I'm an animator and I was initially drawn to the series after seeing the artwork, which by the way is beautiful. Nice clean lines, good use of color to enhance scenes, and the standard Japanese affinity for attention to detail. For a series, I was rather impressed as I am choosy about what I watch, some series have such terrible animation that not even a good story can redeem it. There needs to be a fairly strong marriage between animation and story for it to be a success, and Last Exile has it.
As far as animation goes, it was very good. I'd have to say that it looked as though GONZO was pushing to show off the use of new 3D technology with this one and at times the 3D and 2D elements collided in odd ways. As you see, in animation when using 2D and 3D together generally we try to mesh them together so as to make a unified style and no one can tell the difference. As is sometimes problematic with series (deadlines deadlines deadline!!!) some of the animation looked a little stiff, but hey, you clearly get the idea of what is going on and it's the story that really gets you.
The plot, which everyone else has kindly outlined, is rather intriguing. The writers don't spoon-feed you the entire story so you must do some thinking and imagining on your own. Characters definitely have appeal, whether you love them or hate them, they are evoking emotion and opinion from you as a viewer. My personal favorite character is Dio.
As far as the dubbed version goes, the English voice actors were well selected (unlike some of Disney's choices for the English dubs of Ghibli films *cough cough*). Whether you listen to the Japanese or English audio, both versions use good vocal dynamics (re: none of that monotone "I'm just reading the lines off a paper" stuff) The voice acting gave you a sense of each character's personality (although Lavie's English voice acting got irritating at times).
Overall, if steam-punk is your genre you will enjoy this series. The fantasy world is quite like something that Studio Ghibli would have created and I found myself seeing similarities between this and Laputa (dubbed Castle in the Sky). This is definitely one of the more enjoyable series to watch in English or Japanese.
As far as animation goes, it was very good. I'd have to say that it looked as though GONZO was pushing to show off the use of new 3D technology with this one and at times the 3D and 2D elements collided in odd ways. As you see, in animation when using 2D and 3D together generally we try to mesh them together so as to make a unified style and no one can tell the difference. As is sometimes problematic with series (deadlines deadlines deadline!!!) some of the animation looked a little stiff, but hey, you clearly get the idea of what is going on and it's the story that really gets you.
The plot, which everyone else has kindly outlined, is rather intriguing. The writers don't spoon-feed you the entire story so you must do some thinking and imagining on your own. Characters definitely have appeal, whether you love them or hate them, they are evoking emotion and opinion from you as a viewer. My personal favorite character is Dio.
As far as the dubbed version goes, the English voice actors were well selected (unlike some of Disney's choices for the English dubs of Ghibli films *cough cough*). Whether you listen to the Japanese or English audio, both versions use good vocal dynamics (re: none of that monotone "I'm just reading the lines off a paper" stuff) The voice acting gave you a sense of each character's personality (although Lavie's English voice acting got irritating at times).
Overall, if steam-punk is your genre you will enjoy this series. The fantasy world is quite like something that Studio Ghibli would have created and I found myself seeing similarities between this and Laputa (dubbed Castle in the Sky). This is definitely one of the more enjoyable series to watch in English or Japanese.