Last Exile/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Canon Sue: Claus. Ridiculously good at everything: piloting, navigating, mechanics. Wins everyone over with his wonderful personality. You'd need two hands to count the number of characters who fall in love with him. Especially when he's placed in the cockpit with characters who have reasonable flaws (Lavie, Tatiana), Claus always just comes out looking a little too good.
    • If he were a girl, he might already be famous for his Suishness.
    • While the above is not wrong, it's slightly more justified than usual because he wasn't some hick farmboy that's an Instant Expert as soon as he gets in the cockpit; he'd already been flying dangerous missions for years -- the Backstory shows him damn near getting killed a couple times earning his wings. And daring airplane pilots have always been Mr. Fanservice. As for flaws, well, he's kind of an Extreme Doormat.
    • Also worth noting: He's only "ridiculously good at everything" if it involves flying/maintaining vanships. Outside of his vanship, he's pretty useless.
      • And even then the first time he gets into one of the Silvana's fighter vanships he has no idea what he is doing, and would have gotten himself and Lavie killed if Dio hadn't been just playing with them.
  • Character Derailment: In the TV series, Mullin gets into an argument with his fellow mechanics because they were implying that Claus and Tatiana became an item after their crash landing, saying that he felt sorry for Lavie. In the Travelers from the Hourglass manga, he implies that Claus and Tatiana became an item after their crash landing in front of Lavie, then wonders why she got upset.
  • Complete Monster: By the end of the series we all want Delphine to die. Die so much. Warfare, torture, brainwashing, duels to the death; she looks upon them all with a pleased smile.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Delphine is surprisingly easy on the eyes.
  • Fridge Brilliance: In episode 10, Claus and Lavie are seemingly abandoned at their docking stations by their crew during a blackout after a particularly harrowing race. They can apparently get out once the lights turn on a couple hours later, but are stranded in the meanwhile. Now this may seem like a particularly mean spirited thing to do until you take into account that Claus and Lavie are both healthy young adults with a close relationship. Claus and Lavie share their cramped quarters with a young child on a ship that probably doesn't offer much privacy. The crew left them with a good chance to win the race. The crew likely assumed that celebrations would be in order.
  • Ho Yay: The engineer Gale admits to a crush on Claus, and Dio seems awfully fond of him, with all that glomping and whatnot. Of course, everybody loves Claus in this series. And who does Claus get that doughy-eyed look of love for? His vanship. There's also considerable subtext between Tatiana and her navigator.
    • And the aforementioned Ho Yay between Dio and Lucciola.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Delphine blows Lucciola to tiny pieces, then laughs and twirls as Lucciola's remains fall down like snowflakes.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Delphine crosses it when she brainwashes Dio. She makes him do very bad things.
    • Or even before that when she causes a ship delivering water to refugees to crash on top of them.
  • Subbing vs. Dubbing: Your Mileage May Vary, of course, but the dubbed version is quite good; special notice goes to Dio's voice actor: Joshua Seth.
  • Tear Jerker: Several scenes in the Mood Whiplash-laden ending, most notably Alex's final moments, and Dio's delusion of being back at the time of the race (repeating a certain phrase that seemed cold at the time), with the heartbreak heightened by his reaction after he thinks he has won and turns around...
  • The Woobie: