Leviathan

The plot is very well produced, and the voice acting is excellent. The animation is spectacular, with talented characters. The character development was natural, not at all forced, and balanced. The work is excellent; there's nothing to complain about. The praise has been so good. I hope there's a second season and a third.

The protagonists Aleks and "Dylan" are probably two of the best characters in the coming-of-age genre I have ever seen. If you are a fan of character development, this show does it masterfully, especially as to Aleks. The development of Aleks from being a "spoiled brat" to a selfless hero is beautiful, and you genuinely feel like you want him to succeed. The romance between the two protagonists was also utterly captivating. That is the strength of this show.

The weakness is that the show didn't really play up to those strengths as much as it could have. The plot itself outside of the friendship and romance aspects between the protagonists had to do a lot with very interesting twists and turns in politics and war and started off amazing, but it really lost its way at the end. No spoilers, but let's just say that there are a bunch of plot holes behind a certain capture. In any case, the politics-war plot was unsatisfying, and it also pretty much caused the ending of the romantic plot to feel unsatisfying as well. It also just makes you feel like it would've just been better to see Aleks and Dylan interact more.

Yet despite all that, when the two did interact before the ending, there was definite chemistry between the two. The way their personalities interacted, especially when it comes to subverting gender expectations or even stereotypes, worked very well with these two.

Without going into detail, I also think the ending in the show diverged from the book in which it is based? It seems like an extremely significant change too. I don't know which ending I prefer when it comes to our protagonists. I think I'd have to see a season 2 to decide, but I definitely think this show warrants a second season, especially given how much the politics-war plot ending left a lot to be desired.

This is so typical for these anime stories; the most important persons are involved in war, but how much hurt do they really get? It says it all.

I get so tired of these "war stories" that don't really show any dangerous conflict they way it should be shown. This story could be about anything really. The reactions from the two most important people after a long involvement in war, is shrugging and making small surprised sounds? They look so cute both of them that one understand that their looks are more important than the story. Boooh! Boring. That is why, at the end of the series I don't really care for any of them.

This show had a lot of potential with the subject matter, setting and being somewhat steam-punkish right around WW1. I had high hopes for seeing how it could go.

Another reviewer pointed out some of the flaws about the walker having a large luxurious bedroom inside, airships being taken down with one shot, and other flaws like that.

Those are all correct, but some of the biggest issues is that the main character(s) just aren't relatable. The main character is naive and well-meaning to the point of being painful. Like he will see a ship of his nations enemy suffer a crash and his immediate reaction is "I can't let them be hurt, I must go help them!". He'll ignore *all* advice to not do it, then when he gets up there he'll drag the secondary main character out of immediate danger, drop a med-kit at their feet and be like "ok I'm done bye!" without any effort to go help anyone else and is surprised when they in turn capture him.

Then he'll give up his most valuable resource for his own needs to rescue several troops of nations enemy *again*. It takes the anime good guy trope to a painful extreme.

Beyond that, in this show Germany is portrayed as the ultimate evil who is out to get everyone including their own allies and is not at all genuine to the WW1 timeframe; taking the cliche "Germany bad" mindset. Worse they make them seem incompetent and helpless, with their opponents able to one-shot multiple of their heavily armored units while being unable to inflict even minor damage to their opponents. It gives you the sense that Germany should have been steam-rolled in WW1 and that their steam-driven machines are weak to small bombs dropped by eagles (I'm not even exaggerating that's literally how it went).

To conclude, this anime focuses too much on unlikable main characters, ignores a lot of historical facts, and introduces way too many shortcuts for the "heroes" to the point you don't have any sense that they were ever in real danger.

There was something of a show here. The revisions to history were alright, not the best. The animation is top notch, deep and beautiful. My biggest complaint and ultimately what stopped me from finishing the season were two things. First, the writing, just bad, the story is boring. It just meanders on its revised historical story with Darwin and mechs and ugh.. it just didn't hold up. Second and still with the writing, is their obsession with making Sharp say "barking" all the time, every sentence she say starts with "barking"! It made her time on screen just silly. Lots to pick apart on this one... barking stay away from it!