The Pilot’s Love Song Episode 1 | TFP Review
bctaris: Okay, I’ve not seen The Princess and the Pilot. From what I gather (despite the ANN entry calling this a “sequel”) this is a prequel, of sorts, to that. Or just more of the story from earlier in the novels than the movie.
Sensuifu: I don’t think it’s a prequel, nor a canonical sequel to the former The Princess and the Pilot. The story takes place in the same universe, just set at another time…whether or not it’s before or after the events in the movie, isn’t clear.
bctaris: I can say, however, that the opening in medias res aerial combat sequence was a fairly spectacular introduction to the animation. More impressive to me than most of what I saw in the Last Exile: Fam the Silver Wing. Can’t help thinking of that franchise for other reasons with this, but I hope the story and characters here conduct themselves much, much better.
Of course the normal, non-CG’d character animation is much simpler. But decent enough that I can understand how the budget is balanced.
Oh, and the story: Kalel’s got anger issues. It’s in the show descriptions, so not an exact spoiler, though the show begins without revealing it and I only read it afterward–it did at least indicate better why he acts so unreliably here:
[Spoiler:] So he’s a former prince, with something out for the princess. But this’ll be about him learning love and friendship, and maybe letting go? Aww.
Ariel’s not original, but she’s more fun than also-not-original “mystery girl” Claire, and has red hair, so she’s fun enough. The “little brother/little sister” fighting’s amusing. One more not-very-original shady-guy-with-white-hair is…what he is.
Any case, the episode suggests much death and mayhem ahead. Interesting enough, and slots in for a general adventure show this season. (Last couple seasons have faltered in this department.) The battle animation will help that along.
Sensuifu: I think I’ve been spoiled with aerial dogfight scenes from movies like WoH, that the more recent CG-rendered sequences in TV series end up looking unimpressive. I wouldn’t exactly call it bad, just bland. Though that’s probably a bad comparison due to one being a movie with a higher budget. Still, it’s hard not to make the comparison to Last Exile or it’s sequel because those are basically the only other shows that share aviation/airplane themes.
Kalel and Arilel must be the same age since they’re always arguing about seniority. And yeah, Kalel does need to learn to curb his anger..getting into a quarrel with his sister and getting pissed off enough to run after the white hair dude giving him the ‘evil eye’. I mean seriously, there are people who might suffer from resting asshole face
I’m following this, though it’ll be difficult not to compare it to the movie. Even though the movie was nothing but…[spoiler:] an ‘escort mission turned into a long-ass date’, it was simple, charming and entertaining enough, that it’s hard not to like. I really enjoyed it, and hopefully this series proves to run in a similar vein, albeit with more depth- story and character-wise.
Sly05: Comparisons to Last Exile are hard not to make and the promise of epic aerial battles has me intrigued even if the rest of the episode was fairly standard fair and much of the art was extremely simple and bland. I’ve never seen the Princess and the Pilot either and didn’t learn that this was connected to that until after I watched the episode, but hopefully it won’t require any familiarity with the movie.
Nork22: So it’s looking to be a simple romance story of ousted noble/commoner and a noble with some promising aerial combat. I started to warm up to this show after Kalel met Claire. Will continue to watch this.
Gildor: I find it interesting that they used VTOL/tilt rotor planes in the show, given how controversial they are in Japan right now. Or it could be an unrelated design decision by the show staff…
EyeOfPain: I looked into this, and it seems to be an issue that arose sometime last year, and the original novels were published from early 2009 to 2011 [link].
Having seen the movie first, this first episode was a bit disappointing. I did not expect the story to center on a group of kids/young adults, so that change feels like a step down from the maturity of the earlier work. Kal-el and Ariel’s relationship had a couple of amusing moments, but the class distinction issues in this universe just didn’t feel like they were handled as well as, again, the film.
