bajiir

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.

This is a solid and enjoyable movie, especially if you have consumed a bunch of Japanese media (anime/other) and enjoy that sort of thing. If you're more into Western media this might be a little esoteric for your tastes. The actor who plays Ito (Ryo Narita) does a very solid job. The special effects aren't "Hollywood" but are very respectable and very much serve the story. I haven't read the manga but even so the story it tells is very compelling and makes me curious of the manga to try that out too. Honestly if you're going in blind this is a fun watch over all. Definitely give this movie a try!

The movie is slow, boring, and with stilted characters who have terrible lines. The battles are very PG friendly with no blood and not much action but a lot of "telling" on the part of the characters "Oh no we're losing" as opposed to letting us *see* that a battle might not be going well at a given moment.

The plot progression is so bad that the current "most helpful" reviewer didn't think the Battle of Antietam was in the movie but it *was* it was just so poorly presented and played out that you could miss it if you weren't careful (fighting in the cornfield and on the bridge were pretty evident, plus they mentioned Antietam Creek at least a couple times).

The movie also gets a lot historically wrong, like Robert E Lee wasn't general for the Confederate armies until some ways into the war in 1862 when Joseph Johnston was injured during McClellan's Peninsula Campaign when he first tried to attack Richmond (a campaign the movie entirely skips over including the 7-days battles).

What the movie does have is a lot of long, boring diatribes from Confederates waxing on why they are fighting a "just" war. Even trying to use the excuse that Abraham Lincoln calling up troops following the attack on Ft Sumter is *why* they had to go to war, not them firing on Ft Sumter (which they barely mention).

There is also several "happy slaves" who show up, in one case asking Stonewall Jackson to let him come with him in the army so he can help "protect his home" and Jackson saying "...the job is yours" which is complete horsecrap since the guy is his *slave*. There's no hint of the reality of what it is to be a slave, except in a few instances where Confederates angst about slave uprisings (which goes against the whole "happy slave" narrative they try to put on).

There's also a lot of glorification of Stonewall Jackson and playing it up like he's God's General and fighting for God or what have you, even to the point of having heavenly choir music around him in more than a couple occasions.

As the YouTube reviewer Atun-Shei put it best "I'd rather face a firing squad than have to watch this movie again". Give it a pass, it's boring as hell, the battles aren't very interesting or exciting, and the movie is just a bad attempt at whitewashing the Confederacy.