I wanted this to be a single post but when I finished, a quick word count showed roughly 3000 words which is just too much to ask people to read in one sitting and also, who wants to scroll through such a long post? So a hasty cut was in order and here we are.

Let’s pick up where the last post left off with number 11 …

(11) – Aquarion Evol

Rating for episodes 1 to 7 – 9/12  A-

Even more fun then Symphogear has been this anime, Aquarion Evol – a sequel set 12,000 years after the original series. Normally, I don’t try to jump into a series but I figured 12,000 years was long enough to reset the series. The story is moderately interesting at this point; I’m most curious about the reason why two different dimensions are linked together and what these two dimensions mean to each other. What pushes Aquarion Evol this high is an interesting cast of characters, the high production values, and occasionally its dialogue. The noteworthy dialogue might be more of a function of the translation but I loved two lines in particular. The first was, ‘You stink deliciously,” which was what one of the antagonists said to the main female character; this has to be one of the oddest pick-up lines ever. The other is, ‘He’ll fly for anyone,’ said by a couple of female characters about the male main character’s habit of floating when being excited by a female character.

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(10) – Last Exile – Ginkyou no Fam

Rating for episodes 1 to 16 – 9/12  A-

Gonzo has done a much better job with this sequel then I thought possible but, by being that good, this sequel of Last Exile is frustrating when it fumbles along when it clearly should be soaring. The world building is stellar; the politics is intriguing; the story is grand enough to showcase the world building and politics; and, the characters are a great mix of people who fit with the story and allow the story to accomplish what it wants to do. Yet, when examined closely, problems crop up with Last Exile 2. Probably the most disappointing is the vocal performance of two of the main characters – Aki Toyosaki and Aoi Yuuki. Both are personal favorites and have many great roles under their belts but here they are so lackluster. I don’t know if it’s that the characters are poor or if it’s the fault of the person in charge of the vocal recording for these lackluster performances but the result really saps the energy out of the show when either are on-screen. Many of the other problems with Last Exile 2 could be fixed if the person(s) behind the series composition and the individual episode scripts had been fired and more competent writers brought in.

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(9) – Hunter x Hunter

Rating for episodes 1 to 19 – 9/12  A-

I fall into the category of people who have not seen the original Hunter x Hunter anime series nor read the source manga it’s based on which leaves me in a different state of mind over Hunter x Hunter then the majority of the people I have read talking about the strengths and weaknesses of this anime. For example, at the beginning when I thought the pacing in the episodes was dragging the series out I was constantly reading people who complained about how quickly they were flying through the source material. To me, Hunter x Hunter has really started to hit it’s stride during the current winter season and, as a result, is slowly bubbling towards the top of it’s anime brethren. A good shounen series is a nice change of pace sometimes.

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(8) – Tantei Opera Milky Holmes 2

Rating for episodes 1 to 4 – 9/12  A-

The first season of Milky Holmes was a hilarious, subversive gem that flew under too many people’s radars. For a successful sequel, Milky Holmes needed to use everything good about the first season and infuse that with fresh, new awesomeness. I didn’t know if the creators had it in them but the first four episodes have shown that somewhere in the dark, twisted depths of their psyches they were able to summon new reserves of insanity to make Milky Holmes 2 even better.

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(7) – Another

Rating for episodes 1 to 6 – 10/12  A

I’m going to resist the urge to make a joke using this anime’s name – Another. It pains me to pass this over because I like jokes like that but we don’t need yet another blogger making the same joke. With Hanasaku Iroha, P.A. Works finally succeeded at producing a great anime series after a string of disappointing attempts. At the onset I was anxious to see if Another would continue in the footsteps of Hanasaku Iroha or would it fall back to being another frustratingly almost good series like their early works. Six episodes in and I’m relieved that, after a bit of stumble in the first couple episodes from trying to force the creepy/scary vibe, it’s found a pace that should end with Another being one of the best anime of the season.

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(6) – Mouretsu Pirates

Rating for episodes 1 to 6 – 10.5/12  Strong A

It is indeed time for some piracy. Bodacious Pirates is about a high school girl who finds out her absent father was a space privateer (legal pirate) and with his death she’s inherited his ship and his title, if she desires them. She does, of course, because it wouldn’t be a show if she declined but it does take a couple of episodes for her to reach that decision. This made the show feel like it started off slowly but by episode 5 it started showing it’s potential and, egads, does this anime have potential. What it does with this potential remains to be seen but this anime has become the anime that I most look forward too each week.

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(5) – Ano Natsu de Matteru

Rating for episodes 1 to 6 – 11/12  A+

Over the last several years, J.C. Staff almost always has done its best work when Tatsuyuki Nagai is the director (Honey and Clover 2, Railgun, Toradora). Last year when he directed AnoHana for A-1 Pictures I wondered if he had left J.C. Staff for good and what that would mean for J.C. Staff’s future but with AnoNatsu I can stop worrying about J.C. Staff. at least partly. On paper, even though AnoNatsu is an original anime production, it doesn’t appear to be that ambitious of a project – as opposed to other recent anime originals like Penguindrum or Madoka – however, what it lacks in ambition has been more than made up with impeccable execution. J.C. Staff is in the odd position this season of fielding two of the top series of this season.

