Genre: Fantasy/Mecha

Creator:

No of Episodes/Volumes of Manga: 26 episodes

Reviewer: StorminNorman

Review:

The Vision of Escaflowne is quite simply one of the best anime series ever made. It somehow manages to successfully combine hardcore action, romance, drama, and even the occasional bit of light humour into a single 26 episode series.

The story centres around Hitomi Kanzaki, a senior high school student who gets magically transported into a world called Gaea, where both the earth and the moon can be seen from the sky. Here, she meets Van, the king of Fanelia, a small kingdom that is destroyed by the evil Zaibach empire in the second episode. From there, Hitomi journeys with Van, and Meruru, his faithful retainer (and token cat-girl), through Gaea, gathering support for the plight of Fanelia. They take with them Escaflowne, the most powerful Guymelef (read: Mech) ever made. Guymelefs are the war machines of Gaea, and everyone seems to have one.

That doesn't even manage to summarise half the story of Escaflowne, it fails to mention the huge number of relationships that build through the series, the story behind the evil Zaibach empire, and just exactly who is Dilandau anyway? All this and more will be revealed as the series goes on.

The complex story of Escaflowne is just one of its strengths. Strong characterisation makes the series much easier to follow, with a huge variety in major characters, both good and evil. The plot manages to twist completely at least once per episode, as something new is revealed about each character, and the viewer is drawn deeper and deeper into the world of Gaea.

All this would mean nothing if the series didn't look good, right? Well... fortunately it looks fantastic, with high quality animation, good mecha designs and excellent location drawing. You really feel as if you could reach out and touch Gaea, talk to the characters, and ride the melefs... ahem. The sound is good too, with excellent effects, as well as some of the best music in an anime ever (the closing theme song notwithstanding). Everything about Escaflowne screams high quality.

And it is. Escaflowne is best described as a mixture of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Fushigi Yuugi but without too much of the psychological torture of the former, and none of the over the top comedy and fan service of the latter. It is much much better than both of them, and that's saying a lot in the case of Evangelion which still stands as another of the great series of all time.

When it was released in 1996, Escaflowne showed a new direction for anime, and inspired many new series, from the esoteric Serial Experiments Lain to the spaghetti-western stylings of Cowboy Bebop. It may not seem like it at first, but after a depression in the mid-1990's, anime needed something like this. Evangelion, despite it's success, was considered too complex to be truly mainstream, whereas Escaflowne, despite the violence, is far more family oriented. (Hardcore otaku can feel free to disagree with this paragraph, all flames will be sent to /dev/null.)

Perhaps the biggest problem with Escaflowne is that it hasn't yet managed to achieve the mainstream success that it so deserves. An American dub/recut of the series (by Saban no less) was such a disaster that it was pulled off air after only a few episodes. (I have not seen this dub, but from all reports it is pretty bad, some episodes have been savagely cut while others have been re-sequenced and all sorts of nasty things, not to mention that the voice acting is supposedly terrible). Fans will be pleased to note however that the US DVD release of Escaflowne is the original series, with a different dub track and the Japanese soundtrack remains intact. (It should be pointed out that this review is of a fan-subbed release of the entire series). It is sad that this had to happen, and makes me remember why Hayao Miyazaki (Monoke Hime, Nausicaa) was so insistent to Disney that they were not allowed to cut or edit his films in any way. All anime producers should do this.

Despite all that, if you can get hold of the original Japanese version of Escaflowne then you won't regret it. It is quite probably my favourite anime of all time, and it should stand like that to everyone who sees it.

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