Huge disappointment.
The world of Last Exile is one of the more interesting anime realms that I have come across and the original series remains a favorite of mine. The mix of steam punk and sound story-telling draw you in and make you love the stage and feel for the characters on it.
Fam, the Silver Wing looked to be an exciting continuation of that world, but it falls distressingly short. The primary problem comes in the narrative inconsistency and the rather pathetic characters. In what is otherwise a compelling story about empire and conflict - a story dripping in moral implications - the naivete of the protagonist and the nonsensical resolutions of poor moral choices make this almost unwatchable at times. There is nothing worse than having a show try to get you to feel bad for characters engaging in genocide. And it takes a good third of the series to fully explain how this timeline and the prior series ultimately relate, which is supremely confusing.
But for all that, the...
Almost -- but not quite
Frankly, I loved the original Last Exile and mourned the possible loss of Dio as well as the death of the Captain. Now we come to Fam, the Silver Wing and the confusion sets in. I had hoped for an explanation of Dio's escape from death, but there was none. Then we hear that former planet inhabitants have been coming in from the hourglass shaped world for hundreds of years, taking over territory that the inhabitants who never left earth have been working to unite and rebuild. It's confusing because there is no apparent explanation of the time frame in which the story is being set. When did the Anatore-Disith folks return? Why do they all seem to be the same age as in the original story? SPOILER: Why is one of the two leading characters in the previous story in a wheelchair asking whether he'll ever fly again? I watched the complete series twice, just in case I had missed something; however, I don't believe I did. So timeline confusion was a big negative for me along with lack...
What starts brilliantly...
Ends in a predictable all female cast anime style way.
If you are a fan of the series, watch this for sure. In some ways its much better than the first. It also fills in some bits n pieces of what happened after the first ended. But where Fam fails is in the fact most of the cast is all female and the writers don't get creative with it. How characters react to things gets beyond predictable. They use tired out lines about stopping fighting and war...then when someone acts like you'd expect a person to do, everyone is horrified. Moments like: oh no, how could you take revenge on those who murdered so many people?!! You must be more evil than them! Oh how terrible you must be!! It really gets on your nerves later in the series because it just exposes the weaknesses in the characters even more.
Case in point, pay attention to Dian. She is the only character in the entire series who actually stays true to her character and doesn't compromise on it. Fam's head is...
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