Episode 20 –
Well, with this episode, at least it can be said that the finale for this series will be quite drama-laden. After all, with the return of Luscinia, the advent of peace, and the bits of drama with Liliana (and her death), there’s no way that some major conflict won’t break out within the next episode. The issue I see here, though, is how there are only 3 more episodes left to Ginyoku no Fam. There’s only 3 weeks left, yet the story has barely had any legitimately good character development for Fam, nor has the role of Anatoray in the story been elaborated upon, and even characters like Millia suffer from some poor character development. The story is also obviously trying to rush things to try and reach a proper conclusion, but I fear that a rushed plot will derail from this series the very little it had left going for it.
The main highlights for Last Exile in recent episodes have been the ratcheting political tensions amongst the nations on Earth. While the main cast still spouts on about peace (especially Fam), the atmosphere has been quite intense. With the Gracies remnants always seeming to plot some sort of back-stabbing, the arrival of Luscinia (who has been the villain for a while), and the constant conflict between Millia and Liliana, the general atmosphere to this show has been one without much trust. It was quite obvious that one of the factions would eventually cross that forbidden line, and induce some sort of conflict; the Gracies remnants doing so is honestly not much of a surprise.
What was rather interesting about this episode was how it tried to redeem Liliana in the eyes of viewers before her dramatic death while she tried to protect Luscinia. After so many episodes of distrusting Liliana, Gonzo’s attempts to redeem her as a “good guy” wasn’t quite convincing, which made her death ring hollow to my ears. I honestly didn’t care for her dying, which attests to how poorly Gonzo went about trying to make her a sympathetic character. The somewhat symbolic-yet-predictable moment here was how they had Liliana die in a manner strikingly similar to the previous empress had died protecting her. Subtlety was obviously the least of Gonzo’s concerns this week.
Liliana’s death does introduce some intriguing possibilities though. With her gone, now Millia is the key to Turan’s Exile-in-the-sky, and there’s also no telling what Luscinia will do here. He’s been a giant enigma for most of this series, and even now, we have yet to learn much about him. All we do know is that he had a severe reaction to the death of the Ades Federation’s former empress, and I’d imagine that Liliana’s death might trigger a similar fiery reaction. With the prospects of a peace treaty seemingly shattered by the attempted assassination of Luscinia (and Liliana’s resulting death), I get the strange feeling the situation is going to escalate a lot. Oh yea, and Fam once again doesn’t play into the plot too much this week; thank god 😀
Overall Enjoyment: 3.0/5
Screenshots are later in the post.
Distant Paradise 
Political drama aside, one of the funnier parts (for me) of the episodes was Sadri’s awkward attempts of finding out about Fam’s family heritage. The old man has his suspicions, and I as you mentioned already, subtlety wasn’t in evidence here: here is your lost granddaughter, Sadri. Are you horrified yet?
“are you horrified yet?”. Haha, while I probably would have reacted in that manner, it seems that Sadri has a more complex set of feelings towards the discovery of his long lost granddaughter. Or at least, he certainly is rather curious about what happened to her in the past, etc.
This does make me wonder whatever happened to Sadri’s daughter, Fam’s supposed mother figure. We never did quite learn Fam’s backstory beyond the fact that she was abandoned and raised by air pirates.
Either ways, this connection between the two reeks of foreshadowing, where they will probably face off against each other sometime in the future. Maybe I’m just over-speculating here though :3
i think sadri’s suspicions have already been pointed out in the previous episode, this one is just fully exploring his hunch. i’m guessing that raha is fam’s mother and that she is some sort of lost ades noble/princess. pretty interesting turn since fam’s story has been put into the sidelines in the recent eps (considering that she is the titular character).
Yea, I agree on how it’s interesting that Fam has been sidelined even though she’s the titular character. Quite frankly, I couldn’t be happier that the incompetent Fam is no longer taking center stage.
The problem is that most of the characters are lacking in development; the size of the cast is too large, and there are too few episodes left to properly resolve all their storylines.
Fam would be a princess, and she can control an Exile. enuff said
Haha, I don’t quite know where that idea came from, but unless she’s directly related to royalty, I don’t think she would gain control of an exile.
Though that would certainly be a rather interesting plot twist.