2012-04-02, 10:04 | Link #2904 |
Banned
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Just finished this last night. I'd still say I enjoyed most of the parts of this series that didn't focus on Fam and that I still think Millia's character really saved this show from total disaster. If they didn't have her to fall back on as another main character who actually grew and evolved as time went on from a spoiled princess living in her sisters shadow to a mature political leader who had the respect of her peers I don't even know how this would have turned out. What a contrast those two make with Millia always coming off as seeing things for what they are and Fam always coming through with the idealism right up until the very end where she was finally forced to admit to Millia and Dian that she was basically forcing her beliefs onto them without considering the burdens they carried and how it motivated them to certain extreme acts at times.
What else....Luscinia basically offed himself at the end by saying fuck it when the Grand Exile started to fall apart and decided that Fam and co. would make a worthy guardian for Sara, they just happened to time it in such a way that it more or less resulted in him looking as if he'd been talked down by Fam's whole grand race spiel. I choose to interpret his actions as the former though cause the latter is just incredibly stupid and trite in the extreme. I didn't expect the world from this sequel and never expected it to be as good as the first Last Exile, but merely to provide me with a few months of quality entertainment and sci-fi/fantasy/political intrigue and it mostly achieved that goal, but I hope Japan eventually learns it's lesson that super moe moe girls make about as good leads for large scope sci-fi/fantasy series as the wussy male lead who constantly refuses to fight but does so anyway for 95% of the series. If they're going to have more cute girls as main characters in shows like this again I hope they'll be more like Millia in terms of character arc, really can't stress that enough. |
2012-04-03, 13:56 | Link #2905 | ||
He Without a Title
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: The land of tempura
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EDIT: Just saw it. I think I have diabetes now... :| Quote:
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2012-04-04, 12:40 | Link #2908 | |
❤Ichigo 100%❤
Join Date: Jan 2011
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Still can't nudge the feeling between the original vs. Fam. One was more down to earth and the other had a cartoon feeling. So the biggest Exile is in the original series right? Hope someone have a diagram and picture samples.
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2012-04-04, 22:57 | Link #2909 |
今宵の虎徹は血に飢えている
Join Date: Jan 2009
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Best thing from the last two eps
Luscinia's entire half-assed plan just screams "INSUFFICIENT FUNDS" Sums up everything about how conveniently everything turned out in the end. Just like the incomplete Grand Exile Race was lol though....Dio kill stealing the first place from Dian and Tatiana and then losing it later... Hitomi's singing saves the whole show hands down
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2012-04-05, 00:03 | Link #2911 |
Moderate Haruhiist
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The thing is, you're dooming the Hourglass manga when you're wishing this as well. The only reason why we even have it was to tie the two series together. If there's a perceived lack of interest, they could very well pull the series from the magazine at any time, and then we'll NEVER know what happened in the two years between the two shows.
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2012-04-05, 00:33 | Link #2912 | |
Seishu's Ace
Author
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Kobe, Japan
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2012-04-06, 22:58 | Link #2914 |
Snobby Gentleman
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Monterrey, México
Age: 43
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Last Exile -Fam, the Silver Wing. Last Thoughts
Grand Master
The epilogue with the restarting of the Grand Race was epic to LE proportions but, honestly, this sequel doesn't deserve it to pull it off given how bad and shambles the execution to solve the plot points is handled. At first, I felt the Zero Requiem from Code Geass scattered over Luscinia explaining the dream of the Grand Exile, and I didn't figure out if he planned to used the GE as a weapon or for him to carry on all the people's hatred so as to change the world where people could finally communicate with each other, as it was Augusta Farahnäzs' original ideal. Fams' words this time carried weight, because she finally understood that the real world cannot work out ideal miracles with just desiring and longing for it, since there's still too much hatred and grief for people to truly accept it. I can only think that her words might or not awoken for a brief time Luscinia's inner child from 10 years ago so as to acknowledge her resolve and hand Sara peacefully to the better world to be borned; maybe that's what Sadri meant that their old era ("them") was meant to end. As for Fam's background and her family, I do agree it is forced, because there isn't enough time to go back and give more details, or, better yet, what Fam's family did to have a more sustainable impact on the story besides Sadri supporting Luscinia's campaign all the way to the very end? At least both Claus and Lavies' parents carried on something that made impact on the storyline and were partially connected to one of the main characters from the previous LE besides being respective parents to their children. The ending and epilogue are worthy of this sequel overall, but it doesn't deserve it because how pretty bad the storyline is executed. This Last Exile felt that they tried to cram too much moé characters in the likes of making both Fam and Gisellé cute amidst an Earth that is constantly plagued with both war and misunderstanding amongst world supernations; it doesn't carry the same spark that I felt from the original. Though I like both Claus and Lavi reintroduction into the storyline by the time the epilogue is rolling and meeting again with both Dio and Alvis, I just feel bad and sorry for Claus that he and Lavi couldn't join in this ride given Claus injury, which from what I read in previous posts..... Spoiler:
