Tenkuu no Escaflowne (The Vision of Escaflowne)

Hitomi Kanzaki is just an ordinary 15-year-old schoolgirl with an interest in tarot cards and fortune telling, but one night, a boy named Van Fanel suddenly appears from the sky along with a vicious dragon. Thanks to a premonition from Hitomi, Van successfully kills the dragon, but a pillar of light appears and envelopes them both. As a result, Hitomi finds herself transported to the world of Gaea, a mysterious land where the Earth hangs in the sky.

In this new land, Hitomi soon discovers that Van is a prince of the Kingdom of Fanelia, which soon falls under attack by the evil empire of Zaibach. In an attempt to fight them off, Van boards his family's ancient guymelef Escaflowne—a mechanized battle suit—but fails to defeat them, and Fanelia ends up destroyed. Now on the run, Hitomi and Van encounter a handsome Asturian knight named Allen Schezar, whom Hitomi is shocked to find looks exactly like her crush from Earth. With some new allies on their side, Van and Hitomi fight back against the forces of Zaibach as the empire strives to revive an ancient power.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Escaflowne was originally planned to be a 39 episode series, but after cuts to its budget and an extensive reworking of the plot, the show was reduced to a 26 episode run.

Due to time constraints, certain footage in earlier episodes were cut during its broadcast and later restored on the Japanese home video releases, referred to as the Director's Cut. The North American Bandai Entertainment releases used the TV masters, so their English dub does not sync properly with the Japanese home video masters on those specific episodes. FUNimation later licensed the series and, in 2016, launched a successful Kickstarter to redub the entirety of the Director's Cut edition.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Tenkuu no Escaflowne, Hitomi: The Vision of Escaflowne, Escaflowne: Ishi no Kioku, Escaflowne
Alternative version:	Escaflowne
Summary:	Tenkuu no Escaflowne Recaps

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Fanel, Van

Main

Seki, Tomokazu
Japanese

Kanzaki, Hitomi

Main

Sakamoto, Maaya
Japanese

Schezar, Allen

Main

Miki, Shinichiro
Japanese

Albatou, Dilandau

Supporting

Takayama, Minami
Japanese

Fanel, Folken

Supporting

Nakata, Jouji
Japanese

Merle

Supporting

Ootani, Ikue
Japanese

Fassa, Dryden

Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta
Japanese

Dornkirk

Supporting

Yamanouchi, Masato
Japanese

Ganesha, Balgus

Supporting

Genda, Tesshou
Japanese

Naria

Supporting

Amano, Yuri
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Kawamori, Shouji

Producer, Script, Storyboard, Original Creator, Screenplay

Maseba, Yutaka

Producer

Minami, Masahiko

Producer

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Opening Theme

"Yakusoku wa Iranai (約束はいらない - No Need for Promises)" by Maaya Sakamoto

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Ending Theme

"Mystic Eyes" by Hiroki Wada

Reviews

Mar 18, 2024

09philj

Recommended

The Vision of Escaflowne tries to juggle a lot of different balls, and basically succeeds. Firstly, it's a good old fashioned fantasy adventure serial with goodies and baddies and sword fights and monsters and thrilling escapes and all that exciting stuff. Bound up with that is the fact that it's somewhat of a mecha series, with the magically powered suits naturally allowing major characters to dominate fight scenes. However, it's also a mystical and rather melancholy series about fate and how it can be fixed or changed, punctuated with a fairly large amount of on screen death and injury. Also it's got a rather shoujo-esque ... romance with a knotty love polygon and some really beautiful looking men. The series was originally intended to be 39 episodes rather than 26 and you can tell - some plot threads sort of just stop, appear late on, and/or get resolved jarringly fast. That said, I'm not necessarily sure that an additional 13 episodes wouldn't have come along with making the pacing a bit sluggish. As is, it seems to fill 26 episodes more or less nicely, even if it has to lurch a few times to get there, especially in the back half, and the ending in particular feels rather rushed.

Hitomi is a likeable heroine, and the script manages to quite effectively let her make choices that drive the plot without having to have her take part in the fighting herself. A careful balance is struck between giving her a believable fear of violence and death with a drive to see them not meted out to her friends. The Escaflowne's pilot Van isn't as deep, remaining driven by the need to avenge his homeland throughout, but still gets to evolve in how he approaches it emotionally. The central two are supported by an ensemble of engaging side players: the swashbuckling Allen, the lovesick princess Millerna, and the petulant but vulnerable catgirl Merle, among others. The truncated length does leave a few of the cast with slightly less to do than was perhaps intended, but the most important ones are correctly kept to the fore.

Escaflowne is almost always a lovely series to look at. It is animated with all the lushness you'd expect of Sunrise at the end of the cel animation era, with beautifully fluid motion on the mechs in particular, and the direction makes great use of it to bring life to some wonderfully artistic shot compositions. Yoko Kanno's score is predictably great, and gives the strange and wonderous elements the accompaniment they deserve.

