Tenkuu no Escaflowne

*Contains Heavy Spoilers*

So I've been patiently watching the series mainly because I have nothing else to do, and tbh I quite enjoyed the first half of the series. And then they lost me. I mean it's a fantasy anime, so a fair bit of leeway has to be given to the plot. I can make my peace with the hidden power of fate that the MC uses. I can deal with the mana-mechanical transformer-bots in a medieval setting. Hell, I can even swallow the uber ridiculous goal of the antagonist to control fate, and in corollary, control the world. Classic Villain. Pretty easy to swallow. ... Then it got weird.

There are a bunch of reasons I pretty much hated the series.

1. The antagonists are a fucking joke. First there's Dornkirk who is our classic villain in the shadows, pulling the strings, laughing his evil laugh, who not surprisingly at all started out helping people. His goal is to create a world without war. Now thats very ambitious. More ambitious is his chosen method of accomplishing this goal i.e. controlling fate. You would think that he would take some kind of care in choosing his generals and inner circle.
Which brings me to Folken. Seriously dude? You joined his Hitler-esque cause because you didn't want to kill a dragon? Yeah I know, thats not what happened, but take a moment to think about his actual motivation for joining up with Dornkirk. There really isn't any. I mean I get why the fortune twins fell for Folken, they were half cat so it makes sense for them to unconditionally love the person who saved them. Folken's origin story makes me believe his Draconian mother had intimate relations with a fucking cocker spaniel, because in the end he's basically a rescue.
AND WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THIS DILANDAU CHARACTER? I mean seriously. His only motivation to do anything is "I have a boo boo on my cheek and I must destroy the one who did it and anyone in the way of accomplishing my boo boo revenge". Really man? Is that all there is to you considering how many fucking times you battled the MC?

2. Which brings me to my second point. I don't like to be masturbated without the pleasure of a climax. Van has a hard-on for murdering every minor baddie, but for whatever reason when it comes to Dilandau his sword needs Viagra to function. Not to mention Hitomi's nagging also starts ONLY when Dilandau's close to death. Why? Why is this barely one dimensional character still alive in the 3rd act of the series? Even the final plot twist with this character...WHY? And more importantly HOW? His condition just resolves itself because….profit? This character gave me the biggest murder boner simply because the writers wouldn't kill the little bitch off and kept teasing till the very end.
And after all that "cold as ice" acting , Folken's heart suddenly melts? Because his two pussy cats died? Why? Did I miss something? What was your motivation to join Dornkirk ? What was your motivation in leaving him? Were you sleeping while he slaughtered the first few million people, or did it really take your pussy dying for you to regain your empathy? WTF? THIS, if any of the characters from the antagonists should have been the final conflict. Instead, the writers pussy out and turn him into a good guy at the end. Its pathetic. I bet a nun could jerk me off better than this piece of shit anime.

3. Then there’s… Luck enhanced soldiers made by transfusing synthetic blood created from splicing the genes of the luckiest people…….
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?!? WHY NOT A FUCKING SPELL? ITS A MAGICAL WORLD!!! A SPELL WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE BELIEVABLE!!!
Unless you’re as nit picky as me, you probably won't notice, but the mythology and the world design is in a clash in this anime. Much of it is ok, since we waste most of our time with the bland and often interchangeable characters, but for the most part...ehhh...the world isn't believable as either fantasy or science fiction.

4. The two main characters finally fall in love. This love is strong. Its history is epic. It will become a tale retold in many forms. It had the power to overcome fate. There was nothing in the way of the two lovers making a life together. Theirs was a perfect ending. “Well, I have go back to Earth for absolutely no reason at all and pine for my lover for the rest of my life” - Hitomi.
Stupid bitch.


In conclusion, I’ve definitely seen animes with worse characters, story mechanics, mythology and plot. Credit where credit’s due. It isnt the worst thing out there, but make sure you don't watch this anime when you actually have the time to watch it. Watch it while you study for a test or something like that. Keep it in the background so you don't notice the flaws, and you only see the magical transformer robots and furries. At least that way you won't pull your hair out from the frustrating stupidity that is Escaflowne.

Escaflowne is renowned for its soundtrack scored by Yoko Kanno, an epic orchestral voyage to a fantasy land that remains original even today in an era overrun by music for fantasy films and anime, all vaguely familiar with their typical motifs and themes.

Escaflowne’s animation, at least for the remastered DVDs should also be praised, as well as the direction by Kazuki Akane. It’s dynamic, artistic and looks gorgeous; a vivid world brought to life by an excellent production staff.

Escaflowne’s story takes a dump on all of this, squatting on its nonexistent bent knees, its jeans wrapped around its feet awkwardly, while it looks around ... without any shame whatsoever, even with an air of arrogance about it, staring at you as if to say “Yeah? So what?”