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(4) – Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou

Rating for episodes 1 to 6 – 11/12  A+

Extremely hilarious somehow still low-balls the comedic genius of Daily Lives of High School Boys. There are so many parts to this anime that are worthy of praise. There’s the comedy – it’s actually funny and there’s the characters – they capture high school boys and girls so realistically and the voice acting – they make the characters pop and then there’s the parts were NichiBros lightly lambastes common anime tropes to name but a few areas.

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(3) – Nisemonogatari

Rating for episodes 1 to 6 – 11.5/12  Near Perfect

Watching Nisemonogatari provides a yard stick to measure how much Shaft/Shinbou has improved in the last 2.5 years since Bakemonogatari and it’s almost scary to see the level of improvement that they’ve accomplished. Everything from the scripting to the visuals have been fine-tuned to be tighter, sharper, and better able to deliver the goods with less effort exerted. The only question left at this point is will Nisemonogatari outsell Bakemonogatari or not?

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(2) – Chihayafuru

Rating for episodes 1 to 19 – 12/12  Perfect

Residual respect for the animators, Madhouse, and my new-found respect for the voice actor Mamoru Miyano lead me to try Chihayafuru which is about a group of teens that play Karuta – a game where players compete over collecting cards featuring verses from 100 different poems. I’m glad I did because Chihayafuru started off excellently and has steadily gotten even better. Normally, I’m not a fan of “sports” anime but I love the characters and how they’ve grown over the course of the series and the creators have somehow even made a game like Karuta interesting to watch. The only potential fly-in-the-ointment is that the source material is a continuing manga and the animators have to give the anime some sense of conclusion while leaving the door open for a second season (fingers crossed for that).

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(1) – Natsume Yuujinchou Shi

Rating for episodes 1 to 6 – 12/12  Perfect

How does this series continue to find the room to get better? The creators should have already hit the asymptote of possible quality by the fourth season but they continue to push ever upwards. At this point, future seasons are probably a given and, though, I’m tempted to want countless more, I’ve started wanting to see an ending. I’ve even been thinking about how I’d love to see it end – an adult Natsume, happily married, sitting on the edge of one those short open porches that Japanese houses have and explaining to his young son/daughter not be afraid of the strange creatures he/she has started noticing and he then pulls out the now empty Book of Friends and starts into the story of his grandmother, Reiko, and the camera would pan up over a lovely bucolic scene, we’d hear Nyanko-sensei call out for some food item and the screen would fade out.

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With the second episode of Last Exile ~ Fam: The Sil­ver Wing, Gonzo’s firmly shifted this anime into the winner’s column. They did this, in part, by embedding enough material that this life long SF fan can do one of his favorite activities – mental world building and guessing what’ll happen next. As long as Gonzo doesn’t screw this up, I believe this series of Last Exile could be even greater in scale than the first series and have a more epic story with better characters.

To see how I reach that conclusion, let’s start at the beginning.

(Be warned this post contains spoilers of the first season.)

The back story from the first Last Exile series wasn’t well enumerated in the anime itself but it was detailed elsewhere; so, since it helps flesh out Last Exile ~ Fam: The Sil­ver Wing, I’ll condense it here. Sometime in the future, the inhabitants of Earth were facing a total collapse of the biosphere and the possible extinction of humanity. They decided to build a fleet of ships (the Exile Ships) to seed a string of colony habitats (the Prester worlds) to ensure humanity’s survival and to provide a reservoir population to repopulate Earth once it was made habitable.

Basically, it’s Wall-E without the cute robots.

In SF circles this set-up is known as a generational ship and many stories have been written about the difficulties and dangers of keeping such an arrangement going without something going terribly wrong. The events of the first Last Exile series followed one such Prester world 600 years after it’s founding and how it was in the process of imploding. The Guild had been charged with maintaining the habitat and then using the Exile ship when Earth was ready but over the centuries the purpose of their world was forgotten, Exile became a myth, and the knowledge was largely lost. They kept some advanced knowledge but one example of lost knowledge was that they could no longer fix the weather system and stop the desertification of one half and the freezing over of the other half of their world. Not only that, but once the Guild forgot it’s purpose there was nothing to keep the society of this Prester world together and all it took was the personal ambition of Delphine to send this world into a suicidal tailspin.

Luckily, a plucky band of heroes was there to stop Delphine, unlock Exile and reboot the weather controls. This is where the first season of Last Exile ended but the logical next step is to take Exile back to Earth, if possible, and so we have the starting point for the second season.

