Genre: Fantasy/Mecha

Creator:

No of Episodes/Volumes of Manga: 26 episodes, 1Movie

Reviewer: StorminNorman

Review: (Movie Only)

The Vision of Escaflowne was a revolutionary series. It managed to combine elements of fantasy, romance, big mechs fighting, and a decent storyline in a single 26-part series. It comes as no surprise then, that a movie has been made.

The idea behind Escaflowne: A Girl In Gaea is to take all the elements of the series, compress them into a single 90 minute film, and not leave out those who are yet to experience the television series. In this, the creators of the film have done a fantastic job, and anyone new to escaflowne will be able to jump straight in to the film without problems.

On the other hand (and you can skip this paragraph if you haven't seen the series), fans of the series may be a little disappointed by the fact that the movie simply retells the story, with some modifications that can best be described as controversial. Some of these changes are for the best -- Hitomi now has a real purpose for being in Gaea, whereas it wasn't until late in the series that we found out why she had been transported there. Also Meruru/Merle's background is given a much better explanation (we see the village where she comes from) in the movie, despite the fact that she is reduced to a peripheral character, along with Allen and Millerna.

Okay, that's the fan's griping out of the way, now for the rest of the review. The story concerns a 16 year old girl, Hitomi Kanzaki, who gets transported to the magical land of Gaea. Here she meets Van and Allen, who are fighting a war against the Black Dragon Clan, led by Lord Folken. Much fighting and angsting ensues, and we are left with a decent mecha action movie with bits of romance thrown in for good measure.

Visually, E:AGIG looks good, and most of the characters have undergone severe redraws from the series. They look a lot more 'adult' now, especially Hitomi and Yukari, who now look a lot more like senior high school students than they did in the series, although the redesigned school uniform is not a patch on the older one.

One of Escaflowne's strengths has always been its music, fans will know the opening theme song of the series as being an incredibly catchy tune, and many of the intrumental pieces from the series were excellent. It is pleasing, therefore, to say that the movie carries on this tradition, with some truly haunting pieces of music (the Dragon song) as well as some goofy pop (What'cha Gonna Do, which is used as a theme for Meruru), all provided by the exceptionally talented Yoko Kanno (is there anything this woman can't do?) and added with the excellent soundtrack anyway, making E:AGIG one of the best sounding anime films in years.

Inevitably, liking Escaflowne: A Girl In Gaea comes down to two things: 1: whether or not you are a fan of the series, and 2: if you are a fan of the series, then whether or not you can stand the modifications that have been made to the film. Personally, I still prefer the series, because it covers a lot more ground (the film seemed short to me for some reason) although I wasn't particularly fussed by most of the changes (in fact, I thought most of them were good, as they fixed some of the plot holes that the series had). I suppose the best way to say it is like this: If you are looking for a decent anime film, and have never heard of Escaflowne, then this movie is highly recommended, in a similar way to Akira when it was released, or Monoke Hime is now. If you are already a fan, then don't miss out either.

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