 (no reason to watch it again)
Memorability 1/4 (no reason to it since the first one was way better and similar)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
I liked the setting, all the rest are crap.

VERDICT: 4/10