Secret Santa Review: Last Exile (Hyb)

Medium: TV Anime (26 episodes)
Genres: Adventure, Fantasy, Military, Science Fiction
Director: Koichi Chigira
Studio: GONZO
Release Date: Apr. 7 – Sep. 29, 2003 (TV Tokyo – JP), Nov. 18, 2003 (Geneon/FUNimation – NA)
Rated: Not Rated

Ed. Note: Welcome to the second of our four "Anime Secret Santa Reviews." Our reviewers were given review requests as gifts from their Secret Santas, and are now unveiling their opinions of the shows they chose. For more information, check out our 2010 Anime Secret Santa introductory post.

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You know you're in for a polarizing show when one of the biggest pieces of praise people can give is "it's one of the few shows by this studio that's actually worth watching!" Unfortunately for anime studio GONZO (Gankutsuou, Welcome to the NHK, Linebarrels of Iron), that's basically the compliment granted to any relatively successful series that they create, and for better or for worse, Last Exile (2003) sits among this short list of "not terrible" GONZO series.

The show begins in a vaguely steampunk era in which giant airships have become the primary tool of war. Our heroes are two young pilots who make their living as couriers on the wings of their small fighter plane-esque craft called a "vanship." Claus Valca is a quiet, kindly pilot with a penchant for finishing everything he starts, while Lavie is his hot-headed, impetuous, and intelligent navigator. As the guy piloting the vanship, Claus is naturally the hero GONZO chooses to focus on, while Lavie serves simultaneously as his childhood friend, romantic interest, and moral compass.

These two couriers are living a simple life in the shadows of their legendary fathers (couriers who flew together until their untimely deaths) when they find themselves tasked with transporting a young girl named Alvis to the "Kill 'Em All" Silvana, a notorious mercenary airship thought to suck the souls out of anyone who comes aboard. After narrowly escaping attacks from the Guild, a shadowy organization that exerts subtle control over all the world's militaries and governments, the two vanship operators end up joining the Silvana's not-so-scary crew in a mysterious mission to strike the very heart of the Guild.

On paper, Last Exile seems like an exhilarating modern military tale, set in the skies of a unique world bound by strange rules — and it almost is, too. Unfortunately, GONZO's execution is painfully uneven, to the point that I often wondered if the writers knew where they were going when they created the original concept. The story is roughly split into three acts: 1) introduction of major cast and factions, 2) the Silvana wanders around doing things and battling some people, and 3) final confrontation with the Guild. As you might be able to guess, the second act features no central narrative or even an attempt at a formula (which would have made it much easier to follow). Instead the characters just meet a few unrelated challenges and overcome them, all the while developing ever so slightly as both individual characters and as a team.

Unfortunately, that individual development often leads to dead ends, as with two of the show's seemingly important romantic threads that simply die out before the introduction of the third act. The overall development of the cast, however, is one of the Last Exile's defining characteristics. The sense of cohesion between the Silvana's crew might not be apparent at first, but the motley crew of pilots, mechanics, and bridge personnel really start to feel like one big team by the end of the series. The most apt comparison that comes to my mind is original Gundam (1979), though Last Exile certainly doesn't pull it off quite that well.

Despite the compelling sense of overall camaraderie, some of the individual characters can get truly grating after 26 episodes. Let's start with Claus: his personality is so meek and boring that he is effectively the same as any of the cookie-cutter protagonists in harem anime. Underscoring this unfortunate truth is his harem of girls, including Lavie, Alvis, the cold-hearted pilot Tatiana, and even the strong-willed Vice Captain Sophia. To make matters worse, Tatiana turns into a mushy little lovestruck schoolgirl when Claus so much as lends her his jacket, and Sophia's romantic encounter comes from so far in left field that you'll likely be throwing things at your screen in frustration. To be honest, by episode 15 I was convinced that Last Exile was a harem show in disguise.

Meanwhile, there are a few characters who really shine despite their disappointing company. Alex Row, the stoic captain of the Silvana, rocks all kinds of socks with his grumpy demeanor and tortured past, but cracks begin to show in his emotional armor as we learn more about his history and see him lose control near the end of the show. Dio (no, not that one) and Lucciola, two runaways from the Guild who join up with the Silvana, and Mullin Shetland, a musketeer-turned-mechanic, provide an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the crew as outsiders coping with the stress of turning away from their previous loyalties. On the bad guy's side, the sinister Guild leader Maestro Delphine comes off as a poisonously sweet version of Gundam's Haman Karn.

