While I had no broadband, one of the things I did was marathon some anime I’d been saving up. I’d had Kiddy Grade for a while now, and I finally had the perfect opportunity to power through it. I still remember the first time I heard about Kiddy Grade: Ender was complaining to me about how he got kicked off a DC hub for having episodes of Kiddy Grade; apparently they thought he was stashing some child pr0n. When I asked him if he would recommend the series, he didn’t sound very enthusiastic. However, while not a very smooth ride, Kiddy Grade certainly had its moments.
Kiddy Grade tells the story of two partners, Éclair and Lumiere, that work for the Galactic Organization of Trade and Tariffs (GOTT). The series starts off showing Éclair and Lumiere on a number of simple cases, and we get a glimpse into the life of two C-class ES agents. The first 10 episodes seem like pretty cliche fluff, full of absurd blushing and lots of fanservice, but after that things suddenly ramp up and get way more interesting.
It was the middle of the series that really grabbed my attention. Basically, Éclair refuses to help out some sleazeballs and, in disobeying orders, has her ES license revoked. Even worse, she’s now scheduled to be purged. Naturally Lumiere helps her out, and we get several exciting on-the-run episodes with hints at Éclair’s shadowy past. Just as you might expect, Éclair is not some scrub ES agent; she’s actually a G-class fighter. Lumiere turns out to also possess G-class powers, and the two of them go on a Kill Bill rampage that takes GOTT down hard.
Unfortunately, this is where the series gets unnecessarily complicated. The whole Dvergr and Alv thing barely makes any sense, although I thought Dvergr’s true identity hilarious. The fights also started to get all stupid, like a Naruto-filler fight. All the conspiracy and eventual alliances felt cheesy and inconclusive, and I found myself just forcing down the last episodes just so I could be done with the series.
I’d have to say that the majority of Kiddy Grade is not very good, but those middle episodes are excellent, and will sadly trick many viewers into hanging on until the bitter end. The blushing was really getting on my nerves towards the end, but with a little less fanservice, and some reworking of the last few episodes, I feel like this could have been a pretty good series. Voice acting seemed pretty good, and the music wasn’t too shabby either. Overall, Kiddy Grade strikes me as a deeply flawed series that still has the potential to garner a few fans. I will always have a special spot in my heart for Kiddy Grade, because before learning about G-class, I really thought that S-class was the ceiling.
Kabitzin’s Rating: 3/5
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Kabitzin – who has written 1940 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
To be honest, just stop after Eclair and Lumiere die.
You find it’s a much better series.
I did, and I found it enjoyable.
I take it that S means Super and G is God?
I remember someone once asked me:
“At which point does Kiddy Grade go down hill?”
I replied:
“episode 9 and 10 was the hill.”
Episode 10 was so full of emotion and energy, that I seriously thought this series was going somewhere.
Yet it appears that was a mere accident. The rest of the series was uninspiring, especially since I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of the characters.
I take it that S means Super and G is God?
In Kiddy Grade there are three levels of ES-member powers.
C-Class
S-Class
G-Class
C-Class is “Channel Opener”
S-Class is “Shamanic Operative”
G-Class is “Gazer of Cosmos”
Other random facts that are worth noting.
The Eclair and Lumiere clones are know as “Lightning and Twinkle” and only have the C-Class Power and Puppet, not the full G-Class Power and Particle
One of the other receptionists, the black haired one, is also an ES-Member. She’s an S-class but I don’t know what her power is.
Kiddy Grade, together with Hellsing and Saikano, constitute what I deemed to be GONZO’s unholy trio of squandered greatness. They have good premises, interesting character setups and so much potential. But all squandered by poor storytelling.
And to this day, I haven’t figured out what the title has to do w the series.
I think squandered greatness describes quite a few GONZO series. My favorite example is Speed Grapher, but Kiddy Grade is also one of them.
Speed Grapher is unusual as a Gonzo failure, because it actually has a very serviceable plot. It is one of the few Gonzo animations that failed solely due to low animation quality. Strange, because Gonzo generally make pretty looking works that sucked in plot.
Well, Gonzo used to make top-quality animation. Ever sense the branched into multiple series at once, they would only have the first few episodes animated well, along with an odd looker in the middle and end, and let the rest be done by some animation factory somewhere.
Remember Vandread? That was quality animation all the way through. Why? Because that was pretty much the only thing they worked on at the time.
