#leviathan 2025

[aelithart]

I’m 15 again. (and I’m a Darwinist.)

I love the books and I love the anime. So I fused them both together with my imagination!!

Prints will be available here.

((Please don’t repost my work, you can also find it on my Bluesky! Or other social media))

[chlothecottagewitch]

Realized that one of my favorite genres is "alternate version of 1914"

[vitariesocks]

It's Leviathan anime release day! To celebrate, I did a redraw of a piece I drew back in July 2014 (11 years ago!) to show how long I have adored this story. :') I'm so thrilled for my tween-favorite book to become a beautifully animated and scored show! Check out Leviathan on Netflix! :3

2014 original under the cut!

Still cute. :')

[knightofthenewrepublic]

[cels-and-things]

[kajaono]

IS THIS FOR REAL?!

[liposcelidae]

Alternate history, happy endings, and the kinder 20th century

Major spoilers for the Leviathan anime and the book series.

I think the anime's ending fit the story they chose to tell.

As an alternate-history fan and occasional alternate-history writer, I've thought a bit about what it means to make certain kinds of choices in your alternate timeline.

The Leviathan books are WWI-lite - the war is winding down by December 1914, there's a peace conference in early 1915, there's a formal Coexistence Treaty by 1916. (No Somme, no Verdun, no Passchendaele; Wilfred Owen probably never enlists, let alone gets gassed.) And meanwhile there's a giant flying whale! The world is brilliant and fascinating but also frequently goofy in the best way.

The anime creates an alternate timeline to that alternate timeline, stepping back a bit from the romp of the books and back toward the grittiness of war. Nobody is throwing non-lethal spice bombs in Istanbul: it's a shooting battle. Hoffman, Newkirk, and Klopp now die to show us the stakes and seriousness of the conflict. And the gonzo worldbuilding is just a bit dialed back- the bats don't poop, we don't see the elephant walkers using their trunks, there is nothing horrid about the spottiswoode rebreather.

In Goliath, when Alek chooses to stay with Deryn, it's a victory for joy. (For looking toward the future instead of holding on to the past, for choosing life after loss, for personal happiness.) It's the perfect ending for their story and the perfect start to the hopeful future for their world that's become possible with the avoidance of most of the war.

But in the anime, we don't get to end on joy, because the world isn't quite as light. Alek chooses duty and responsibility over love and freedom because the heavier world makes responsibility sit more heavily on his shoulders. There is hope, but only if everyone is willing to do their part and make peace a collective priority (pursued through collective rather than individual action, as the Tesla arc hammers home).

I can only speculate why the anime team chose to make that change. Maybe it just spoke to them more as a story! Maybe it felt more realistic, or respectful of real-world awfulness past or present, to rein the story in from its wildest fantasies of a kinder world. Maybe it felt like a step too far to make a romance with a happily-ever-after out of even an alternate version of such an ugly part of real history. Maybe somebody saw Casablanca or Roman Holiday a few too many times, I dunno. One of the interesting things about adaptations is seeing what someone else thought was essential about the work and what they wanted to reimagine, and the anime team said, hey, we think this works for the core of the story we care about.

And that's great. That's fine.

But the Leviathan I love is the one that goes big; my timeline is the timeline that is so much more hopeful that we get hope practically for free, where the worst horrors can be avoided just because the world isn't that bad. My Alek chooses Deryn not to dodge responsibility but to fully embrace and demonstrate that the two worlds are better together, and also because yay. Tu felix Austria nube. It's meteoric. :)

[ozthebbrabbit]

Leviathan (2025) Review

Leviathan, by Scott Westerfeld, was a novel I reread at least 4 times when I was a teenager, so I was excited to hear it was getting an anime adaptation! Especially since I love steampunk worlds.

Background and Character Design

This was so perfect that I was shocked. The characters and locations fit my imagination perfectly! Alek was suitably handsome in a carefully put together sort of way, and Deryn was tall and androgynous just as described!

The backgrounds were absolutely gorgeous. I especially loved Istanbul.

Animation

The animation relies on CG, which means it is frequently a bit unnatural and clunky. For example, in one scene 2 characters drink coffee while looking at the view over a thick railing. Despite standing right in front of it, with their hands full for many minutes, neither one ever interacts with the railing. I'm sure this is a side effect of the animation. The railing is drawn in 2D, which means the characters can't convincingly interact with it unless they make a 3D model of the fence.

Voice Acting

The original voice actors do a great job with these characters. There were times when I felt Ayumu Murase should've given Alek a more aristocratic voice, but I think he did give Alek a certain charisma which helped the viewer root for him despite being somewhat unlikable early on. Deryn sounds suitably androgynous, which is highly necessary and was pulled off beautifully. Natsumi Fujiwara was perfect for this role.

The voice acting by the whole cast was really great, and a huge part of my being drawn into the story despite already knowing the plot really well.

The English dub leaves a lot to be desired, which is how I generally feel about a lot of English dubs of foreign projects so I may be biased. However, since the majority of this story is canonically in English, I had hoped it would be better. I'm a little disappointed they didn't take the opportunity to incorporate multiple languages. Specifically, Alek should be speaking German before he encounters Leviathan. Since the Austrians are all intelligent nobles, they could even speak perfect textbook English later on. Since Deryn only speaks English, having characters speak English the majority of the time would still be very believable, so it wouldn't be too much effort to just include a few scenes in another language.

Another downside of being a Japanese project, they completely threw out any attempts to indicate that characters from different nations speak different languages.

Plot

The pacing is really well done, if a little fast. A lot of downtime between destinations, wherein the characters get to know each other, has been cut due to the fact that this short season covers 3 books. This means the viewer never has a chance to get bored, but might result in viewers being less invested in the main relationship.

The direction and writing are both very solid. It's a faithful adaptation, but still works really well as a television show. I'm very impressed.

Score

The score is incredibly disappointing. I was shocked to find out Joe Hisaishi was involved, since he's a favorite composer of mine- but that's because he composed 2 songs for the show, and they were definitely misused. I assume they felt they had to use one of his songs for the opening and chose the one that had internal plot relevance, but it was tonally wrong for this show. It's a very sweet piano piece, which is really jarring when it precedes and follows brutal war scenes and insane stunts. Since they cut a lot of the slow moments from the book, there isn't even a chance for the opening to feel nostalgic for the viewer. It does not do a good job in selling the show as is, outside of having Hisaishi's name attached.

The entire show is angsty and action-packed. The score, however, often feels like the composers thought they were choosing music for a completely different show. I actually thought they may have neglected to hire a score composer, but then I find out there are actually two! I don't know what happened there at all. It feels like only two-thirds of the scenes have somewhat appropriate music.

Opening

As I mentioned in the Score section, Joe Hisaishi's song Paths Combine is used for the opening. It's a soft and peaceful piano version, which does not represent the show whatsoever. It is plot relevant- Alek and Deryn both know versions of the song from their families. However, in-canon music does not always represent the tone of a show. The opening feels like it's actually telling the story of a romance. Not to say there isn't any romance, but it's not the focus of this show.

Final Thoughts

Despite my complaints, I was happily surprised with this adaptation. The score and animation was a little rough, but I think the voice acting, direction, and writing are really well done.