Well, ABF, I hope you're happy.

[A Black Falcon]

And there's the problem. He gets mentioned in passing a couple of times, but that hardly lends him an presence. But then in the second-to-last episode who swoops in, professes his intention to get thousand of people killed to satisfy his bloodlust, and provides some mild menace until how turns into a complete puss and turns tail because of some angry, unarmed civilians. It certainly doesn't help matters that he's just a walking stereotype.

I actually thought that his stated motivations for wanting to start the war were clever and accurate, to a point. The way he died also was quite ironic...

Specifically, Hopkins said that the reason he wanted to start a war was that technology advances faster during a war than during peacetime, I believe, and that he wanted the world to regain its lost technology, and he believed that the quickest way to accomplish that would be to start a war. It was actually a clever reason I thought, and actually accurate -- during wars military technology advances faster than during peacetime without question. Of course, it doesn't justify what he was going to do, and their rebuilding the tank from the past, during peacetime, seemed kind of an ironic counter to his argument I thought. Not that he listened. Oops. :)

She didn't give up anything because in the end she goes right back to where she wanted to be all along. That's hardly a sacrifice.

Not right back, there was a timeskip. Also why is there no sacrifice just because she goes back? There was a big sacrifice before then... she had to completely give in on her beliefs and dreams pretty much. I think that matters.

Throwing that in at the very end and not properly developing it would fall under lazy writing as well. It's another one of those "come out of nowhere" plot points that doesn't get its fair due because they had to cram everything into 12 episodes.

That's just false though. It wasn't just thrown in, and it didn't come out of nowhere. The show did a great job of hinting at things without saying them right out until they really mattered, and that's exactly what happened there. We knew about the Invisible Death. We learned that it had killed the people in several towns, and had been used during the war against the "Romans" (who have a Romanian-style flag and speak German, so I'm not sure where they're actually supposed to be... considering that Helvetia is supposed to be in Switzerland, write in French (and speak it maybe, even though it's technically in Japanese?), and have a French/Spanish/Japanese mix culture, who knows really.

Oh yeah, and Aisha or whatever looks Indian, so Rome is Indian/Romanian/German/Italian and Helvetia is Spanish/French/Swiss/Japanese, I guess? Entertaining stuff. :)

Anyway, getting to the point, the issue of the Invisible Death and the disease had been a central point in the show, referenced repeatedly throughout. Why do you think that the church woman is caring for all of those orphans? Remember the episode where we learn about their backstory, and how ones' parents died in the Invisible Death? There was just one example of the references. Another example would be when everyone made the little "boat" remembrance shrine things and let them float down the river. Noel did not make one, unlike everyone else. We didn't learn why at the time, but learning about her role in the Invisible Death explains why -- she felt responsible for the deaths of many of those people, so she didn't think it'd be right to do one...

So yes, it had most certainly been referenced, a lot. All that remained was learning the exact details of what had happened, and that's what happened in episode 11. It was one of the major pieces of the plot, and I think it was done really well.

I do have some problems with the show, sure, but that's definitely not one of them.

Yes, they clearly showed their loss of innocence in the final scene where they're happy and laughing.

That was months later, I'm pretty sure. We don't see the immediate aftermath. And also they were just blowing up tanks. When you are destroying vehicles, buildings, etc. it is easier to pretend that there aren't people involved than when you are directly killing people. But still it happened, and I'm sure it affected them in some way.

This, of course, makes no mention of all the little details and hints that get brushed aside. The giant skeleton? Who knows. As it stands it's just a MacGuffin

They don't tell us precisely what happened, but they do give us a new, different, and interesting legend in the last episode. Mixing the legend in the episode with something that someone at GAF interpreted it as meaning, what seems to have most likely happened was that aliens invaded the earth who looked like giant birds (or Rodan or something, as I've also heard them called :)). They and humans started fighting for an unexplained reason. They were wiping out humanity, but one got injured and took refuge in the valley near the fortress in the show. The maidens in the fort healed the alien, and it gave them a horn in return. However, the people in the town found out and set the valley on fire, killing the alien and the maidens. A large number of aliens came, planning on killing the people in the town. However, before dying one of the maidens blew on the horn, showing the other aliens that the humans were not all evil, and they called off their attack and spared the people. And that's how the earth got into the state it's in.

Seems like a reasonable theory, considering what we know. Of course we don't know anything about the origin of the "aliens", but why would people know that centuries after the near-complete collapse of civilization? It makes sense that all they'd have are myths and legends, and the writers decided not to have some random thing happen that magically explained the whole thing for the benefit of the viewer. Slightly frustrating, sure, but more consistent with the world, which was obviously always something that mattered to the writers. I think it works.

The war Felicia fought in? Who knows. Could be Rome or could be anything else.

Um, that was the war against Rome. You really weren't paying any attention at all, were you? It explained the whole thing in depth really, or as much as you could expect from a 12-episode anime...

Rome and Helvetia had a war. One of the key battles in the war was Vingt, a battle where the arrival of Iliya's troops was central. All of the characters had a connection to Iliya and most to Vingt as well.

Anyway, during the war Rome tried to conquer Helvetia, but failed after Helvetia used biological weapons, namely the "Invisible Death" that Noel was key to figuring out how to make again in an ancient, pre-crash factory. Also, the Roman Emperor wanted to marry Iliya, the (elder) princess of Helvetia. However, she died in that random accident (while trying to save a child from a flooding river, evidently), and Rio refused to marry him in her place; she wanted nothing to do with her father.

The talk about the world soon coming to an end? The only conclusion is that it was just metaphorical.

The ending note is obviously supposed to be Kanata's optimism and hope, and not "it's over and ending". Kanata was saying that people like the ghost soldier were wrong when they said that the world was ending, and that if people try they can still live and improve things again and have peace. That message I like for sure. I definitely like it a lot more with an optimistic ending than I would with a "the world is dying, the characters all just got slaughtered, the end" ending like they could have done. That kind of thing has been done enough...

I'm sure it didn't help my disposition towards the ending much by watching it right after I finished A Certain Scientific Railgun where they pulled out pretty much exactly the same ending, which I absolutely hated.

As I said I dropped Railgun after ep. 9... just didn't hold my interest well enough.