“Overall, Kiddy Grade strikes me as a deeply flawed series that still has the potential to garner a few fans.”
That pretty much sums up about every GONZO anime created. They manage to get a hold of so much wonderful properties only end up with them screwing it up. (KyoAni did such a wonderful job of revitilizing FMP with Fumoffu!) Speed Grapher was cool for about 2 episodes then fell flat on it’s face. Even the best animes from GONZO had tons of serious flaws i.e. Hellsing, Full Metal Panic and Last Exile. I remember being so excited that Chrono Crusade was being picked up as an anime only to be very disappointed by the results. I’ve really grown tired and jaded of their work.
I’m just astonished how many fans they’ve managed to garner despite their continuious missteps. But I’m not pointing the finger only at GONZO, there are plenty of studios I feel the same way about *cough*Xebec*cough*.
I do agree with Sang that GONZO used to make some quality work that were quite wonderful to behold, flawed in direction but at least not production. These days it seems like they can’t get even one right.
Ah well, I guess I’m just becoming more cynical as I get older.
You know, I keep hearing comments about the flaws of Last Exile, but nothing ever specific. What exactly was flawed about Last Exile? I sincerely hope it is some genuine rating-breaking flaw, and not something inconsequential or subjective.
The art was good, the VAs were good, the songs were gorgeous, the plot was believable, etc… I seem to be missing something here. ô_Ó?
Just by what standards can an anime be considered okay? Absolute perfection? I hope not, coz if that is the case, then there is no good anime.
On a related note, I found Chrno Crusade to be very enjoyable, if… heart-breaking at the end.
Yeah. Bandwagon people. Even after rewatching it a few times, I still don’t get it. What flaw of Last Exile?
I felt SG was good, Basilisk was good, LE is the Bible. Argh my review on Last Exile is still in the works due to the desire to make it perfect and destroy all the baseless claims that it is not a work of divine beings.
Btw Kiddy Grade was bad. But do remember the beautiful character designs by Keiji Gotoh who also did Nadesico and Gatekeepers’ C.designs.
Btw Kiddy Grade was bad. But do remember the beautiful character designs by Keiji Gotoh who also did Nadesico and Gatekeepers’ C.designs.
Close, but no cigar.
Kiddy Grade was directed by Keiji Gotoh, and he has done many pieces of official art for the show, but…he didn’t do the character designs.
The character designs are by his wife, Megumi Kodonosono.
She also did the Uta-Kata designs too I think.
The flaws of Last Exile are not to be found in the animation although I remember a single scene during the race in some of the earlier episodes very well which looked ridiculous. It might be only series in which GONZO ever got CG consistently right. I think Last Exile is a great series but you have to admit that most characters which seemingly had a deep background story ended up as shallow decorations. Add a couple of unresolved plot threads and it does not really qualify as a true masterpiece anymore even though it’s certainly way above average. What’s really sad about GONZO is that I believe they could have gotten every single series right if the had listened to the otaku in their hearts.
Off-topic: Does anyone know what happened to our beloved Cinnamon Ass? His website seems to be getting DoSed since a couple of days now. Actually, it started just when Kabitzin moved to his new Burg. Is that just a coincident?
Most characters? Which characters? As far as I am aware of it, the main characters are the wholesome pair, with the rest of the cast serving as secondary characters to flesh out the main characters’ story. Specifically which character(s)’s background story was disappointing for you? I wish to know specifics here.
Secondly, which plot threads? I need exact examples here, because Last Exile is not a series that spoonfeeds the audience, and so some explanation/exposition may slip past a person’s first viewing. Much like how SHaruhi is crammed with references/details that may blissfully sail over our heads until somebody else points it out to us.
Cheers.
Chris – I’d imagine the issues at CAss are pretty much the same as the ones he had last month – exceeded bandwidth due to a combination of increased traffic and shared bandwidth. I think he’s on a monthly account, so it’ll probably be back up in a couple of days. Bluwacky is still in the middle of his end-of-course exams anyway, IIRC, so he wouldn’t likely to update much this week anyway.
As for Kiddy Grade, I kind of respect it for having the balls to change character designs modway (though the newer ones were kind of fugly), but the ending was way too deus ex machina for my liking and kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. That, and I thought the b-characters were far more interesting than the leads, and simply didn’t get enough screen time.
She also did the Uta-Kata designs too I think.
Which was also directed by Keiji Gotoh.
Noticing a pattern?
