The Vision of Escaflowne

Synopsis

Escaflowne is about a girl who is magically transported to fantasy world which she must save from the forces of evil. Escaflowne is the story of a tangled love triangle. Escaflowne is about a bunch of cool giant robots with swords hacking away at each other. Escaflowne is about a bunch of scantily clad cat girls hugging the nearest person. Escaflowne is a surreal exploration of the risks in tampering with fate. Escaflowne is an interesting look at a famous historical figure. Any one of these statements will describe Escaflowne, but the strongest overall tone is that of a story driven console RPG.

My Opinion

Escaflowne is a darn good show. No matter what you like, it's probably in there. It's all packaged quite cohesively, and the production values are top-notch. And then of course there's the outstanding soundtrack by Yoko Kanno. If you've never seen any anime before, Escaflowne is a great place to start, and if you've seen just about everything, it's still top-notch.

Comparisons

Compared to the movie: Like many movie adaptations of anime series, Escaflowne the movie is a reworking of the serious in a shorter time frame. It reworks all the characters, and straightens out most of the relationships. It is however decidedly darker in visual style, and the normally identifiable Van is transformed into decidedly feral psycho.

Compared to the Americanized version: When it was brought to saturday morning television in America, Escaflowne was stripped of some very important factors. The first episode, which provides much needed setup for the series, was removed almost completely, with only a few arbitrary scenes inserted as flashbacks in the second episode, now made the first. Numerous other scenes providing context for the action were also stripped out. The most horrifying crime however was that the beautiful soundtrack was removed entirely and replaced with constant, bad, techno tunes. I should rather say almost entirely, as one track was maintained. A grandiose chanted track normally reserved for the most significant fight scenes, and now played during any action at all.

The Dub vs. the Sub

Escaflowne sports a fairly decent dub for its time, but a number of questionable choices in the casting department. Take Dilandu for example, who in Japan sports one of the most realistically psychopathic voices you'll ever hear, and in America is voiced by a girl trying and failing to sound like a calmly evil little boy.

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