A schoolgirl, Hitomi, gets transported to another world which is on the brink of war thanks to an empire ruled by a beardy man with plans to change fate to his whim. There is a supporting cast of kings, princes and princesses, random animal-folk, jousting mecha and an obligatory secondary antagonist who is bug-eyed, sounds like a little girl when in pain and generally annoys the hell out of you, much like when you see someone taking a dump in public with no shame.

The writer, the aforementioned dump-taker, takes the concept of fate and rapes it to a bloody pulp with deus ex machina after deus ex machina. What we see is not so much the consequences of toying with fate, as the big baddie attempts to do, but the consequences of a lousy writer using fate as an excuse to take shortcuts in the screenplay because he's too lazy and incompetent to tell a tale properly.

Escaflowne has a pretty simple, and almost childish, story structure of groups of people being chased from one action scene to another, complimented by a love triangle, which all builds up into a perfect storm of plot contrivances, holes, twists and gaps of logic, all meaningless, un-earned and insulting.

The writer plays so fast and loose with Hitomi's powers that anything can happen at any time and there's nothing you can do about it, the writer just doesn’t care about any rules of screenwriting, he throws everything at the screen and the viewer has to accept it or not, no matter how baffling and unexplained it is.

People getting transported via columns of light into specific landscapes very conveniently, people having their flashbacks played for others, people getting hurt or healed conveniently, in fact it may as well have been called the Convenient Vision of Escaflowne, because Hitomi sure as hell gets many during the series, all perfectly timed to diffuse the story of any sense of mystery, suspense and development.

Every single dramatic action scene of importance is foreshadowed and foreseen by the protagonist, and thus the viewer. To have a 26 episode series constantly use this method is staggering in its ineptitude, and almost irresponsible behaviour that any writer worth his salt would balk at.

This 'character' of Hitomi feels and sees EVERYTHING that happens in the story, all to the writer's convenience. She's not so much a 'god' as she is the writer's pen masturbating over your eyeballs.

Nearly every rule, whether it be mythological or narrative-based, set up in the story is either broken, molested or outright ignored just to give maximum dramatic impact, but that impact itself is robbed of any power because it’s so insulting watching a story be so inconsistent.

Lazy writing. This, as you can guess by now, was the main problem of the series. Characters acting out of character, revelations with no meaning or coherence about them, it’s a mess. A mess strung together by an extremely competent crew, the writer notwithstanding. A brilliantly directed and animated mess with a gorgeous soundtrack.

Yoko Kanno’s 4 CD soundtrack is a classic of the anime medium. An amazingly sumptuous memorable epic filled with orchestral bombast, vocal choirs scaring the crap out of you with chants of ‘ESCAFLOWNE’, beautiful violin and piano-led melodies that indicate a winding journey of heroism and love. Basically her soundtrack doesn’t belong on such a flawed story, and as a result it elevates the anime to another level. It keeps you watching even though the story irritates you with its constant missteps, the music is too beautiful to ignore.

There are memorable moments in Escaflowne, thanks to the music, art and direction, making it worth a watch but not essential. Listening to the soundtrack is a must however. Having visuals as a context may enhance your experience with Kanno’s genius, but she is so skilled that you don’t need the images of this anime to be affected by her music.

If you want to watch a tale with the same template but done better, then watch Juuni Kokuki.

Patiently watched all 26 episodes expecting some grand payoff - it never happened. I want my time back.

This is a shoujo with a mecha aspect thrown in to appeal to the shonen userbase. It does a poor job executing on each part, nor is the sum of those parts decent.

This would've made a decent 2 episode OVA. But for a 26 episode long show? It's a hard skip. You're not missing anything.

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Tenkuu no Escaflowne 4/10

A few days ago I remembered an anime I used to watch when I was a kid (9 or 10 years old), "Vision of Escaflowne". My memory of it was hazy to say the least. What I did remember were those characters with the long noses, the pretty guy with long blond hair, and a very memorable soundtrack. So I had a strong urge to re-watch it, and I did, unfortunately the result was, my memories of this fairy-tale like anime were shattered.