Last Exile ~ Fam: The Sil­ver Wing almost certainly takes place on Earth and about three years after the end of the first season of Last Exile. My guess of three years is based on reading that it takes a year for Exile to travel between Earth and the Prester world from season 1 and guessing at the sequence of events since the end of season 1. (How it only takes one year isn’t explained; I’m guessing handwavium.) A round trip would take 2 years and the first trip of Exile was probably just a quick recon but at least one person stayed on Earth – Dio – and it was Dio that points out in episode 1 that Exile has just returned to Earth. From this it’s apparent we’re talking 3,5,7,etc. years in the future but the screenshot of Alvis in the opening song makes me think it’s only been 3 years which would make Alvis 14 years old. The exact number is probably not that important, though.

What is important was the reveal of the 6 “moons” really being other Exile ships. This fact alone can be used to guess at the political situation on Earth.

For each Exile ship there is probably a kingdom/group/ethnic enclave made up of people who came to Earth from a different colonial world and settled somewhere on it (assuming they didn’t get wiped out, more on that idea later). Since the signal was never given (or not shown in the first season), each of the other 6 Exiles plus the one we know from the first series probably returned to Earth at different times. For example, we know that the people of the Turan Kingdom have been living long enough on Earth to build a nice capital city and develop a sizable fleet of military ships (so at least a couple of generations) but Alvis’ Exile ship just recently returned.

This doesn’t sit well with the descendants of the people who stayed on Earth and survived through the natural calamities. They view the planet as their own and, frankly, I don’t really blame them too much in thinking that (unless there’s some sort of written agreement that was made back those 600 years before the colonial worlds were settled). However, the residents of Earth appear to have taken a very hard-line and formed the Ades Federation to wipe out the Turan Kingdom (and maybe others). The fervor shown by the leader of the Ades Federation in episode 2 had definite shades of ethnic or religious cleansing.

This left me wondering; why was the Turan Kingdom allowed to be founded in the first place? My guess is that the people of the Ades Federation couldn’t stop them as long as the threat of Turan Kingdom’s Exile ship could be used as a bargaining chip.

Imagine The Imperial March is playing at this point.

Seeing two Exile ships in action it appears that two things are required to command an Exile ship. The first is a special sequence of words that is unique to each ship and the second is some sort of genetic marker which is probably unique to the population of that Exile ship and also unique to running each ship. So, even though, the returning settlers would have easily been overwhelmed by the native Earthians they were protected by a superior weapon that is a single Exile ship and there was little chance for the natives to ever get control of an Exile ship to even the odds.

Of course, in episode 2 we see the leader of the Ades Federation gaining control of an Exile ship. He probably got the required verse from his assassin henchman, who was probably a guild member from the same world as the people of the Turan Kingdom. And this entire war was probably a ruse so he could capture one of the princesses who has the needed genetic marker to run their Exile ship. I find it interesting that the younger princess is not aware of their worth in relation to their Exile ship; this might be explained merely by the younger princess not being told yet due to her age or is it possible that she does not have needed marker and didn’t need to know?

Does this give the Ades Federation control of their first Exile ship or have they gained control of the other 5 Exile ships in the past? I don’t know, we’ll have to see .

To recap, the first Last Exile series took place on one of the colony worlds that Earth founded and Last Exile ~ Fam: The Sil­ver Wing takes place on Earth several years in the future after the end of the first series. The political situation on Earth is tense between those inhabitants that have never left (the Ades Federation) and those that returned from the colony worlds (the Turan Kingdom, other groups we haven’t met and assuredly the people from the first season that have just recently returned to Earth). A long-standing war between the natives and the Turan Kingdom ended with the Ades Federation gaining control of an Exile ship.

The Exile ship from the first season.

Like I said earlier, there’s enough here to start imagining how the series could go. It’s probably a very safe bet to guess that Fam, the pirates, the younger princess, Alvis and the crew of the Exile ship from the first season will combine their efforts to save the princess and defeat the Ades Federation. If that’s the case, there’s a real chance of a MAD Situation if Exile ships start fighting each other. Definitely a cool visual but can Earth withstand such a war?

Also, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s revealed that Fam or her navigator, Giselle, happened to be descendants from one of the  other Exile ships and can control the ship if they knew the needed verse.

Defeating the Ades Federation might be as simple as taking out it’s current leader but the second episode showed how difficult this is going to be. Though there might be elements in the Federation more sympathetic towards the returning colonists (or at least adverse to what a war could do the Earth) and could provide help in overthrowing him.

Dio, as a former Guild member, will have to play a big role in helping the rebels/pirates/ etc. since it looks like the natives have gotten help from other Guild members. Or maybe that’s just me wishing because Dio was my favorite character from the first season.

And finally, I think Gonzo is actually going to pull this off and save their company. Where they go next is too much of an unknown that I wouldn’t even hazard a guess but I’m hoping for more quality anime.

And if nothing else, Aoi Yuuki and Aki Toyosaki are great to listen too.

Filed under: anime, first impressions