LASTEXILE

LASTEXILE(Last Exile) is an anime series that takes place in a dieselpunk-ish world where an eternal war had been raging for…I dunno, it’s eternal, with the so-called Guild acting as mediators. However, the situation has changed. Why? One crazy guy has decided to fight the guild and the people he dragged along will help end the eternal war. Yay!
LASTEXILE was something I found I unexpectedly vibed^A) with, though I’m a bit frustrated by it, since it’s deeply flawed. Overall though, yeah, I think it’s good. You should check it out. It’s related to another series called Ao no 6-Gō and, apparently, many of the staff who worked on that came back here. Honestly, not at all hard to see.

If you watch this back-to-back with Ao6…it’s glaringly obvious that the creators were recycling ideas. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, though, because those ideas do better here than there.
Instead of focusing on weird ideas and ignoring good ones…they actually focused on some good ideas!
Though this is where the ‘LASTEXILE curse’ begins: including Ao6, each Last Exile series is flawed in a significant way…but always in a different way, which really raises questions about how they make these things, when an earlier series lacks a problem that a later series has.
This is the time when I tell you that my notes don’t give much that is concrete. For example, while I know this series is flawed, I apparently forgot to write down what those flaws are. Though…I prefer this over Ao6…like, significantly so.
I think I wrote something somewhere, but I don’t know where yet.

This is a spin-off/sequel to LASTEXILE which takes place a few years afterwards. It’s in both Manga and Anime form, though I haven’t checked whether the Anime (which I watched) is an adaptation or not.
There’s some confusion related to Anatoray here, where apparently the rest of the world is aware that Anatoray exists and is related to an Exile, but isn’t aware where exactly they are or that Anatoray has superior tech to everyone else in the world.
I remember thinking that I really disliked the whole ‘kumbaya peace’ stuff that is common in anime…it’s present in LASTEXILE too, though there it does make some sense, since there are only two countries.
My notes claim that most of the minor issues from LASTEXILE are gone.
I was pleasantly surprised that the series actually had characters from the first season present, though this is extra pleasant, since the new characters are just…not quite there.
As far as my memory is concerned (I have more notes but I forgot where I put them), this one is worse than LASTEXILE, though I don’t remember why. I think it’s because of the Kumbaya stuff.

The very title of the series, plus what we see in Gin’yoku no Fam, heavily implies that the characters from LASTEXILE were the last ones to return to Earth.
Further evidence to suggest this is the fact other returnees had apparently been on Earth for over a century by the time Gin’yoku no Fam starts, yet the characters from LASTEXILE have only aged by like 3-5 years.
Other evidence that could suggest this is that nobody knows anything about them: the Silvius is completely unknown and considered an urban myth. On top of that, nobody except the returnees seem to use vanships in combat in the same way as the returnees, though Anatoray isn’t the only exception in that regard.

I think that the returnees (specifically Anatoray) are better at combat than anyone else on Earth. This is probably due to the perma-war they had been in for centuries, during which they improved their own tech and simultaneously got better at war.
Evidence that they’re better is in the simple fact they seem to always outdo every other inhabitant of Earth.

• Official Website
• aniDB
• AniList
• You can get to Gin’yoku no Fam via the power of links.