I liked Last Exile…
No, wait, I liked Escaflowne…
Last Exile is the abso-fucking-lute best sci-fi/fantasy anime ever made.
I know some of you are saying “What about MY favorite anime? You know, the one about the tiny fairy who turns into a teenage boy when you throw cold water on him and then turns into a yellow dog with rabbit ears when his cat scratches him?” or the ever popular “What about mine? You know, the one where the kid jumps in the machine and then goes out an saves Japan from the big tetrahedron?”
Let me put it this way. “Last Exile” is the like the most badass tentacle-penis monster you’ve ever seen and your favorite anime is like the most helpless “La Blue Girl” character. It’s like a cage match where “Last Exile” is Alucard and your favorite anime is Shinji from Eva without the mecha. “Last Exile” is like the Old School Godzilla and your favorite anime is like the little kid who says “Godzilla is friend to children!” before Godzilla eats him and the kids standing next to him and then shits out a big turd filled with Pokemon lunch boxes and Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
Now, before you shit your pants, let me tell you why.
Firstly, an anime like this has to be judged on the richness of the world in which it takes place. The world of “Last Exile” is so rich it’s like Bill Gates at a titty bar for millionaires (“I don’t want a lapdance, I want a full body dance”). If shows like “Escaflowne” and “Lodoss” are the Mount Everest of rich worlds, then “Last Exile” is looking down from high earth orbit saying “Is anyone else here?” A rich world helps you suspend your disbelief, and any world dominated by flying machines (called “vanships”) that don’t have wings, propellers, or jets but instead are powered by engines that look like fucked-up coat hangers has to go pretty fucking far to suspend my disbelief. It does and it is.
What’s a fantasy anime without a story? Don’t answer that, it’s too long of a list. A good fantasy anime usually starts with the story of a couple of main characters and then just gets more epic in scale (or it starts epic and ends with a couple of main characters). “Last Exile” has got ya covered. It starts up with a couple of main characters and ends up with the entire world changing. Changing in a good, solid, understandable way. Not in a fucked up Evangelion “please hold me cuz I’m a basket case” kind of way.
Would it make any difference if this anime were a bunch of stick figures running around with little stick guns? Of course it would! That’s why the art is so incredible! The image of a vanship shooting through the clouds and having a column of vapor following it and the cool explosions when the big ships would “sink” had me beating my own chest to start my heart back up. Fanservice? Well…the awesome visuals of those vanships swooping through the clouds and through valleys, canyons, and big ships exploding had ME jizzing all over my Sears husky boy pants. And that was a crappy fansub. I’m almost afraid to get the rest of the DVDs when they come out (But you know I will!!). I’ll watch them and next thanksgiving my family will break into my apartment and find my dessicated, mummified corpse with crispy dried semen all over my pants and Lay-Z-Boy chair and a shit eating grin on my dead ass face.
Now I know there are a lot of you with a horse cock up your ass about CG animation and I can understand your point of view when I watch a show like S(uper) D(ipshit) Gundam or Vandread-ful. But give this show a chance because the CG is really well done and it’s as seamless as I’ve ever seen in an anime. As a matter of fact I think that the CG actually enhances the show and it’s not a crutch that the animators lean on so they can crap out an episode in record time.
The characters are pretty good but, here’s the good part, there’s no “annoying comedy relief stock character #212”. You know, like Hanagata from SMJ or someone like him. The character designs are all pretty much androgynous. Most of the girls even have short hair and flat chests. Pretty much the only chick with boobs is the empress and she’s got some big ones. I guess you get elected purely on the size of your hooters (which is like pretty much any California gubernatorial race…ZING!). They also have the “scary insane gay guy who’s in love with the male lead” character but he’s not overdone and there are no overt confessions of love or desire…just my “gaydar” screaming like a teenaged girl at a Justin Timberlake concert during the scenes with that character. There are a lot of characters but not too many to keep up with.
This is not an anime...it's an experience! Not a "watching a Pink Floyd laser light show extravaganza at the planetarium" experience but a more of a "getting a blow job while watching 'Return of the King' for the first time at an IMAX theater" kind of experience.
Go out and buy 2 copies of this anime. Let’s encourage the companies to make more ones like this.
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