Interestingly, in this episode the Sylvius is victim to the same weakness that Fam&co have been taking advantage of: the way in which it’s actually quite easy to shut down a huge battleship if you know where to look. Thankfully this episode included this: it shows that Fam isn’t special, and things get a lot more believable when it’s not just the good guys who came up with this idea.
In any case, this episode did get one of the shorter straws on the animation budget, even though what happened here was quite important to the overall story here. First of all Alvis returns, but Lilliane, Milia’s sister, turning out to be alive, and a sudden ally to the evil empire marks a large turning point for this series. Combine that with the fall of the sylvius here, it makes this episode even more of a turning point. Next week will be the infamous new year break in which absolutely nothing airs, so this should have been a great way to close off the first half of this series. So why the budget wasn’t bigger here is beyond me.
The first half overall wasn’t as good as the first half of the first Last Exile, but it still had a lot to like. So far we’ve seen great characters that despite their young ages are quite likable, and the show already got some good drama out of them. The big weakness so far is the large amount of inconsistencies and weak points. Shangri-La had those too, but to make up for it it just had a crazy plot that just kept moving. Ginyoku no Fam’s story though is much slower, allowing these things to stand out more. I’m definitely curious about the second half though. That will be the point for this show to really evolve. If it can do that, it will get pretty memorable here.
Rating: * (Good)
Loved what I saw, so many big events and turning points and as you pointed out Fam and the Silvius’ side pretty much loses on several fronts with Fam finally taking some hits and Alauda and his Guilders infiltrating the Silvius to take over the engine room, return of Alvis, Liliana, Vincent protecting Al and in command again (return of the Urbanus too), so cool, lots of new developments.
The animation was pretty good, but I agree it should have definitely gotten a bit more of the budget to put it up there as a stand out with the other best animated episodes of the series so far instead of quite good given how much great stuff happened and how great the show has generally been animated outside of a few moments here or there. Though a nice size-able portion of it went to Dio’s sweet duel which made me happy. The Guild-style action was quite well animated.
A nice episode actually! We see Vincent, Alvis and the Urbanus back again; there is now the conflict between the Turan sisters, and Silvius is hijacked it seems…
I wonder about what Vincent says about Alvis losing someone and comparing it to Millia, if what I heard was right…
Too bad the animation’s getting the short straw of the budget, especially on the characters. I wished that GONZO just did the Last Exile sequel when they had a secure budget…
Things seem to be finally getting somewhere now. I have to say Last Exile is so much better compared to Fam at the moment…that it’s really a pity. But it isn’t over yet and things could still go into a good direction at the end.
Hopefully the overall story will be going more forward from now on. I would like to know more about this white and black Guild’s that Dio’s opponent mentioned and see more Alvis of course and know what all has hapened.
Well, can’t wait to find out more and hopefully the story will go more forward now.