Last Exile ep.5-8

February 1, 2004 | 2 Comments

When I first started watching this series, I found the world of Last Exile to be quite peculiar. For example, fresh water is quite the rarity in this world to the point that most people treat it like some expensive alcoholic beverages. At first, I found it amusing when the characters in this series going to the bar and order an expensive fresh water to celebrate a special occasions. Upon reflection, however, I realise that this situation is not that different from our own world where, in some countries, obtaining fresh water is not very easy. In some ways, Last Exile works quite well as a precautionary tale to remind us not to take our water supply for granted.

Anyway, back to the show itself, episode five continues from where episode four left off with Claus and Lavie being saved by Alex Row, the Captain of the Silvana battleship. After the incident, Alex coldly pays Claus and Lavi for their service and orders his crew to retrieve Alvis. Claus, however, is not happy when he realised that Alex sees Alvis as nothing more than a 'merchandise'. After a quick repair of his vanship, he decides to track the Silvana and attempts to board the battleship by force in order to find Alvis. At first Silvana greets Claus and Lavie's vanship with canons in response to being followed by the two young pilots. But after witnessing Claus' perserverance and raw skill in combat, Alex seems to change his mind and allow them to board the Silvana and see Alvis.

Upon arriving inside the Silvana, Claus and Lavie realised that the red vanship that saved them a couple of days ago actually belongs to the Silvana. However, before they can get a good look at it, they are confronted by a group of Silvana crews/mechanics who are not happy with Claus' rash decision to board the Silvana. A fight between Claus and some of these crews then ensues, with Claus ends up as the unfortunate receiver of several well-placed punches. The fight, however, comes to an end when the pilot of the red vanship, Tatiana Wisla, orders the crew to go back to work and tells Claus to go to the deck to find out the whereabouts of Alvis' room within the battleship.

Episode six continues the story with Alvis attempting to escape from her room and ended up finding Claus and Lavie's vanship in the hangar. However, she is soon spotted by the Silvana crews as well as Silvana's vice-captain, Sophia Forrester. Sophia kindly asks Alvis to follow her because she wants her to meet someone. She leads Alvis to a room where Claus and Lavie are temporarily resting. After allowing the three for a short reunion, Sophia tries to persuade Claus and Lavie to understand that Silvana is the safest place for Alvis. Claus, however, is not convinced whatsoever and insist on talking to Alex. Alex and Claus then end up having another brief argument with one another. Their conversation, however, is interrupted when Silvana is suddenly attacked by the same star-shaped robots that attack Claus and Lavie a couple of days ago.

The robots turn out to be the property of the Guild who sees the opportunity to attack Silvana whilst its ace pilot, Tatiana, is away to deliver a message to the Anatoray King. It doesn't take too long before the crews of Silvana are overwhelmed by these robots even after they try to send some vanships to combat the enemy. It's interesting how the show changes its perspective now that we see things from Silvana's point of view. Despite the fact that they are reverred to and feared by other ships, Silvana is just like other battleships who have to earn its victory through a lot of efforts and hardwork. And as we get to see in this episode, they do often get overwhelmed by their enemy and not completely invincible.

One thing that distinguished Silvana from the other battleship groups, however, is the fact that they place more importance on the lives of their crews instead of on their desire to win a battle. If one of their vanships got hit by an enemy, for example, Silvana seems to prefer that they recall the ship and its pilot back instead of letting them getting injured/die in a vain battle. Unfortunately, this leaves their hangar vulnerable to enemy's penetration. As Silvana retrieves destroyed vanships back and forth, a star-shaped robot managed to enter the hangar and seeks to capture Alvis once again. Thankfully, the Silvana crews managed to destroy it before the robot can achieve its objectives. Unfortunately, the remains of the robots crumbled on top of Claus and Lavie's vanship, destroying most of its components.

Enraged by the fact that his vanship is now completely destroyed, Claus asks the permission to fight the Guild. Alex, who doesn't seem to care either way agrees to the idea and tells his crews to prep Claus and Lavie with one of their vanships. As soon as they're about to embark the flight, the hanger is infiltrated once more by another star-shaped robot. Claus, in his anger, decides to attack the robot head on and push it out of and away from the Silvana. This, however, doesn't stop the rest of the star-shaped robots from invading Silvana, forcing the rest of the crews to stage fights against the robots from inside their living quarters. Elsewhere, inside the Guild battleship, a new character called Dio Eracles watches Claus' reckless bravado with newfound interest.

Due to the nature of the situation, the majority of episode seven is spent showing the battles between the Silvana crews versus the Guild's robotic army. Meanwhile, Dio is now impressed with Claus' naive and yet skillful flying skill and decides to participate in the battle himself. He starts to tail Claus and Lavie's vanship and becomes a constant problem for both Claus and Lavie who are not as skillfull in air combat as they are when it comes to flying a ship. Strangely, even though Dio has had two clear chances to shoot Claus' vanship, he never took the opportunity for some reason. Meanwhile, Tatiana and her navigator, Alister Agrew, return from their delivery mission only to find the Silvana under attack from the Guild. They quickly become embroiled in the battle with the Guild as they get closer to the Silvana.

