Stream It Or Skip It?

Author Scott Westerfeld’s award-winning YA novel Leviathan gets the anime treatment courtesy of Netflix, which also adapted his Uglies book series into a maddeningly mediocre movie last year. One episode of Leviathan confirms that his work gets better treatment this time around, which isn’t saying much, but hey, at least it has a high ceiling. The steampunk saga stretches over 10 episodes, exploring a teenage romance against the backdrop of an alt-universe World War I – an intriguing concept, but will it work in serialized anime form?

LEVIATHAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A chessboard. A hand moves knight to something something. 

The Gist: Turns out Alek (Dor Gvirtsman) something something’d himself. He has no one to play chess with, it seems. It’s after midnight. He lives in a castle. He’s the son of the Archduke of Austria-Hungary. And he has handlers, or assistants, maybe tutors, but mostly babysitters it seems? Volger (Rob Nagle) and Klopp (Gregory Cupoli) rouse their young mentee as he pretends to sleep. It’s the middle of the night and they tell him to quickly get dressed for an impromptu training mission. Alek is royalty in Europe’s Central Powers, here dubbed Clankers for their use of big mechanical machines. He’s confused but happy to pilot a massive mechanical walker, which looks like ED-209 crossed with, I dunno, Robotech? Does that date me? And then he learns his parents are dead. Assassinated. It’s the eve of World War I. And Alek is confused as to whether he’s being kidnapped by his adult friends or whisked to safety. 

Elsewhere: Edinburgh, Scotland. It’s a gorgeous, sunny day. Deryn Sharp (Broghanne Jessamine) looks in the mirror. Her hair is short and she’s wearing pants, which is not the norm in these here parts. She’s going to pass as a boy named Dylan Sharp so she can enlist in the military air force for the Allies, dubbed Darwinists because they wrangle genetically engineered animals. E.g., massive aerial jellyfish called Huxleys, which float through the skies like hot air balloons. Nobody notices she’s not a he – or maybe they don’t care? – so “Dylan” soon finds herself trussed to a Huxley, several hundred feet above the earth. And she loves it. 

Destiny is apparently arranging a meeting for these two teenagers, although it doesn’t happen in the debut episode. While Alek gets into a skirmish with German forces while making his way to Switzerland, a storm over Scotland whisks Dylan far, far away. She bonks her head and dreams of a hot-air balloon ride with her father. When she awakens, she sees a massive air whale ahead of her. I think this is the story’s version of a dirigible. I also think it’s the thing in the title of the show.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The steampunky aerial action makes me wish Netflix had ordered more seasons of Drifting Dragons.

Our Take: Be patient – you’re going to need more than one 25-ish-minute episode for Leviathan to fully set its hook. We have a pair of parallel stories to develop before they intersect, and a world to be built, one that resembles our own in some ways but is fascinatingly alt-historical – a narrative conceit that lures us in with familiarity and delights us with its creative deviations from fact. 

So conceptually and visually, Leviathan is grounded at the same time it’s fantastical. I’m compelled to see how the series handles the weightiness of World War I; I’m less thrilled that our emotional entry into this world is through a pair of teenage twits. Dylan is deeply gee whiz and Alek veers toward whiny sad-sackdom, their outlooks on life pointing toward a yin-yang balance that points toward an opposites-attract-style romance with Romeo and Juliet opposite-sides-of-the-greater-conflict dynamic. 

So far, the series looks, well, just fine, the relatively inspired vehicle and animal design rendered with middle-of-the-road animation that tells us Netflix isn’t quite sure if Leviathan will take off, so its monetary investment was likely modest. Thus far, it skews a bit younger – teens and tweens – and toward the middle of the road, and even if it doesn’t inspire too many superlatives, it’s squarely watchable, maybe watchable-plus. The promise of higher-drama action and star-crossed romance seem likely to keep us on the hook to see how the story plays out.

Sex and Skin: None in the pilot episode.

Parting Shot: Enjoy a good long look at the Leviathan as it fills your screen.

Sleeper Star: Here’s hoping the Darwinists’ massive purple tiger (!) does more than look cool in upcoming episodes.

Most Pilot-y Line: Klopp tries to sell Alek on a pseudo-kidnapping that the kid doesn’t yet realize is a pseudo-kidnapping: “Don’t think of these surprises as a bad thing, master. They say Mozart himself was given these kinds of shock training exercises.”

Our Call: The popularity of Westerfeld’s work will fuel Leviathan, luring in devotees, so why stretch the boundaries of anime for an adaptation? So far, so above-average. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.