Back to Relenus's Profile Relenus's Profile

Last Exile is proof that no matter how amazing the setting and concept of a story is, it can still fail to be entertaining at all if it's not told well. I was really excited when I discovered this show. I love steampunk. I love epic adventures. It seemed like a natural hit. And the first episode had me really excited for the rest. Unfortunately after establishing a breathtaking world, Last Exile's problems begin to show up in spades.

First of all, our heroes Lavie and Claus are uninteresting. Lavie is supposed to be a standard tough girl, ... but she only really shows this at a few plot-important moments. That being said, she's at least better off than Claus, who is devoid of any kind of a personality other than "nice guy." There are some supporting characters who show promise, but the story seems glued to the adventures of Lavie and Claus and keeps the supporting characters mostly in the background.

And then of course there's the story. At first it was interesting, a mysterious organization called the Guild starts tearing up fleets of various airship captains, Lavie and Claus are dragged into fighting onboard the Silvana, and there seems to be some foreshadowing for later. However, the story sags so much that I couldn't even force myself to finish it. Though I understand that shows sometimes go through slow patches, this becomes much less acceptable by the fact that I had to force myself to watch every episode from 4 on. And when that big a chunk of a 26-episode series is downright painful to watch, something has definitely gone wrong.

On top of all this, though the series does sport a nice soundtrack and some cool designs for the steampunk world, much of this immersion is ruined by glaringly obvious CG in nearly every dogfighting scene. And although the CG isn't horrible, it's still not very pretty to look at.

Now, I only finished the first half of the show before I called it quits, so maybe it gets better right after all of this and if that's the case, ignore this review completely. But for a show that feels so in love with adventure and the awesomeness that is steampunk, it does a pretty incredible job of slogging all the potential charm and intrigue.

If I could sum Bleach up with one phrase, it would be "wonderful art, terrible story."

I'll start off with the good news: seven years later, Tite Kubo has not sacrificed a single bit of artwork quality for Bleach. One of the best things about Bleach is it's imaginative character design. No two characters have the same fighting style, and it really is amazing the level of detail that goes into shading, considering most mangas with over one billion kazillion chapters like Bleach tend to sacrifice art quickly in order to churn out more chapters with less effort.

But, that is sadly the end to ... the good. Because while Bleach has amazingly creative character designs, it falls horrendously short in original character personalities, or having a passable plot at all.

I'll be honest, the first few volumes of Bleach are quite good. The characters all have their own distinct and interesting personalities, the story is a bit random but solid, and the whole product gives off a cool samurais-meet-Ghostbusters theme. But sadly, all that is thrown down the drain when Rukia is taken to the Soul Society and Ichigo and the gang go and rescue her. At this point, Bleach makes the mistake so many other animes and mangas have made before, and that is introducing way too many characters way too fast, and as a result having dozens of creative characters who get almost no screen time whatsoever while a select few get more than the main characters.

Also at this point in the manga, the fights begin to suffer heavily from "Dragon Ball Z syndrome," in which all skill and agility is replaced by power levels and energy beams.

But the killing blow comes at the beginning of the next arc. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say that Ichigo is suddenly transformed from a punk with a heart of gold into a generic moody manga lead, Orihime is transformed from a pretty girl with a very odd personality into a centuries-old princess that needs constant rescuing, and Chad continues to never win any fight ever.

I loved Bleach when I first started reading it. It felt like such a breath of fresh air. But quickly that freshness gave way to the staleness that plagues the shounen genre so. The only solution is for Tite Kubo to end his shinigami magnum opus as quickly as possible, and try his hardest to give the manga a halfway decent ending (if it's even possible as this point).