I’m glad I had this 13+ year gap when I didn’t watch much anime, because now there are plenty of series out there that I can catch up with. I’m waiting for the next volume of 12 Kingdoms to be released, but in the meantime I can start working my way through the series Last Exile.

Produced by Gonzo who brought you such excellent shows as Vandread and Hellsing and some not so excellent things such as an upcoming adaptation of Witchblade. Ew. I don’t think the world needs more Witchblade.

Last Exile is set in a steampunk sort of world (seems like an alternate Europe around the time of the industrial revolution), where giant ships fly through the air and the military does battle with cannons and musketmen. Claus and Lavie are a team who fly a van ship, a small aircraft. Claus is a pilot with surprising skills for someone so young — Lavie seems to be a navigator/mechanic with a more lively personality than her partner . They make their living as couriers, but take a dangerous job that sends them to a battleground in the air. They manage to survive, but when they are in the middle of a competetion (reminiscent of the pod race in Starwars) they see a pilot crash and drop out of their race to help. They end up promising to complete his mission — transporting a little girl who happens to be pursued by a freaky looking robot plane.

The character design and animation are both richly detailed — the animation ends up combining a 2-D handdrawn look with some 3-D computer generated backgrounds and ships. The first dvd sets up the story, showing how Claus and Lavie relate to each other, detailing the air-based conflict between the kingdoms of Dusis and Anatore, and showing hints of a battleship called the Sylvana which doesn’t seem to be loyal to either side of the war.

Animefringe reviews Midori No Hibi, one of the weirdest ideas for a series I’ve ever heard.

I’m not going to see Polar Express (it just looks creepy to me) but I found this post tweaking the motion capture character design in photoshop interesting. He does manage to make the characters look less zombie like. {via}