But as far as I'm concerned, the real star of Last Exile is Lavie Head, Claus's energetic navigator. Originally she seems like nothing more than an obligatory bossy love interest, but by episode 8 or so it is clear that her personality reaches depths far beyond those of her lame childhood friend. Even when she decides that she doesn't want to be Claus's navigator as long as he is flying in combat (a brave and unexpected decision that throws a fascinating wrench in the works), she remains one of the most well-developed members of the crew. Lavie feels with a magnitude that nobody else in the show does, careening between nurturing love for Alvis, passionate concern for Claus, and unexpected bravery in the face of danger. Through it all, she manages to be both completely admirable and believably flawed, a feat that I'm frankly surprised GONZO managed to pull off so well.

While Japanese voice actor Chiwa Saito's performance as Lavie certainly gets the job done, Kari Wahlgren truly makes the role her own. Especially compared to Johnny Yong Bosch's typically overwrought Claus, Wahlgren's Lavie is always believable, no matter where she is on the emotional spectrum. In terms of the rest of the English cast, despite some clunky deliveries they mostly stack up well, especially thanks to spot-on Japanese-to-English voice matching by Bang Zoom.

Nearly all of the technology in the show (intricately researched and designed by character designer Range Murata and Gankutsuou's Mahiro Maeda) is animated using GONZO's notorious CG style, which only rarely blends with the two-dimensional character animation used throughout. Movement is also irritatingly choppy during the fight scenes, undercutting the clear quality of the original concepts. The skilled 2-D animators who realized Murata and Maeda's beautiful character and costume designs likely could have transformed most of the storyboards for the battle scenes into thrilling dogfights, but as it stands the 3-D fights are merely passable (though GONZO gets points for including ZERO Gundam-style monologues or pilot-to-pilot arguments during fights).

While I don't usually comment on such things, Last Exile's sound design is actually one of its greatest strengths. The sound effects used to represent the creaking and turning of machinery and the movements of the wind are far more visceral (and frequent) than the effects used in most other anime. This, combined with Maeda and Murata's unique and complex designs for clothing and machinery, makes for a lot of fascinating world-building potential. Unfortunately, spotty explanations of the factions and technologies often make it difficult to understand who is fighting whom and for what reasons. By the time the series reaches its exciting finale, it might still take a Wikipedia visit or two to understand just what was going on in the skies of Claus and Lavie's world.

Last Exile, like many GONZO series before it, is a valuable lesson in wasted potential. It's clear that the concept designers put a lot of work into the series during pre-production, and the animators' love for their material shines through in rare moments that belie Last Exile's most glaring flaw, which is that it doesn't really say or do very much with its own material. In the end, the exquisite presentation, the attempts at world-building, and the moments of genuine humanity come together to produce a work that is nothing more than the sum of its parts. We are left with a vaporous story about people in airships who fight each other.

[Passable]

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This review is based on the Hulu streams (both dub and sub) of the series, provided by FUNimation.

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Review: Gankutsuou – The Count of Monte Cristo (Dub)

Medium: TV Anime (24 episodes)
Genres: Drama, Political, Science Fiction
Based on: Alexandre Dumas's novel
Director: Mahiro Maeda
Studio: GONZO
Release Date: Oct. 5, 2004 – Mar. 29, 2005 (Japan), Oct. 16, 2007 (Geneon/FUNimation – N.America)
Rated: Not Rated (appropriate for 16+)

Adaptations are one of my favorite types of stories to review due to their ability to show one story from multiple perspectives and through the eyes of multiple generations of writers. Thus, Gankutsuou, Gonzo's 2004 anime adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' seminal novel The Count of Monte Cristo, is simply irresistible to my sensibilities as both an anime fan and a fan of the original novel.

Unlike many others of its ilk, Gankutsuou goes above and beyond slavish imitation, changing a number of relatively important parts of the story from the get-go. Naturally this can confuse most readers of the book as they try to figure out how the plot could possibly work out with all of the changes. When I began watching, I, too, was a skeptic. Though I am certainly not a total believer now, the 24 episodes of Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo have shown me a fascinating approach to adaptation that maintains (and in some cases improves) the depiction of the central theme while not fretting over the nitty-gritty details of the original work.