Elsewhere in the sky, Claus is now in trouble because Lavie has somehow lost her consciousness while Claus performed one of his downward maneuver. Things turn from bad to worse as Dio once again gets the opportunity to shoot Claus' vanship. However, before he has the chance to do it, some kind of an alarm seems to have been raised to alert all Guild's robot battleships. In a strange turn of event, all the Guild's battleships immediately stop their battle with Silvana and return in droves to their mothership. I don't really understand why they do this. But my guess is that this is the same situation as in the first episode where both sides have limited amount of time to attack and cause damage to the other and then once the time limit expires, they must return to their mothership. Anyway, the Silvana decides to celebrate for being able to survive the attack and somehow along the way, Claus and Lavie feel like they are now a part of Silvana.

The last episode in the DVD shows the Silvana crew stopping at a public floating dock which doubles as a giant casino to repair the ship which was damaged during the fight with the Guild, as well as to obtain some replenishment. While checking out the casino, Lavie once again meets Mullin Shetland, who has to quit the Claimh Solais battleship due to the injury he received from the Minagith battle. Mullin is now hoping to get a job at another Anatoray ship called 'Goliath' and is waiting for the opportunity to talk to the captain of the ship. However, he soon finds out that Goliath is filled with a bunch of assholes who not only sneered at him for serving under Mad-thane who lost the battle of Minagith but also turn out to be cheaters who don't hesitate to do anything to win a casino bet.

Unfortunately, for the Goliath noblemen, if you can call them that, when they cheat a race tournament, they ended up pissing off Lavie who is disgusted at their behaviour. Being the hotheaded person that she is, Lavie decided to throw a chair into the face of the Goliath captain. This, of course, earns Lavie the wrath of the Goliath soldiers. Seeing how Lavie is in a danger from the Goliath soldiers, the Silvana crews decide to help her, causing a huge brawl between the Silvana crews and the Goliath soldiers. Meanwhile, Mullin, who have been silently observing the behaviour of the Goliath captain and his underlings is finally fed up with their behaviour as well and decided to strike the captain himself.

Mullin tells the Goliath captain that he has suspected it for a while now that the Goliath is filled with nothing but cheaters and selfish losers who left the rest of the Mad-thane fleet helpless when they needed Goliath's help the most. Of course, the captain of Goliath is enraged upon hearing this and decide to strike Mullin with his sword. However, his attack is thwarted by the owner of the Casino, who shoots his sword and tells the captain that he'll have no fight in his Casino. The Goliath captain, however, insists that he anyone who humiliate him must die. Lavie, however, retorts back with the fact that the noblemen deserve to be humiliated. In the midst of the verbal fight, Alex appears and asks his crews including Lavie to return to the ship.

Alex's non-caring attitude in what has transpired thus far pissed off the Goliath captain even more, especially after he realised that the group who staged fights with his soldiers is under Alex's command. He ends up challenging Alex to a ship battle, not knowing that Alex is the captain of the Silvana. Meanwhile, Mullin is sad and depressed as he realises that he had just destroyed his own chance in getting a new job. At the same time, he is not sure if he wants to work for a group of people who are as dishonest as the Goliaths. Back to the Goliath themselves, it doesn't take long for these losers to realise their mistake in challenging Alex. However, being the scumbags that they are, the Goliaths decide to cowardly attack the Silvana from the back before the ship can turn around and strike the Goliath.

Unfortunately for them, Silvana's defence mechanism is far more advance than the Goliath's. In addition to this, Alex has just installed a new weapon which he and Sophia are itching to try. It doesn't take long for Silvana to sunk Goliath, destroying the ship to pieces. Meanwhile, from the dock of Silvana, Alister, Claus, Lavie, Mullin, and the rest of the crew looks on in disbelief as the Goliath is destroyed so easily by Silvana's new canon bombs. Lavie then gives Mullin his medal back telling him that he should be happy that he's lucky enough to not end up being in that ship at the end of the day. Mullin happily agrees with her and realises that he's far better off in not joining the Goliath battleship.

Overall, this has been quite an interesting volume. Unfortunately, there aren't that many character development except for maybe Lavie and Mullin. But in its place, we got many action scenes as well as some comedy scenes. It's nice to know that while Silvana is still considered as an invincible ship by many, when it comes down to it, they can be vulnerable as well. It's a good decision on the part of the writer to place the audience's point of view from the perspective of the people who work inside the Silvana. So now the myth is not so much of a myth and we get to know the crew a bit better and as a result care for them a bit more, especially now that they seem to have taken Claus, Lavie, and Alvis as their own members.

And that's another interesting point about the show. Somehow, during the space of eight episodes, the show manages to bring all of its main casts together under the same place (the Silvana battleship) even though at first they all came from different backgrounds and were located on different parts of the country. Now all of the main characters which include Claus, Lavie, Alvis, Tatiana, Alex, Sophia, Mullin, and Alister are aboard the Silvana. I supposed this way makes it easier for the viewers to direct their sympathy to the plight of the Silvana. I also like that the show makes it obvious that despite their ruthlessness from time to time, all Silvana crews are very protective of each other. For example, even though at first they butthead with Claus and Lavie, now that the two are apart of Silvana, the crews treat Claus and Lavie like their own friends and do not hesitate to help them when they are in trouble.

© memento 2003