Ranked #2368

Last Exile: Ginyoku no Fam

Roughly eight years have passed since the final episode of Last Exile. We all remember how it concluded: after defeating the antagonist and ending a war that was raging for eternity, good guys laid their hands on a sleeper ship and went to another world to live in peace and harmony. But what they actually arrived at turned out to be the twisted, corrupted world of unnecessary sequels.

Truly, Gonzo was having a tough time and needed a strong comeback that will allow it to stay in business, so they chose to milk one of their old successful and popular titles. Was it a wise decision? Probably, it was. Does the new show turn out to be good? Well, let’s find out.

The story is pretty simple. A young sky pirate girl named Fam Fan Fan is accidentally caught in a war unleashed by bad, bad Ades Empi— I mean, Federation. (But hell, it is ruled by an empress!) Fam along with her friend, Giselle Collette, saves life of a Turanian princess named Millia who asks the sky pirates for help in the noble quest of liberating her country.

And here we come across the most obvious and fatal flaw of Gin’yoku no Fam — the protagonist and title character, Fam herself. Firstly, she is the worst kind of a pacifist who honestly believes that all people in the world can easily throw away their differences, lay down weapons and then just fly in the vast blue sky, full of joy and happiness. Fam never questions her ideals while on war where, big surprise, people are dying because somebody isn’t able to just give up on his goals, be it revenge, greed, survival of relatives, or anything else. To be fair, this naïve faith is not a bad trait, but the fact that she always holds to it no matter what is really stupid and irritating. Well, Fam receives some character development near the end of the series but it was too damn late for me to like her. Secondly, the way plot revolves around her is unbearable. Her Noble Phantasm is Deus Ex Machina: The Slayer of Suspension of Disbelief. Fam can fly in the middle of the battle and never be harmed, she can infiltrate enemy’s flagship with ease, hell, she can probably go back in time and save John Lennon or something. I get that she is a genius pilot but there are limits to how far the writer can stretch it. Thirdly, she is voiced by Toyosaki Aki-shi. It’s just personal and very subjective but I can’t stand Toyosaki-shi as a seiyū of protagonist in this kind of show. Her voice is hammered into my mind with air-headed clumsy girls, so no way I can take her as a world saviour seriously.

That’s it with Fam, now I want to say two words about other characters. Giselle seems like a pretty generic sidekick to me, but that’s okay because she rarely steals the spotlight. On the other hand we have Millia and she is one of the better parts of the series. Millia receives a lot of character development from start to finish, she can be irritating at first but she gets better little by little and progresses a lot throughout the show becoming one of the small number of Gin’yoku no Fam characters I feel little sympathy for. Another interesting character is the main antagonist, Luscinia Hāfez, the Premier of Ades Federation. Yes, his actions seem unreasonable and more I think of them less sense they make, but most of the time watching the series I spent on figuring out how far he can and will go, how much of him believe that his way is the only possible solution for the crisis. That was some kind of pleasure.

One thing people complained a lot about Gin’yoku no Fam was fanservice. Their point was this series seems like a sequel to Strike Witches not to Last Exile. To be fair, there is not much fanservice here and what is present is not really annoying. The only thing got on my nerves was Millia trying to take over the ship with her maid uniform. Yeah, it was played for laughs but this scene stood out too much and was too damn stupid, so I just cannot let it slip by. On the other hand, cameos of Last Exile’s characters (kinda fanservice too) were utterly pointless. They were lazily written into the new series for appearance’s sake only. For example, Dio’s overall impact on the plot is exactly zero, so I get this sticky feeling that Gonzo here is just trying to draw attention of the original series fan base.

And one more thing before I call it a day. Let me bring up the philosophy, the basic idea of both series. It’s pretty simple: the war is bad. We can see it through both the original series and Gin’yoku no Fam. The problem with the latter is how that idea was integrated into the plot. In Last Exile we have the Guild. It enforces strict rules of combat resulting in a lot of casualties, casualties that can be avoided if you break the rules. But if you do it, you will be punished by the Guild because it has superior technology and can easily crush you. And even if you follow the rules, a member of the Guild can call off the engine of your ship on a whim, just because he thinks it’s fun. So you’re screwed no matter what you do. This is unfair and cruel. This is war, guys, and this is why it’s bad. And what can Gin’yoku no Fam offer? We have our protagonists flying here and there and talking about friendship. We have loli Empress crying because fighting is making her sad. Oversimplification and child’s play. The war is bad. The oranges are orange. Care to explain why Gin’yoku no Fam is about war and not about oranges, Gonzo?

So, overall, is this series a powerful comeback? Hell no. I won’t cry if Gonzo returns to animation studio asylum. Gin’yoku no Fam is certainly a nice try but its shell is sadly empty. The setting is cool, but the plot while having a good build-up is too much of a cliché and the characters are either annoying or just simply not memorable. To be fair, this series has some good scenes and nice background music but that’s not enough. I rate it 7 points. Too high, maybe, but at least it’s not as bad as war. read more

There's something dignified and respectable about a show like Last Exile that tells a great, unique story and quietly leaves you to praise it. Its sequel, Last Exile: Fam, the Silver Wing, destroys every bit of that uniqueness and dignity. It's content to merely hover where its predecessor soared, and feels like a desperate, cheap cash-in rather than any sort of real sequel. This review wouldn't be necessary if people judged it merely on the rating, but with so many unwarranted 8's and higher misleading people (including myself), fans of the first Last Exile need a better frame of reference.

