Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam – 19

There are many challenges about series that place children at the center of adult struggles. One of the big ones is making their roles in the grand scheme of things believable. Ginyoku no Fam is struggling with this, clearly. And yet here it barely managed to make things work.

A lot of stuff in this episode challenged my suspense of disbelief, but on the other hand it was exactly what the previous episodes had been building Fam’s character up to. The big problem with that evil empire is that it’s got this very young empress who has been hi-jacked by a revenge-crazed psycho. All it would take is someone who would make her a bit more proactive, and that’s where Fam comes in. This episode had her play the role as a delivery girl, and to be honest, it’s there where she really belongs.

Having said that, though…

Something went wrong with the world building here. It’s been bugging me for quite a while now, but this episode convinced me: the world of Ginyoku no Fam feels empty. This is a very serious issue for a show whose biggest asset is exactly the world it created. My point is: how on earth was Fam the first to suggest to that princess to make them stop fighting? What happened to the to her subordinates here? Aside from the main characters, in the end the world here feels lifeless.

There also was one point in this episode that couldn’t be excused with the budget troubles that Gonzo has been having. It’s the point where the Sylvius appears, and immediately starts shooting down every single warship in its vicinity. And that after all of the previous episodes were building up how hard it is to actually control such a thing: the sylvius spins a bit and suddenly everything is gone and we cut to a new scene. That was just plain laziness.

And with this, the major conflict is over. And the only thing that remains is that bad guy. I mean, he wasn’t involved in this episode for a reason: there’s that doomsday weapon of an exile that’s going to threaten the entire planet, yadda yadda yadda, we know the story by now. I really wonder whether the creators will be able to make that kind of an ending interesting.
Rating: (Enjoyable)

9 thoughts on “Last Exile – Ginyoku no Fam – 19

  1. The thing is, Fam convincing Augusta doesn’t automatically mean that the world setting is bad. All that was needed was for Fam to actually have ACCESS to Augusta this time, as the previous visit to the capital of Ades showed that the two girls were actually on the same wavelength (and Sara herself didn’t want her subordinates and friends killing each other)… Access that Dio provided this time, by the way, and Dio was always a whimsical wildcard. It ties up things conveniently, true, but at least the next few episodes can be used to focus on Luscinia’s plans and how the members of the rebellion react to it.

  2. Another theme worth addressing might be how there are several people even in the Alliance who are against a peaceful “forgive-and-forget” resolution to this war. Dyan choosing to keep shooting at Orang’s fleet, even though she knew they weren’t really the enemy, as well as chasing after Fam when she found out Fam was trying to get a ceasefire. I really feel for her. It’s hard to forgive the kind of loss Dyan had to suffer, losing so many of her teammates and her entire homeland. She finally got a chance to let her pain out against the people who did this to her only to get held back. A ceasefire should be the right thing to do, but I’m very uneasy letting Luc’s subordinates get away with what they did. Points to Orang for holding back against Dyan.

    How on earth was Fam the first to suggest to that princess to make them stop fighting? What happened to the to her subordinates here?

    By subordinates, I assume you mean Vasant, who wants revenge against Luc too. A ceasefire would mean Luc coming back peacefully to Aden and everything he did to Vasant’s subordinates, along with everyone else, getting brushed under the carpet. It might actually be a rather nasty twist to the story later. Would Sara punish Luc for the things he did or does she just want him stopped and to just let bygones be bygones? Remember Luc used to be the guy who carried Sara on his shoulder. I wonder how the other Alliance members Luc hurt will take it, like Dyan.

    It’s the point where the Sylvius appears, and immediately starts shooting down every single warship in its vicinity.

    I think it was more of an issue of time limitations. With only a handful of episodes left, basically they just wanted to make the point that the Silvanus shows up and does just enough damage to turn the tide for the defenders. It didn’t wipe out the First Fleet singlehandedly or anything, as the scene might imply. They still had plenty of fight left, especially after knocking out the wall, which apparently neutralized the area’s terrain advantages for the defenders.

  3. If you consider her a royal look at her court.
    White haired bad guy (prime minister), old General who was supporting him.
    Two officers who were on the fence and just following orders.
    Female officer whose only just had a change of heart.

    There you can see why no one was advising her to stop the fighting.

  4. so I watched this ep since I Heard the silvana. . .err I meant silvius came back(I stopped watching this pos a while back)

    and just like psgels mentioned. . .they screwed it up, seriously thats what I was waiting for. I do find it funny that all it took was a “pretty please” from the little girl for the fighting to stop.

    this show really expects you to have a HIGH suspension of belief. with the lack of guards the empress has, in the real world, she would have been killed already. I have no idea why she is there, and why she hasn’t been shot yet besides the hand of the writer protecting her(and the main cast)