The bottom line is that Escaflowne is a fantastically well produced series that is let down mostly by the circumstances of its creation, and make it less than it perhaps could have been, but what is there is broadly an well executed marriage of disparate elements.

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Apr 7, 2024

LotteGiants

Mixed Feelings

Escaflowne is an isekai mecha action show that really really really wishes it could just be an isekai romance show. The first half balances those elements reasonably well and strings the viewer along with a lot of mystery about its world and why the evil Zaibach empire is so bent on finding "Escaflowne". Ultimately that promise is never delivered on in any meaningful way and halfway through the show the shounen action and romance fall completely out of balance and get in each other's way. Everything does reach a rushed yet functional conclusion but the wasted potential is massive.

Pros+
+ Escaflowne is a visual feast if ... you’re a fan of that certain sort of 90s animation. Sunrise really put their best effort into showing the eponymous Escaflowne transforming and swinging its sword against other Gunda-I mean Guymelefs. Cockpit shots showing gears and pulleys and braided steel are very smoothly drawn.

+ Yoko Kanno’s work on the OST is tremendous. Action and drama are well supported with choral backing and high tension string instruments while gentler moments have flowing piano and gentle violin. Truly an excellent work from a renowned musical director

Cons-
- The story of Escaflowne is not confusing but it is quite slow for no particular reason until the final few episodes where it races to the finish. The first half of the show involves a lot of the main cast running from the enemy while sheltering in various locales such as military outposts, capital cities, airships, and the wilderness. Then it just sort of stalls and turns into long emotional exchanges punctuated by somewhat weightless action.
- The characters. This is truly where Escaflowne falls utterly apart. Allen, is the only character that truly gets consistent character development and backstory. New characters are introduced and seem interesting enough (Van the prince of a ruined nation; his cat friend Merle; Chid the child prince; Folken the brooding strategist of Zaibach) and then nothing really happens. Van, for instance, fights for revenge after Dilandau destroys his country while looking for Escaflowne. We see this in the first episode. And then nothing really changes about that at all. He runs, he fights, he learns a bit about his family, and then at the end he fights Dilandau and says “You destroyed my country so I will kill you!”. We never really see him do much other than fight and talk to people about nothing. Some side characters have character arcs but mostly nobody is well developed.
- The romance. Hitomi arrives in Gaea and is immediately treated well by everyone and there is a clear connection between her and Van but also her and Allen. And then…nobody tries to do anything. Hitomi increasingly seems attracted to Allen but eventually learns he likes more age and class appropriate women and backs off. And then any “will they? Won’t they?” progress goes away until about episode 20 when it becomes plot relevant and everything is forced to an unsurprising but still somehow very weird conclusion in 6 episodes. The show has all the trappings of a romance but because it also has giant robots it doesn’t let itself get too lovey dovey because that will get in the way of robot fights.
Ultimately Escaflowne is a great looking and sounding show that starts strong, slows down rather quickly, and then never finds a good speed before crashing into its ending at 150 mph. There is enough to like that I can’t honestly call it worthless but I almost certainly wouldn’t have gone back to it if I hadn’t watched some of it as a kid and after seeing it I don’t think romance or mecha fans would be satisfied watching it over something else.

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Feb 12, 2022

reizamundi

Not Recommended

A disappointing and predictable series riding on the mesmerizing musical compositions of Yoko Kanno.

The story of Escaflowne had the opportunity to incorporate engaging and complex explorations of predeterminism and how one’s state of mind is the catalyst to one’s destiny. The inspirations drawn from archeology and ancient mythology could also have had immense potential to support the theme.

Nevertheless, the narrative failed to dive into the underlying philosophical and rich subject matters. It is a pity that such powerful motifs were not thoroughly illustrated or perhaps the implicit aim was to cater to the generic audience. Either this or the writer gave up on the ...

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Poll: Escaflowne Episode 26 Discussion ( 1 2 3 ) maLakai - Jan 12, 2009	118 replies	by Lockensocke »» Apr 8, 12:23 AM
Remember when people thought this was one of the greatest anime ever? Schlockendale - Jan 13, 2022	17 replies	by Lockensocke »» Apr 7, 8:44 AM
Poll: Escaflowne Episode 25 Discussion kage-bunshin - Mar 22, 2009	22 replies	by LotteGiants »» Apr 7, 8:33 AM
Poll: Escaflowne Episode 24 Discussion kage-bunshin - Mar 22, 2009	36 replies	by LotteGiants »» Apr 7, 8:22 AM
Poll: Escaflowne Episode 23 Discussion kage-bunshin - Mar 21, 2009	37 replies	by LotteGiants »» Apr 7, 8:12 AM

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