Thank God you maintain this blog and the forums otherwise I wouldn't have a clue as to what's going on with Last Exile. I'm still a fan and from time to time I like to check in with the series and see what's going on. I'm glad there's someone on the Internet as awesome as you who keeps the fandom up to speed.

I think of all the anime and manga series I've read, LE is the most convoluted in terms of characters and time frames and worlds. It's annoying that the anime staff decided to acquiesce to the request of the author because even though that makes this written story canon, it's shoddy storytelling on their part because it forces you to seek out and read the supplemental material to find out WTF happened. When telling a story, you have failed as a storyteller if you require the reader/watcher/listener to seek out supplemental material just to make sense of it all.

I read your comments about the time skips and the WTF-ness of how the story was constructed, I'm really glad you tried to stay as close to the source material as possible so that we could see just how confusing the Japanese version really was. You did a great job considering the material you were working with. Your comments were really helpful!

I get that Al and Holly trained in the Travelers manga, but it still confuses me as to why the story describes Al as suddenly being this amazing pilot when clearly only a year has passed between Travelers and this story. I mean it took Claus and Lavie something like 4 years to get good, and in those 4 years they were flying pretty much daily on courier routes. Unless Al magically started flying as a courier daily like they did, I see no reason why she would suddenly be a good pilot with so little experience.

One last thing at confused me is why Claus is in a wheelchair at all. I mean the story says he was shot in his shoulder, arms, and legs... so why is it that his arms and shoulder are fine and his legs aren't? By that logic Claus would be on crutches or a walker or some sort instead of being carted around like he's incurred a spinal injury. Somehow I don't think the author thought that one all the way through.

It also makes me LOL that Dunya had a baby out nowhere, with no buildup. They never talk about her being pregnant, and then suddenly she's having a kid. Technically that would mean this put the entire timeline from when Claus left to his return being something like 9 to 11 months based of Mullin's comment when he first left.

The lack of backup on Claus's part, especially when he's doing this so close to dignitaries and whatnot, is just astoundingly stupid. Especially since everyone in universe knows that Dio and Claus are about equal with each other. I would surmise that overall Dio's actually a better pilot than Claus. Quite frankly Claus deserves to get shot for that. LOL