Escaflowne starts promising (girl travels through worlds, meets knights and royalty, can use magic, some interesting adventures) but ... the more episodes you watch the more plot holes appear. Things often made no sense, or they simply ignored important details, added or just changed rules for convenience (to get out of a tricky situation for example). Don't even get me started on the lazy, repetitive dialoges, or how many times a character yells out another ones name to make things 'dramatic'.
Most characters were annoying, mainly because they were walking stereotypes. The antagonist role wasn't really explored, his past, his plans, his purpose (except he wants to destroy the world as we know it and mess with faith), just what was going on in his head? Van's brother suddenly became a good guy and all was forgiven (this could have worked out better if they didn't rush his development, it only took one episode for him to do a 360).
Many elements just got smashed together here; fortune-telling, robots and all kinds of machines (whose origin never was explained), luck enhanced soldiers that defied logic (lack of logic in general), magicians, atlantis, faith everywhere, shoujo romance, and the climax - utter disappointment.
Let's talk about the romance. Three (or more) failed love-triangles, which had ineffective build ups and were executed poorly (I just didn't care anymore at one point, it was too much). The main characters never even showed they really liked each other until we were reaching the end, which was a mistake if that couple was supposed to be the main selling point of this anime, it wasn't believable and I couldn't root for them. And then once Hitomi realizes who she loves (and it was all faith), she leaves his world forever because...? They don't explain that part either, so much for true romance.
Art? Well it's an anime from 1996, so I can't complain, it's actually a pretty good production. The world the director created looks beautiful, that's the one thing my memory hadn't failed me at. As well as the epic soundtrack, it might be the best thing about Escaflowne (later found out it was done by Yoko Kanno) - but nothing can save an anime that has so many inconsequent story lines such as this one, and it's sad because it had potential.

I'll keep this one short, based on the most notable points.

For about the first 2/3 of the series:

The anime seems like an action fantasy adventure with romantic potential.
Building the world and demonstrating the power structure progresses.
Character development and relationship building are weak, but present.

For about the last 1/3 of the series:

... It's unrealistically anti-war- considering the story.
Things happen pretty close to randomly.
The anime becomes a melodramatic soap opera.

At the end:
The conflict element (& resolution) is severely downplayed
Other dumb, unexplained shit happens.
The shipping... is not satisfying.

It's tough to pinpoint without spoiling, but this is one of those stories where events are strung together, plot points are forced, and everyone is pretty stupid, so they can choose to move the plot forward.

I had hope from the beginning- No, I actually enjoyed it for a bit-- but I'm glad it's done now.

Hitomi (the female protagonist) is notable as one of the relatively rare, non-sexualized female leads of the time. Unfortunately, they still make her fickle, selfish and shrieky- so she doesn't really do well as a 'hero' or role model- and the ending is just an unexplained illogical, 'pat' ending.

I don't recommend it unless you're a hardcore fantasy fan, can look past large plot holes, and don't mind stupid characters.

So, I'll be blunt with this one, there's one big mistake that simply made me drop it after 3 weeks trying to watch. And that mistake is: the narrative built-up is bad, if not non-existent.

Before continuing I'll advise: there won't be spoiler here, but my grammar won't be the best either, both because english isn't my first language and I'm writing this on my cellphone, so be easy on me for typos.



Ok, first of all, I started watching this anime because I love Isekai and while I was searching for animes like that, this one came at the top of the list of recommended on ... a thread on Reddit (I think it was there). Then I started watching it, and I liked it enough to keep going for it, but after 10 episodes or so I got extremely bored with the show and I didn't know why until today, which is:

THIS SHOW LACKS NARRATIVE BUILD-UP, it's so obvious since the first episode that I don't know why I didn't notice it before. It's like the author had a lot of ideas to put on the story, but he simply couldn't find a way to connect them properly, whatever he put them in the plot anyway.

It's like a bunch of situations happening randomly and they keep going forward, there isn't a focused direction on the show and it keeps the sensation of "started from nowhere to end in nowhere", the characters are presented bluntly and have no real development. Things get worse from sudden events then get fixed by sudden events, both by concepts that weren't presented nor developed beforehand, and they are not better explained nor added as a development step for the plot in general.

There isn't a hook anywhere in the show which kept me wanting to watch more, the characters aren't interesting, both from the protagonist's side or the villain's. No mysteries or original places to go. The motive for anyone being there is simply: "because war". The backstories are boring, showing nothing that really aggregates to the characters at all, just explaining "better" something that we already knew. Besides, the main character and the hero are annoying as hell, it's like the author wanted for them to be like that so they can develop better, but that doesn't happen, not until where I dropped at least.

There's no flow or gradual change of mood or gradual plot development. The beginning of an episode is calm and chill with people talking in a library, then in the middle, there's a fight which the hero almost dies, then at the end, side characters are arguing about love life. It might look like a roller coaster of emotions, but it ends up like a weak and broken mechanical horsehide.



Every time I see an old anime with a high score, I always go two steps back for caution, but I really was hoping for this one to be good. Seriously guys, never, and I say NEVER, use nostalgia as a quality factor, because the person which you are recommending to WON'T HAVE THAT NOSTALGIA FEELING, I kind of understand when you place that old anime you watched long ago as a "10" on your private list, even so I don't like that line of thought, but don't do that in a recommendation list.

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 ... narrative midway.

Everything from the underdeveloped drama and tension in the plot, dry characters, and unoriginal environment art are cliché and monotonous, especially being contrasted by Yoko Kanno’s ingeniousness and the majestic elements of Gregorian chats in the theme song.

This anime should be considered an insult to be paired with the glorious compositions of Kanno.

Summary: only watch this if you like predictable plots or if you are a Yoko Kanno fan.