    This is called: BAD WRITING There is no way around this, and Im not even going to get into the whole Fam issue either, the writing has been cringe-worthhy since the beginning, hell, there were MANY interesting characters that were poised to show up again but were forgotten during the “world building” that psgels referred to, its not like that didn’t happen, but because the writer never went back to seemingly important people, we all forgot about them (that is the reason I am not mentioning some of the interesting side characters that should have been playing a role here. . .just to see if anyone remembers them and how we’ve been teased into thinking they were kinda important)

    with the whole ceasefire thing, I felt that this episode (and the last if I remember reading other bloggers correctly) were a waste on senseless drama and “fam”-who is now all of a sudden a princess or whatever now. . .I mean can you get more cliche than that, its like they tried to force her relevance down our throat at the last minute

    it took Gonzo 8 years to make a sequel to the first last exile, at least couldnt they at least try to dissect all the parts that made it aweso. . .well at least pretty good or at least what earned it large amounts of popularity/money? I kinda think a) getting a whole new writer who worked on such WONDERFUL shows as linebarrels of iron (*barf*) and b)NOT continuing with the same main characters (I mean they are only two years older) but going with moe loli bait to pander to the otaku instead of continuing the story with the characters that we wanted to see in the first damn place is just a bunch of b.s. I mean sure if the writer was actually good and gave us a reason to care about the main characters then that(the obvious otaku moe loli crowd pandering) can be forgiven but really, Nobody cares about the characters due to the bad writing, hell even some of the side characters who I thought were interesting at least don’t care about all they wanna see is the cast from the first show back (glad they haven’t come back though as this writer would have ruined them)

    Last Exile holds a special place for me, as it was the first show that after dlding it on irc every week during its airing, I was truly invested in and bought all the dvds etc. Kinda like how mahou shojoutai is one of the early shows that impacted psgels the most, last exile did for me. Yeah it wasn’t perfect and there were some parts that made me go”whatever”(i.e. claus’ harem. . .love triangle between tatiana and lavi ok I can kinda believe it but the empress who was in love with Alex? No.) Then they bring out this crap EIGHT YEARS later (so you cant tell me they had no “time” to make it good) and expect is the fans to fall in love with it again. Im pretty sure psgels is being very nice in his reviews towards this thing that gonzo has crapped out after eight years I’m pretty sure if mahou shoujoutai came out with a sequel, and did everything the opposite of what it has in the first one. . . like have all the characters be male moe blobs with shounen ai and an overly impulsive shounen wanna be lead, who not only fails at almost everything he does, his successes are also rendered meaningless at some point and has nothing to do but annoy the piss out of everyone yeah Im sure psgels would have torn that show a new a**hole. despite what ever fanboys fangirls have to say about it.

    This show is just bad and theres no way around it. . .hell even if the ending stretch magically becomes awesome: maybe if claus and lavi all of a sudden came in on their vanship, and started taking down the whole enemy fleet, picked up al and used their exile as the super weapon against luc while being backed up by the Sylvana, urbanus the anatoray-disith fleet with the empress of prester and dio on a guild starfish while the other characters whom we don’t care about watched in amazement. then after kicking so much ass, lavi gets off the van ship and slaps fam in the face a few times for being such a retard and rides off with the rest of the cast we actually care about into the sunset… it STILL wouldn’t wipe the bad taste of the rest of the show up to that point out of my mind.

    This show is just a big failure Period.

    1. Rant less, and if you want to argue at least make sense.

      The transitioning was pretty bad in this episode, and I actually felt like they squeezed the events of at LEAST 3 into this single one, but some of the stuff that happened can actually be excused because they were hinted to in-series… Like Fam being Sadri’s granddaughter (which was pointed out at LEAST since episode 3 and a bit during episode 11).

      That said, Dian was pretty much a big idiot and let her need for revenge override good sense. Seriously, you do NOT shoot down your allies, especially since said allies are all that is standing between your lines being overrun.

      1. Seriously, you do NOT shoot down your allies

        It’s an illustration of how high tensions were between the Alliance (especially the Gracies survivors) and the newly defected Aden forces. That’s what made Sadri’s tactic to send a fake order signal to Orang’s fleet, implying they were traitors, so effective. Before blaming Dyan, how about blaming those idiot allied ships who started shooting at the Gracies first. Or Orang for not giving out a signal for all his forces NOT to fall for Sadri’s trick and to hold their fire?

        Orang’s fleet was already nervous having the Gracies pilots just flying overhead. And Dyan, as I mentioned earlier, just needed a little push to let emotion take over. (Although, she still needed to be pushed. She too refused to fire on Orang’s fleet til they started shooting her girls down.) I imagine she’d be more than willing to die if it meant dying killing the people who had destroyed her people. It’s not like they had a lot of hope of beating the Aden fleets anyway. She said it herself that she and her people were already defeated. She’s just looking for a place to die. I’m not sure if Fam can save her. I hope she can though.

        I wonder if Orang survived. We see his ship badly damaged but…

        Truth be told, I thought the First Fleet would be at a severe disadvantage, with the defenders having good defensive ground and Vasant, Orang and the Alliance forces arrayed against them.

      2. /Rant less, and if you want to argue at least make sense./

        That’s showing him. I’ll probably like the original LE over this one, but I hate long, incoherent spiels like what was just posted.

    2. @tktym

      I actually do sympathize. I loved the original Last Exile for being more of an adventure story rather than a war story. Here in Fam, it feels like the war part of the story has overwhelmed the adventure part, leaving the protagonist pretty helpless and resulting in quite a bad taste in the mouth a lot of the time. I can’t really comment on what you’ve said for two reasons. One, I don’t have a good recollection of the original Last Exile and don’t own the DVDs. Two, I generally don’t enjoy war stories as they’re generally very tragic so I haven’t really been following this series closely. I do think it has very nice art and graphics and a great setting but the theme of the story is heavy – much heavier than the original. I used to compare the original Last Exile to Laputa but with Fam, I wind up thinking of space operas like Gundam. If you’re not into tragic space operas, you might want to give Fam a miss. Btw, I for one totally buy Sophia turning her back on her royal heritage to be with Alex. It’s a pity she couldn’t save him from losing himself over the loss of his last great love.

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