In Defence of Lavi's Choice

So I've spent a lot of brain power over the last few days on Last Exile because it is that good. That said it isn't perfect.

One of the most constant complaints about the show is that it's second protagonist kind of drops out of significance in the middle after deciding to no longer be the other protagonist's copilot.

And I sort of get it. But...

One of the major themes of Last Exile is the tragic militarization of the Sky and the Lavi-Claus-Titania love triangle is a big giant metaphor for it.

Titania is a combat pilot born and bred. It's one of the reasons why those two bug her so damn much early on. She's worked all her life to become the best damn combat pilot in the world and then all of a sudden here comes Claus who got that damn good just by goofing around for fun.

To make things more clear she sports a red plane.

They devote an entire episode to her realizing that there is more to flight, to the skies than just combat and that maybe it isn't such a good thing that Claus is starting to turn into an a real ace. He's starting to abandon his wide eyed wonderment at the sky.

For Lavi's part, and Claus share this backstory she flies to memorialize the devil-may-care adventurous spirit of her deceased father and senses that there is something wrong with that being succeeded by combat oriented pragmatism.

The choice between the two really is about Claus choosing whether he wants to be an aviator or an airman. And the fact that Lavi won't fly with him while he's the latter, while Titania won't fly with him while he's the former brings that choice to the fore.

Also it's not like Lavi left the series she hung around with the flight crew and continued to work on the physical symbol of all of that.

Their fathers', the two know each other because their dads were copilots, damaged plane.

My point is that while the choice to take Lavi out of the cockpit gave her less screen time it may have made her more thematically important.