I came to watch the first series at the start of 2004, and it took about 7 and one-half years to wait for the sequel. If you ask for recommendations, then I strongly suggest to watch and enjoy the original series and read the interquel manga that takes place between Last Exile and this one. Overall, other few commendable things about the sequel are the soundtrack and the OP & ED songs. This was the fifth anime that I picked-up for the autumn anime 2011 season and finished. |
2012-04-13, 02:32 | Link #2916 |
Raging Ami-chan Fanboy
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Cailfornia
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Well, the last succession of episodes kind of lost me. Finally got around to finishing this show. I think they tried too hard to make the ending "epic", when it was unnecessary. The thing is, there wasn't enough depth to any of the characters for this, and that was fine.
I was enjoying this season as an action anime with some characters carried over from the first season. The story itself didn't matter too much as long as the ride was enjoyable. And enjoyable it was...until the very end. It's really hard to pinpoint it on any one thing. I feel like there was forced tragedy here when there didn't need to be. Eh. Also, Grand Race my ass. Nobody can beat Dio, it was obvious he would win before the race even started :P
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2012-04-13, 16:28 | Link #2917 | ||||
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2006
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Agreed. Quote:
I agree with your thoughts on how this also could double as a setting up for a potential future season potentially with Claus, Lavie, Dio and Fam and Gisey all working together like you said. Also, now without there being a ten year gap between series I think they'd feel far more comfortable using both part of the new cast and the S1 cast along side each other more prominently and sets of leads and perhaps re-using key others like the Silvius, now that it's not been ten years and worries over it being so long since the last series that likely was by necessity a concious focus of how to balance the focus towards the new cast while working our old characters and the first season's story back in for the future while still giving us old fans a great view of some of our returning favorites like Tatiana and her Silvius and Dio, now, for the most part, the Fam audience knows most of the key players from both season including generally what to expect in terms of "generally" what the key players from season 1 are like, that they had never seen before coming into the new show due to the unavoidable issue of such a long gap of years since the last production. Like now they know Dio extremely well and they've gotten a good enough look at Tatiana and the Silvius, as well as even a general introduction to Claus and Lavie with the big recap to be able to use them more up front if there were to be a third season without waiting another ten years. My thoughts: I quite enjoyed the new season, I loved the world and the always imaginative LE setting and cultures, there were a lot of likeable new characters on both sides, I loved seeing my old characters back kicking ass when they got the chance, the story was good (but as others have said it was a bit thin as it never expanded beyond the war and initial storyline while based on the first show I guess I expected some kind of "second story" to kick off in the second half with a more prevalent Guild, like in the first series when the Guild became more up front) and loved the scifi and Exiles and awesome airship fleet battles (and vanship action) as almost only LE does them, and how they totally successfully recaptured the audio-visual unique setting, atmosphere, characters, military fleet combat style, music and "feel" etc. of the franchise and of the airships and awesome vanships and flight visuals etc. that makes LE feel so unique with totally awesome visuals, animation, character designs, gorgeous background art and CG and, extremely important, sound, with the return of LE's composer and another awesome soundtrack with so many great new tracks and important returning ones, even after 10 years since the first show. The first season is hard to surpass but I love both seasons and as mentioned Fam had really nice pacing overall and I loved most of the characters and action and thought the story was pretty good, the one thing that I agree it missed from fully reaching it's fullest potential, since I loved her character quite a bit, was the unfortunate decision to lack a more substantial Fam growth arc running through the storyline. I imagine the following point is one of the reasons she didn't grow so much until she did a bit towards the end (I liked how they at least tried to make something positive about it and had Fam herself acknowledge that she realized everything too late), but looking back I think they should have just bit the bullet and given in and retreaded Claus' "naive --> fighter pilot" path even if it'd been a "repeat" as it's the most visibly straightforward way to make a pilot in a war-based story "feel like they've grown". I did like that she was a fighter though and never "weak" or "wishy-washy" always willing to get out there and do her part in the battle or take responsibility even if she never really faced having to truly kill with weapons. Plus plenty of other lead characters get away with far worse and don't get called out on it for whatever reason and Millia had a fantastic growth arc. Quote:
