Now this is a quiet episode that I can get behind. It had some flaws, but overall it was very heart-warming. Also, another old face appears!
The characters in this series may not be as well portrayed as with the first season of Last Exile, but this episode showed that they’re still really good when it comes to the light-hearted scenes as well. Giselda’s arc of the past number of episodes concludes here, with some very neat shots about how the two of them grew up. It worked. The team building hockey match? It worked. The birthday subplot? It worked.
Now though, this still is Gonzo. And this episode unfortunately got the short stick of the animation budget. The backgrounds still looked fantastic (Seriously, nine episodes and these still are consistently gorgeous), but there were more still frames in this episode than you can shake a stick at. The hockey match was a bit over the top, but that was to be expected, though I feel that this especially does disservice to the crew members of the Silbius: these guys both do not have good animators behind them, and their voice actors are also pretty bad. Only the superiors do not suffer from this and they indeed were great (I loved the head mechanic as he wondered where everyone went). This was actually something that the first Last Exile was very good at: even the random soldiers were very well acted.
Also, regarding the plot, I still don’t really get it: last episode, the enemy massively abandoned a sinking ship. They withdrew everyone from it… and just left it there without actually blowing it up, or making sure that it didn’t fall into the hands of the enemies. Why? I get that they can’t salvage the remains due to the proximity to the border of Gracies, but they pretty much handed the enemy a really good warship there.
Rating: ** (Excellent)