Leviatã

They reimagined the world war I with bio-engineered animals and some walkers, at-at style, plus other kinds of technology.

From the worldbuilding to the characters to the story itself, I really enjoyed the show.

I could get through even though the CGI is, at times, not so smooth; and I'm definitely not a fan of CGI, up to the point to skip a show if it has any, but everything else was so well created and tailored that it didn't bother me, much.

In any case, if you're a fan of sci-fi or alternative realities, give this a chance because I promise you it will deliver, if only due to the amount of imagination involved in its creation.

It's a tragedy Netflix didn't advertise this properly. Seriously no one is watching it. Why spend the money to make something this good? This is the second time they messed up a Scott Westerfeld book series. Anybody who has read his books loves living in the universe's he creates!

I can only comment that I've read all 3 books. They could have made the series longer but I'm astounded at how much detail was involved. Every aspect from the first page of the book seemed to jump on to my TV screen. They didn't miss a beat. I felt like I was watching the books I read. That's extremely rare for an adaptation.

It's not perfect. There are changes to the story I won't comment on. But the dynamic between Alek and Dyren was spot on. And that was a major plot point.

The art and animation was spectacular and went to the core of imagination for anybody who read the books. It was perfect!

People keep calling this steampunk. It's not. It's actually more dieselpunk. Yes there is a difference.

If you haven't read the books it might be slow or strange in some way. But it's extremely close to recreating the source material so I recommend watching it.

My next wish is a live action of "The Risen Empire" Make that happen Westerfeld!😋

I won't go in too deep, because the show it really short (You can binge watch it in a day), and it was great, so I'd encourage you to watch it.

But to summarize: The Setting was fantastic. The show got me hooked with the first (30 minute) episode.

The Visuals are great. Only the best "animes" had better visuals like Arcane, or To be Hero X.

The base story wasn't super crazy, but how the executed it made it great. Just for an example: I won't consider this a spoiler since it's revealed in the first 5 minutes: One of the main characters (Dylan) is a girl, and she only poses as a boy only to be able to enlist in the UK air force. Just this simple setting makes the story much more interesting and exciting, as you hope she won't get discovered.

I'd be really happy if this show got a 2nd season or more. It was worth every minute.

I've seen some people saying romance killed the show. Don't let that discourage you, that "romance" was basically only in the last episode, and for about ~6-7 minutes.

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.

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.