The story is where this show immediately falls apart. Without giving too much away (there isn't much to give away), A big nasty empire comes and destroys a smaller nation, and of course, it's up to a small resistance to stand against them and find out what they're really up to. Our protagonists, a few very young girl sky pirates, commandeer enemy ships for the resistance and the princess of the small nation. Gone is the first episode with a full-on sky battle between two puppet nations, with rows of musketeers firing from the decks. Gone are the two interesting protagonists, who may or may not have a relationship, scraping by with just their fathers' van-ship, caught up unwillingly into something big, something they were destined for. Gone is the mysterious "Guild" from the first show, too.

The story's only merit being that it's entirely standard, we must continue on the story's flaws: it's filled with childish and completely unbelievable scenarios. Last Exile had some of this, but it never strayed away from showing the horrors of the politics and wars at hand. In this sequel it isn't uncommon for a tiny ship to fly through a fleet unscathed simply because protagonists are on it. Actually, it happens in nearly every episode. Twelve episodes in, you will only know the three things you knew in episode two: Empire bad, little girls are good, and moons are magic space-ships. It does nothng new, and it does everything old extremely poorly. Storytellers should understand the basics of nature, warfare, the human condition, and conquest before writing about it. This show throws a big empire at you, makes them do bad things, and they're just automatically the villain. Past 12 episodes this may change, but after that duration most stories have fully developed political backgrounds. Last Exile had reasons for why the nations were at war, and made it clear resources were scare. This sequel, like it's cast, is childishly written.

On to the aforementioned cast. Characters in Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing, are among the most forgettable, uninteresting, motive-less husks of human beings and not-human beings ever put into an animated production. They even insult past beloved, central characters of the first series by shoving them into side roles where they barely appear in favor of these far less interesting newcomers. This is particularly infuriating, as Dio, Tatiana, or Vincent would have all made incredible main characters. Fam is your typical happy-go-lucky, fearless-by-stupidity, loli protagonist who just likes capturing ships, it seems. She's committing theft, why should I be rooting for her? Is smiling and doing random reckless acts identifiable to anyone at all? Her navigator is Giselle, a much better character who is at least smart, but spends most of her time, like Fam, just being cute for the camera. Neither of them show empathy, struggle, or reveal anything other than vague cuteness and plot-defiant heroism. These characters never make an attempt to rationalize the war, which is understandable, considering that there really isn't anything to understand about it. How many children do you know that would just casually accept being involved in a war with a huge empire, still smiling at every instant?

Are ships characters? Because in the original Last Exile they were. The Silvana was one of the coolest ships ever, with a bad-to-the-core, funny, and enigmatic crew. This show's substitute, the Silvius, is a perfect reflection of the show: it pales by comparison in every way. It's boring, with a largely nameless, skinny, short-haired male archetype crew. Why do they blindly follow this princess (who is no longer a princess, of course) to re-build her nation? It is never explained why, it's just accepted. Where is this show's Alex Row, the tortured captain with secret ties to his crew? Where is this show's battleship-with-chainsaws moment? Most of all, where is the personal, human element? The entire atmosphere of Last Exile came from it being a colonial steam punk style, but there's no musketeers or soldiers, just commanders and little girls who can do anything.

The artwork is still admirable for the most part, comparable to the first series, but with a markedly lazier and less creative design for the mechanical side of things. It still has that special aesthetic that demands merit. The colors in some scenes are beautiful, the architecture of cities is breathtaking. Costumes and character designs are also easy to admire, if only they had as much care put into their insides. The art can't be faulted, its integration of CG modeling even more seamless and enjoyable.

Sound, like the art, is good, using a lot of the same songs and sounds of the first Last Exile. It's nostalgic, almost like it's trying very hard to say "This IS a sequel, remember, see?". The intro is artistically valuable, too, though cant compare to Last Exile's Cloud Age Symphony. Gun-battles between metal sky-behemoths sound chaotic, you know, like battles, and that's all one can really ask for. The voice cast does it's job, nothing spectacular, as there really wasn't one emotional scene in 12 episodes.

Overall, Last Exile: Fam, The Silver Wing, is a cash-in of the worst kind, capturing none of the essence of the first show by slapping a boring, over-used plot on an original series. It then proceeds to tease old fans with returning characters, shadows of their former selves, to play background while loli's giggle in the forefront. As a fan of the original, and as a fan of many of Gonzo's works when many are not, this is a highly disappointing venture on their part. A little wisdom and care would have gone a long way. The awareness that someone will say "you only watched barely over half the series, how dare you criticize it!" haunts me, so let me rebut: a good show is good throughout its majority, a good sequel is comparable to the quality of the former in all respects. Last exile was, indeed, called LAST Exile for a reason.










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