Manga It's pretty good, but there is a little catch.
Before we continue, I am a man with a few mental issues, so please take my words with a lot of salt.
This is a pretty good series. I am not a lover of computer-animation anime at all, but it does its job. The whole thing of "whaling, but in the air and the "whales" are super-dangerous" is a good fantasy angle (other fantasy settings like Dishonored have this), and the fact that the anime follows a crew that is in financial straits because this is a line of work that is dying because of Society Marches On kinda gives it a steampunk Cowbow Bebop feel. There are a few twists and turns in the plot. I am not a meat-lover at all and the cooking scenes still look nice.
The thing I dislike, and that is hate... Mika. At some point you get sick and tired of Idiot Hero-Big Eater-types and this guy was my limit and that limit was Episode 6. There is a dragon on the rampage, it's burning a town, it's the cast's fault, and Mika convinces everybody to fight it and save the day... because he wants to eat the damn thing. It's the size of Godzilla, just as pissed off, and it's loaded with a billion tons of flesh-dissolving poison — doesn't matters, he really wants to eat the damn thing.
And that's when I had it with him.
Watch this show and enjoy it. These are crappy times and it's not a bad show to entertain yourself during them.
Manga Your Mileage WILL Vary
It's kind of hard to talk about this anime without addressing the proverbial elephant in the room. Namely, the fact that it takes the standard Shonen anime formula and applies it to a fantasy version of a real profession— whaling— which has fallen into extreme disrepute in recent years. This is understandable from a cultural perspective, what with Japan being one of the few countries that still hunts whales, but to a non-Japanese viewer, it has the unintentional effect of making the protagonists difficult to sympathize with. The "dragons" in the series are simply wild animals, and rare ones to boot, that the protagonists slaughter without a second thought. In short, this is a series that suffers from a serious case of Designated Hero syndrome.
That aside, the characters aren't much to talk about. All of them fit into predictable archetypes of the genre, and I couldn't even remember their names after watching it. The setting is neat— very steampunk-y, with lots of airships and other stuff of that nature, so if you're into that sort of thing you might enjoy it, but the story doesn't really match the artwork in quality. But then again, if you're not as hung up on such things, you might actually enjoy this show. I didn't.