Anyway, I hope gimik turns Gemini Knives into an anime, sure, it kinda looks like Kiddy Grade mkII, but dammit, I LIKED KIDDY GRADE!
Please don’t quote me in full, you’re violating my intellectual property. Snippets are OK, that’s fair use. Anyway, this topic has popped up before you, so might just want to read this:
http://www.seaslugteam.com/2006/03/06/last-exile-review/
You can certainly recommend Last Exile to anyone and nobody’s going to be disappointed. I just think under its strengths lie in the beautiful surface not the plot or the characters.
That link’s a really great review! As for CAss, I agree it’s probably a monthly limit thing, as some hosting companies will cap you out and then shut you down for the rest of the month when you hit the limit. My personal blog used to be on a free host that did exactly that.
As an off-topic remark to Last Exile, I liked it a lot, but if you watched it one episode at a time, I think it weakens a bit. Claus especially was a rather boring, static character, and towards the end, the focus shifted a little too randomly, making it difficult to follow if you watched one episode a week. I would still recommend LE to anyone, but it isn’t perfect.
I definitely liked the Uta~Kata and Kiddy Grade designs. I also thought Eclair’s lipstick whip was one of the coolest weapons I’ve seen in a long time. Not to be outdone, however, Armbruster had a freaking sweet briefcase that bordered on being ridiculously overpowered. It can stop time and light your smokes?!
I seriously start to question people’s sanity when they start focusing on the plot in a series where it’s a well endowed chick beating people with lipstick while her loli hackher sidekick talks about being lady like and drinks grape juice O_o
it was a fun fanservice filled sci fi anime… analyzing it beyond that takes out the fun..
altho why the cheesiness of the OP got left out (as wella st eh confusion on the translation do to engrish:D) is kinda disspointing…Iwas alughing going thru the fansubs
Yes, that OP was mad cheesy, but it sort of fit the ridiculous nature of the show. I started to like the ED after ep 9 gave siginificance to its rather gloomy feel.
I almost feel that series can be graded differently based on whether they are marathoned or not. As Kabitzin pointed out, LE is just so much better when marathoned, as are many other series. Does this mean that the series is “inferior” because it can’t hold its own on a per-episode basis? Who knows.
Lately, I’ve become more inclined to hoard up a large number of episode before finally watching them all in one fell swoop. In the meantime, there’s always old unwatched series to go back to and finish off.
FYI, I marathoned Last Exile. And each time I do it, I don’t stop till the whole show’s over.
Most anime these days, I stop at about 5-6 episodes before the final one and then wait for it to finish.
Wait a bit, doesn’ that mean Keiji Gotoh didn’t do Gatekeepers’ designs as well? I have been living a lie. And his wife has the weirdest name.
My first viewing of Last Exile was episodic, since it was shown at 11pm, Wed-Fri on TV. I was hooked, and writhed in agony everytime I couldn’t catch it( I was still serving compulsory military service at that time, as a Regimental Policeman… aka… Guard Duty).
My second viewing of Last Exile was from the released VCDs, from a local company named Blue Max. This enabled me to marathon it, but man… the quality sucked… I really hate buying VCDs these days, but there was no Last Exile DVD locally at that time. The subbing was done by a local company too, and to put it frankly, it was abysmal. For crying out loud… they couldn’t even sub the names properly, when said names are in the titles! What the fish?!
My third viewing of Last Exile was from fansubs.
Now I just need to get the DVDs for a fourth viewing.
Cheers.
Wait a bit, doesn’ that mean Keiji Gotoh didn’t do Gatekeepers’ designs as well? I have been living a lie. And his wife has the weirdest name
No, Keiji Gotoh did the Gatekeepers character designs.
But he didn’t direct that show.
He has only ever directed Kiddy Grade and Uta~Kata
well the series was ok but i loved the ending song couldnt get enough of it heheheehehe listened to it all day and im still not bored hehe
The fact i watched full 26 episodes long scifi action anime have to mean that Last exile is some way good, i usually skip 95% from that genre. Though it was far from marathon style, somewhere middle of the series i had several months long break. I just forgot whole thing.
“Ender was complaining to me about how he got kicked off a DC hub for having episodes of Kiddy Grade; apparently they thought he was stashing some child pr0n.”
LMAO ROFL
………..still laughing.
Hi hi!
i think kiddy grade is sure a great thing,tho it lost some sparkle after episode 10 i think..the whole plot of eclair and d’autriche was lame.