English Dub Review: Leviathan Season One

Get ready for a fascinating blend of history and fantasy when Leviathan, a new anime series based on the popular novels by Scott Westerfeld, premieres globally on Netflix on July 10, 2025. This highly anticipated series comes from the acclaimed studios Qubic Pictures and Orange, known for their stunning work on titles like BEASTARS and a segment of Star Wars: Visions, setting high expectations for its visual quality and storytelling and delivering in droves, unfortunately, the plot is a mess, and one has to wonder why the hell a European-set animated series adapted from a steampunk adventure novel written by a Dallas, Texas-based author needed a Japanese pastiche in the first place.

Leviathan transports viewers to an alternate 1914, a world on the brink of war where two factions clash: the Clankers, who rely on massive mechanical war machines, and the Darwinists, who utilize genetically engineered beasts as their weapons. Caught in the middle of this escalating conflict are our two unlikely protagonists.

Alek(Dor Gvirtsman), the fugitive prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is on the run after the assassination of his parents, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie. Meanwhile, Deryn Sharp (Broghanne Jessamine) is a resourceful and courageous young girl in disguise as a boy named “Dylan” to serve as an airman in the British Air Service. Their paths collide aboard the HMS Leviathan, a colossal, living airship created through Darwinist bio-engineering. That said if you’re expecting a bunch of World War I action featuring steampunk mechs, it comes in short supply and mostly what we get here is 12 episodes of a TON of dialogue that just seems to drag on with no real point. Shades of a romance build-up, more shades of a big war that never happens, and a Riddler from Batman Forever take on Nikola Tesla largely splinters in a number of different directions that never really coalesce.

Based on Scott Westerfeld’s trilogy, the anime is adapting the entire story of the aforementioned novel, much to the delight of fans with Westerfeld himself has been involved in the production, promised a faithful adaptation with some cool variations from the books but I don’t see any of that here. The pedigree of the studios involved is a significant draw. Orange’s expertise in blending 2D and 3D animation, as seen in BEASTARS, conveys Leviathan as a visually striking series directed by Christophe Ferreira, but this is a classic case of spending a lot of time and money on the look of a series that doesn’t have a lot of follow through in any other aspect.  The musical score, with an opening theme by the legendary Joe Hisaishi (Studio Ghibli), is hardly noticeable among all of the tepid dialogue with the series’ actors doing their best to deliver but as mentioned every time it seemed like the show was going somewhere in terms of a direction, a pivot happens to another thread line that eventually also goes nowhere.

Anime fans, particularly those who enjoy historical fantasy with a touch of the fantastical, should definitely add this to their Netflix watchlist, everyone else should steer clear because this is 12 half-hours that you’ll wish you had back to watch anything else.

Leviathan streams on Netflix starting July 10th.