Claus and Lavie are childhood friends who fly their fathers’ vanship (think mini-airplane). They lost their parents when they were both just little kids and have had nothing but each other for years. They are message couriers flying around the country delivering letters so they can pay to keep their little house and their vanship flying. Flying is the only thing they love. They pretty much ignore the war between their country, Anatore and the neighboring country Dusis. They just want to fly. The war is controlled by a small group of powerful people called the Guild. The Guild supplies the engines that power the larger ships and allow them to fly, and through flying to do battle with each other.
Clause and Lavie may not have much, but they are happy because they get to fly together. Their life is simple. Until they get an expected job delivering a little girl named Alvis. Things start to go downhill for all three of them as they quickly discover that the Guild is after Alvis and will stop at nothing to get her. Clause can’t stand to just dump Alvis off and leave her so he and Lavie take it on themselves to make sure Alvis is safe, even after reaching their destination. Only the captain of the Sylvana (where Alvis was to be delivered) seems to know why the Guild is after Alvis, and that reason seems to be that Alvis is the only one who can save the world from the Guild.
This was an exciting story with some really neat thought put into the design of the various ships flying through the air. There is a second season with all new characters but I have not yet started watching it so I can’t say much about it. There was a good story behind the animation instead of throwing a bunch of half-naked girls on screen to cover for the lack of story.
Season 2 was different. It really was less a season two and more a spin-off. I’m not finished watching it but I’ve gotten most of the way through. The story is pretty good but not as good as Season 1. The first half of the season was spent trying to figure out what was going on. Some parts of the story seemed to indicate they were back on Earth (assumed to be Earth) and other parts indicated that they were still on the other planet that Season 1 took place on. To be honest I’m still not sure where they are.
The Vanships you grew to love in Season 1 are pretty much gone. There are all kinds of different Vanships but they are all these tiny little things that make no sense. Season 1 was filled with ships that needed the Guild to power them so they could fly. Season 2 is filled with ships that are powered by themselves. The story up to now seems to pretty much be about one of the countries trying to service as a government in exile. If you haven’t been able to tell already while Season 2 was decent it hasn’t left any lasting memories.
As for content, Season 1 was very clean. Season 2 was a different story. The very first scene was the main star pulling off most of her clothes and falling out of a plane. It has nothing to do with the rest of the show. She is sleepwalking and they comment about how this happens all the time and I’ve yet to see it happen again. So basically they put it in to get a rating. It’s worth skipping. The opening sequence is also very inappropriate and worth skipping. Again I got the feeling that the only reason sequence was made that way was for the rating. If you skip these two pieces you should enjoy the show.