Glass no Kantai: La Legende du Vent de l'Univers

Glass no Kantai (Glass Fleet) is an odd anime. Combining elements of space opera and medieval Europe, its strength is in its strong characterization of its three main characters.

The story is set in an alternative universe, in which self-proclaimed Emperor Vetti seeks nothing but power over others; the handsome lone wolf Cleo - who carries the blood of the overthrown royal family - seeks to bring down Vetti; and the rebel aristocrat Michel Volban seeks to establish a people's republic. Michel eventually teams up with Cleo, and the main story unfolds from there.

Each of these three men harbors a major secret concerning their ... identity; and some adult themes are explored starting around episode 11 or so. Despite the general adventure theme look of the anime at first, it's really not for younger kids.

The production design is interesting and eye-catching, particularly the medieval-inspired costumes. There are strange anomalies, like the fact that apparently humans in this alternative universe don't need atmospheres on their planets in order to breathe(!).

I rented Glass no Kantai because I'm an Akira Ishida fan. He plays Vetti, the villain, with a much lower and deeper voice than he normally uses - and it's very sexy too. ;)

If you're an Akira Ishida fan, or if you like the "different" animes, the ones that don't quite fit neatly into any one category - you might like Glass no Kantai.

A lot of anime are influenced by others in one way or another, but rarely have I seen one that shows its influences as blatently as "Glass no Kantai - La legende du vent de l'univers" (wow, what an exceedingly long and pretentious sounding title). This anime rips off so many sources and does it so badly and in such a painfully obvious way, that the result is comparable to a patchy rag doll, crudely sewn together from many different pieces of cloth.

Though at the time of viewing I remember noticing many similarities between "Glass" and numerous other anime, now I've either forgotten what most ... of those anime were, or I've forgotten the similarities in question. However, I do remember thinking that it appear to be ripping off "Last Exile" in particular.

Right from the start the signs were there. The opening of the first episode featured two fleets of flying ships doing battle, with people in the ship dressed like aristocrats. Hmmm where have I seen this before... of course - these were exactly the exact same things that caught my attention in the opening scenes of "Last Exile"! In what is possibly a feeble attempt to reduce the glaring similarities, the creators of Glass have decided to set this in space, rather than on a steampunk world. But soon enough, more similarities piled up, too many to be coincidental. To name a couple: a rogue ship making a flashy entrance in a fashion similar to that of a certain other rogue ship from "Last Exile" - even the skills exhibited by the two ship captains are pretty similar. Also, the tactics deployed by Admiral Gawain in the big ship to ship battle mid series could easily have been inspired by the the brilliantly orchestrated battle at Dragon Fang in... well you can probably guess where. Perhaps on their own, these similarities can be dismissed as coincidence. But so many in a single anime strongly implicates some serious plagiarism going on. If it isn't for the fact the Gonzo made both "Last Exile" and "Glass no Kantai", the makers of the latter would probably get sued.

As if blatent rip offs aren't bad enough, the production of anime is often downright terrible. I suspect I would be in for a laugh when, about 30 seconds into the jpoppy opening theme, a totally inappropriate bit of rapping is thrown in, no doubt in an attempt to make the anime seem "cool". And sure enough, this anime did indeed deliver plenty of laughs, virtually all of it unintended. There is some flakey, overarching plot over the whole thing, and some of its ideas definitely has merit, but it's often let down by the production and the wooden characters. Plot progression wise, it's probably the opposite of "Monster", where the plot execution is done almost to perfection. In "Glass no Kantai", there are numerous parts where the plot progression feels forced, bewildering or like they've plainly just cocked up. Prime example of this is the "twist" in the early episodes regarding one of the characters - the producers manage to shoot themselves in the foot and actually caused me to inadvertently stumble upon it without knowing it was meant to be a twist to be revealed later on (it sounds complicated, but you'll exactly know what I mean when you see it). The character are also fairly incompetently done. Other than ripping off from other works that came before it ("Creo" is basically Alex Rou from "Last Exile" with a dash of the devil may care attitude of Spike Spiegal from "Cowboy Bebop", Michele Volban is also ripped off another character that I can't actually name, as it will "spoil" the aforementioned twist for you), the character development feels heavy handed in general and just plain ridiculous at times.

Despite all its flaws (like, all 402 of them), the series isn't all bad. The Admiral Gawain part of the story is pretty good, despite stealing its battle strategies from "Last Exile". Some of plot points are also well executed and shows hints of promise... but it's just that most of its flaws are amplified simply because it's an anime that takes itself waaay too seriously. It obviously fancies itself to be something of a sweeping epic, perhaps not too disimilar to the kind of grand operatic feel found in "Gankutsuou". The music, arguably the one aspect of "Glass no Kantai" that's not riddled with flaws, do manage to provide an orchestral score befitting the epic it's *trying* to be. But that air of grandeur it's trying to achieve is something an anime can only get away with if it has genuine class... like "Gankutsuou", for example. "Glass" asks to be ridiculed far too often for its better points to be noticed (they do exist, few though they may be). In fact, for a long while one of my friends couldn't work out whether "Glass no Kantai" is meant to be completely serious or a tongue in cheek comedy (true story, I kid you not)!

Presentation wise, this anime isn't bad. Though visually the anime appears to be quite pleasing at first, I soon found that a lot of the character designs seem a little... off, for lack of a better word. It's as though they tried to go for some attractive character designs, but did not quite succeed. The general feel of the anime is that it's trying to create a big budget affect with a small budget, so it cheapness often glares out from beneath a thin facade. There is this one hilarious scene where one guy fights a group of soldiers. The soldiers unleash a barrage of arrows at him... and he somehow manage to single handedly unleash a barrage of similar size back at them... with his one crossbow. You'll really have to see it to fully appreciate the unintended comedy of the situation! It just felt so cheap! But due to "Glass no Kantai" severely lacking in substance, the presentation, despite feeling amateurish, is probably its strongest department. "Amateurish" is probably a word that can be applied to the anime as a whole. As much as I love Gonzo at their best ("Last Exile", "Gankutsuou", "Hellsing" springs to mind), they do produce far too much cheap trash like this ("Gad Guard" springs to mind here). They should just concentrate on making a few great series instead of wasting their time and money by pumping out crap. I mean seriously... do they really think they'll can con people out of their hard earned cash with anime of this calibur?!

first let me say i love this kind of anime set up. a time of noble's and knights. there are so few and even rare good ones. so i hope to find one in glass fleet. sadly the ship blow up and there was no one alive....
the story: was short for a 24 esp sereis. the people wanted to be free or more right from the noble's. so they they strike out againtist them. the noble's fought back. this could have been a good way to start things up but what evil thing's where the noble's ... doing? you never saw them killing any of them or hear how the taxes are. there was one noble that destroyed a village for hunting grounds but he gave them a forest to live in and work.they lived in a desert at first, that looked like a trash yard, then moved to a nice forest and got work! so that was a fail to show the evil noble's. the other part was the black cross. A black hole that lead to a new unervirse. that part of the story was a small part of the series till the end.
the art: was ok. most of the women looked ugly or plain.(save one the pope's daughter) other than that ok.
the sound: felt off to me. the guns on the big space ships did not have the boom they should have. the voice actors sounded bored and did not want to be there.
the charater: this was a mess. i was bored watching them. they all had a different goal in mind and was a text book motives.
enjoyment: there is little to be had. I like the era this was place but that was it.
over all: what killed it for me was the ending. felt like they wanted a different ending from normal and threw it together at the last moment. without spoiling the series i can say WTF with the last 4 esp! so this is my warning......DO NOT WATCH THIS ANIME!!!