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I'm curious what I'll think of later for possible third season ideas but I agree that would be a rather cool possibility for a third season, bringing both casts fully together as I really love the casts of both series and joining them in learning the bigger secrets of the past and what else may be buried under the surface after so many hundreds of years could be potentially quite intriguing. Such a starting point for say the first half before whatever they find ends up causing something bigger could even support both casts having equal billing with no actual lead or even if Claus or Dio were to take the lead as I also think if it were based on Dio, Claus, Fam, Lavie, Giselle, Tatiana, Alister, etc. on the Silvius making these discoveries and ultimately getting into a dangerous spot that requires the fleets for the second half it also wouldn't necessarily matter who the lead was as it would have the advantage of starting out tighter with characters we all know working together almost all of the time as a full crew so most of the crew would be together most of the time hence it wouldn't even matter so much who the lead would be. Speaking of the booklet that came with volume 3 (and the previous 2 volumes) stormwaltzing mentioned, it appears Cecily's name is officially revealed to be Cecily Lightning in the booklet I absolutely loved the epilogue in the final episode. So many great little moments for Fam and co. before getting to the race and then I thought they handled the race fantastically with the build up of everyone getting ready/arriving and Claus and Lavie suddenly making their way in and then Fam running by them and Al happily reuniting with Claus and Lavie and Dio commenting on Fam and co. being an interesting bunch to Claus (just like he did to Tatiana) and Lavie reassuring Claus he'll be flying again when he sees Fam and co.'s love of flying and Dio almost tearing up looking forward to flying with them again as well as during the race the cuts to all the characters watching and the perfect music, they even didn't pander and didn't have Fam win, loved that the final cuts were the race results (the Dio winning, show the podium moment, then Dio's expression when getting disqualified and then Tatiana getting the win was a GREAT little surprise moment and gave me an unexpected big laugh/smile feeling to end on since I love both Dio and Tatiana) and ending with two perfect cuts, first to Claus, Lavie and Al and then Fam and Giselle, felt great with the music and singing soaring. And Vincent getting "hugged" by Sophia while they were watching the race gave me a smile, I'm sure that got some shippers talking Loved seeing the awesome old Silvana (and Silvius) mechanics doing well and not being forgotten and getting in there too! Speaking of them, I wouldn't have minded them joining earlier as I expected (given how early Vincent showed up I thought we'd fully go to the new Anatoray and they'd fully join in the second half) so they could have played a bigger role but given when they arrived in the story I think Chigira maximized their arrival pretty successfully as I fully enjoyed their scenes in the last two eps arriving as reinforcements and the surprise (but was hopefully expecting of Sophia) of the Silvana truly being Sophia's flagship and Sophia and Vincent leading the last charge of the fleet towards the Grand Exile's weapons once the Silvius fell behind inside, man seeing the Silvana, Silvius and Urbanus lined up blasting away with the Silvana/Silvius music playing was so damned good. Glad they mentioned that Claus should be able to fly again in the future, I always viewed that kind of wheelchair as the really simplistic mass-produced type you'd probably get during recovery rather than a "showy" permanent/personal one. I thought they handled the Luscinia and Fam confrontation extremely well for something that's always extremely tricky, I was quite surprised that I really liked it. Even if the first season was better in some ways I thought this season was totally worth it and would love for Gonzo to do another if they can come up with a good story, maybe using both sets of characters to their full potential together now that it won't have been 10 years between series so perhaps they'll feel more comfortable using both casts fully integrated right from the start. Last edited by DangerMouse; 2012-04-13 at 17:58. |
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2012-06-04, 16:00 | Link #2919 |
reads too much
Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: you know that's a great question.....
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It appears that someone on the internet has been scanning in all the booklets that came in with the DVDs, you can find the scans in the comments of these two journal posts (waaaaay too many links for me to repost all of them).
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adventure, science fiction |
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