Vision of Escaflowne

Original Title: 天空のエスカフローネ
Romanized: Tenkuu no Esukafuroone
Literal: Escaflowne of the Heavens

Plot Synopsis

Young Hitomi is a girl with some slightly unusual talents--she's a top member of the track team at her high school, and she's got a knack for Tarrot readings. But her relatively normal life is about to get very un-normal when one day she finds herself running from a dragon, and being saved by a young prince from the world of Gaia. Thus she finds herself thrust into a world at war between the powerful empire of Zaibach, with vast fleets of airships and floating castles at its command, and the many kingdoms who oppose the emperor's dark plans. Hitomi's mysterious abilities land her with a group of misfits, including the deposed princes Allen, a gallant swordsman, and Van, the headstrong pilot of the mysterious and mighty Escaflowne, in a fight against destiny.

Quick Review

Rating: 3.5 / 5
Reviewer: Marc
Review Date: 2004-06-29

With equal parts romance, fantasy-mecha action, metaphysical sci-fi-fantasy, and a good measure of fantasy story thrown in as a bonus, Vision of Escaflowne is an impressive series. Backing up the interesting and enjoyable characters and twisting plotline are the creatively designed world of Gaia, very attractive visuals, and beautiful music. All that, and the overblown drama and angst factor are even toned down and offset by pragmatic characters and a hit-the-ground-running plot. The catch? It ends about a season too early, so the last third is rushed and unsatisfying, and the end is particularly disappointing.

Despite the disappointing conclusion and weak finish, Escaflowne is still an exciting and enjoyable series for any fan of wild fantasy/sci-fi, light romance with a whole lot more, or just a good anime yarn. Just don't get your hopes up.

US DVD Review

The hybrid DVDs aren't Bandai's most impressive productions, but are solid enough on the whole. Aside from the two audio tracks and a subtitle track, the later discs include cast and staff interviews, creditless openings and endings, and a few odds and ends, such as a preview of the Playstation game.

Content Guide

Though there isn't anything particularly objectionable, quite a bit of violence and some mature themes lead to a 13-up rating.

Violence: 3 - Not particularly gory, but there is a lot of death and destruction.

Nudity: 1 - Nothing particularly noteworthy.

Sex/Mature Themes: 2 - The romance is mostly light, but there are some mature themes.

Language: 1 - Relatively mild.

Notes and Trivia

There is also an Escaflowne comic series by Katsu Aki (available in English from Tokyopop), but it's not really fair to say that either is based on the other due to the series' interesting history.

The concept for the series was developed by Shoji Kawamori (known for his hand in developing Macross) around 1990, and sold to Bandai as a 39 episode TV series. It was initially developed as more of a shounen (male-oriented) series, focusing on action and fanservice, but after a number of delays and staff changes the series was re-envisioned to incorporate more shoujo elements and a stronger female lead. In the process the story was also compressed down to 26 episodes, leading to the rushed plotting (for better--high-energy--early on, and worse--hurried--later). This is the form it eventually took in 1996.

Along the way, a comic version was also produced, but it was done in parallel to the animated version, and based more on the original concept than the final one. As a result, the comic is a story of its own, and much more of a boys' comic, quite different in both plot points and flavor.

The story with the high-budget movie produced a few years after the TV series is similar; though based on the same concept, it is a story of its own, with no direct connection to either the comic or TV series versions.

It's also worth noting that though it's very easy to draw parallels between this series and Evangelion (weird, organic mecha and traumatized heroes with unhealthy relationships with them), the concept was developed well before Evangelion began production, and the two series were developed essentially at the same time, so there really isn't any cross-over between the two. Just two ideas that appeared at the same time.

Availability

Available in the US from Bandai on 8 hybrid DVD volumes or a box set of the whole series. Was also available on 8 subtitled VHS tapes, now out of print.

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