On the topic of omitting grit, Gankutsuou skips Dumas's entire set of introductory chapters, which serve to construct the tragic back-story of the mysterious, fantastically wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. Instead, scriptwriters Natsuko Takahashi (Fullmetal Alchemist, Romeo X Juliet) and Tomohiro Yamashita (Afro Samurai, Red Garden) drop us into the Carnivale on Luna, a strikingly science-fictiony replacement for the original setting of Rome. As if the book purist in me wasn't already crying out at the omission of Edmond Dantes’s/Monte Cristo's unjust 15-year imprisonment, giant CGI blimps and reveling space colonists seem to state immediately that this is not Dumas's original (and, very importantly, that it is not trying to be).

The switch in the starting point, however, actually serves to set up the first of many important narrative shifts; the focus of the story is transferred from the Count of Monte Cristo to the anime's new protagonist, Viscount Albert de Morcerf (who plays an important role as a side character in the novel). While partying on Luna with his best buddy Franz d'Epinay, Albert finds himself in trouble with bandits, only to be saved by the Count. Before long he becomes close friends with the rich aristocrat, who ends up living in Paris, forging bonds with many of the most influential families in the city (including Albert's).

But as tragedy befalls Albert's friends, acquaintances, and enemies, it becomes clear that something sinister is afoot. Some see the Count as a prime suspect, but Albert cannot believe that the man who once saved his life would be out to cause harm to him or any of his friends.

The true strength of director Mahiro Maeda's (Blue Sub Six, "Second Rennaisance" portion of Animatrix) retelling lies not in simple translation. He might miss essential pieces of what Dumas was trying to say, but through these changes he creates an entirely new story, rooted in the basics of the original but not necessarily tied down to its themes or messages. Indeed, this contemporary version of The Count of Monte Cristo has its own moments of storytelling and aesthetic brilliance. Textile designer/digital director Yasufumi Soejima (Last Exile, Ristorante Paradiso) captures the opulence of Parisian aristocratic life using a fascinating and unique visual technique involving brightly colored textures that seem to remain stationary as the characters and objects they are attached to move around the frame. The effect is disorienting at first, but it lends the series a distinctive air of gaudiness that suits the setting. Meanwhile, the Count himself is the most striking image of the entire anime, with his almost vampiric blue face, pointed ears, and protruding canines. In the novel he is described as being so intriguing that he is the center of attention whenever he enters a room, so it is impressive that character designer Hidenori Matsubara (Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, Sakura Wars) was able to maintain this feature while not adhering strictly to Dumas's other descriptors.

Unfortunately, Gankutsuou's anime trappings don't always work to its advantage, especially when it comes to an overuse of exposition. The original Count of Monte Cristo revels in its mystique, never making an explicit connection between the Count and Edmond Dantes (nor with his own revenge plot) until the novel's final act. In Gonzo's version, the connection is made within the first episode, and though Albert is given an incredibly wide swath of incriminating information regarding the Count, it takes him around 20 episodes to finally discover the (then quite obvious) truth. Admittedly this kind of exposition is necessary due to the omission of Dantes's back-story, but it doesn't make the dramatic irony any less frustrating.

Geneon's dub doesn't exactly help matters either, with Johnny Yong Bosch's predictably overwrought performance adding a bit more intensity than necessary to Albert's character. The Count, however, finds a quietly sinister portrayal in Jamieson Price, one that I would even say fits Dumas's original version of the character. Backing up Bosch's occasionally effective performance is Ezra Weisz, mucking up nearly all of Franz's lines with mood-crushing wooden acting. Luckily, he's one of the few stinkers in the cast, but that doesn't diminish the damage Franz does to the dub version every time he's on screen.

Gankutsuou's most effective moments come when Dumas and Maeda's sensibilities play off of each other. A scene of a girl suffering from poison, lit only by lightning bolts, expresses Dumas's supreme melodrama with a profound visual language not available to the author. Even scenes with sweeping changes, such as the aftermath of the duel near the end of the series, carry emotional weight thanks to Maeda's choice to continually compound his own calamitous plot threads and Dumas's own acute sense of tragedy.

At its best, Gankutsuou can produce just such moments of silent collaboration between Maeda and Dumas, but in between the high points are scenes of bland anime exposition and maddening, poorly executed dramatic irony. Through it all, the series maintains a quick pace, fueled in part by Takahashi and Yamashita's propensity for cliffhanger endings in each episode, which pulled me along in much the same way that Sunrise's Code Geass did. This might not be hailed as the kind of timeless classic that its source material is, but Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo is certainly a compelling, firmly above average anime melodrama, not to be missed by any genre aficionados.

[Recommended]

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This review is based on a Netflix streaming video version of the series provided by FUNimation and viewed through the reviewer's personal Netflix subscription.

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