You know what? I liked this.
Really, as an ending, you could do much worse. My big fear of Fam magically pushing the “solve” button here was averted. Instead, she ended up playing out her role in this series: that of a delivery girl. She also failed to really pull through with her ideals, and she also failed to prevent many people from dying. I really did not expect the creators to make her stay true to this, and that’s what really saved the final third of this series for me. I mean, I do’t really need all my protagonists to be hero or leader material. It makes them all too similar. It also pays off to show the glory of someone who isn’t the central focus, while this series also made sure to show off the actual scale of the war by using Milia. In fact, the parts of this series thta were the most grating were when Fam stepped beyond her role, and tried to involve herself with politics and large-scale decisions. She just isn’t fit for that.
I also like the way the Grand Race was used. My big fear was that with all that build-up they’d find a way to use it in a Deus ex Machina or something. Intead, they realyl turned out to be just the hopes of a young girl, which eventually didn’t really mean anything in the context of a war. As soon as the peace arrived though, Fam got her wish. I can live with that.
Instead, the doomsday weapon destroyed itself by being just so damn inpractical and unfinished. It’s hinted that Luscinia knew that this would happen all along, but something tells me that he also just realized that his plan wasn’t going to work when he saw the actual thing in motion. I liked how he actually took his loss like a man. Yes, I liked this ending better than Shangri-La’s ending. Also, Claus and Lavie return in the epilogue! Awesome aftermath here!
In the end, the biggest mistakes of this series were made when the plot was outlined. In the end, the creators could have tried better, the show needed more variety and less inconsistencies. A touch of realism would also have helped this show a lot here, and the creators also should have spent time to ask the question of how to make Fam more likable. I like how she was used in the finale, but in the end she did whine way too much throughout the series. She has strong ideals. Her portrayal should have made us sympathize with these ideals. Fam I think repeated them too often, and that made her whiny. Overall I like this show, but the original Last Exile it ain’t.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Amen, Hallelujah, and Peanut Butter. Fam really isn’t title-character material, but as a supporting character, she has her place. Too bad the expectations that surround BEING the titular character has certainly made things, hmm, complicated.
With things tidily concluded with Silver Wing, here’s to having Hourglass animated in the future!
Same here, would love to see Hourglass get animated!
I hated it.
It became predictable.
The villain just became one of those typical villains that viewers would symphatize with in the end (I didn’t, and so are most of the people here…I think)
Liked the first-last-exile-dio moment at the end.
Sympathizing with Luscinia? Not really, but his motivations were at least understandable.
Or do you REALLY like villains like Delphine, who pretty much do things for the LULZ. Villains of her type easy to loathe, I guess, but they’re certainly not compelling that’s for sure.
his motivations were typical.
I don’t mind villains like Delphine, who does things on a whim. Infact, she is a great villain who doesn’t have an air of cheesiness, but has an air of mystery arround her. Luscina was so cheesy…too cheesy. Besides, to me, it’s not about loathing, but about how that villain makes the story more interesting.
characters yeah…. I really want to kill aa kitten after seing Silvius being … under command of Millia. For god sake… the most annoying aspect of this show is indeed that creators put little girls in places where they don’t belong – and everyone in the cast is okay with that!
one thing that i really didn’t like on this one was when they revealed that the supposed cannons were actually the grand exile’s engines and that luscinia is actually self destructing it. somehow it felt like a last ditch effort by the writers to resolve the conflict.
as for fam, it would have been better if they explored her character more. they didn’t even explore her background and didn’t even reveal more about her mother raha’s story, so her being sadri’s granddaughter turns out not all that significant. had they done all that, they could have actually made fam an interesting viewpoint character, even if she didn’t play a large part in the plot.
He wasnt really self destructing it, it was a last Exile being built by those left on Earth after all the other Exiles had left. They spent generations building it and designed it to be big enough to carry everyone left. The problem was it was too big, they eventually realised it couldnt make it into space and gave up on it.
Luscinia was using it as a boogey monster, he pretended it was a weapon of mass destruction so the whole world would unite in trying to stop it and knew it would fall apart from the start.
Luscinia in essense was doing the same plan as later Char/Milliardo Peacecraft in Gundam.
I’m not sure if Luc’s plan has come to fruition yet. I think one of his main objectives was to do what he did to Sara in the end. I think to make her able to access some yet unrevealed Guild technology. Maybe the bluerays will have an extra episode. Or we’ll have to stay tuned for Last Exile III The Next Generation.
*shrug*
Btw, I’m not sure why you’re comparing Luc to Millardo or Char. Mil got twisted by the Devil Gundam system and wasn’t himself while Char was definitely not trying to be a sacrificial martyr.
So my earlier hunch that Luscinia went to Schneizel el Britannia’s School of War proved correct, with him trying to use the Grand Exile to intimidate the world to stop fighting. But apparently, he also incorporated some ideas from Zero’s Art of War strategy manuscript by making himself the target of everyone’s hatred through his use of the Grand Exile. And then he basically kills himself with the disintegrating Grand Exile to give the whole world a clean slate to be reborn, his death signifying the end of the strife that has plagued the nations around the Grand Lake.
On the episode, I have to confess I just felt disappointed.