Escaflowne

[Kamirura]

Escaflowne
(a.k.a. Vision of Escaflowne, Tenkuu no Escaflowne)

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Site Reviews: VivisQueen

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Vision of Escaflowne Total Eps - 26

Vision of Escaflowne is about a teenager called Hitomi she loves running and reading tarot cards. And because of her love for running she’s fallen in love with the captain of the track and field team she's running for, and gets really sad when she finds out that he is going to be studying abroad. The night before he is about to leave she meets up with him to run one last time in order to beat her best time.

When she is running a guy named Van suddenly appears on the track and after him comes a giant dragon. A huge battle takes place and Hitomi suddenly gets a vision of what is going to happen. And then she helps Van defeat his enemy. After the fight she and Van gets magically pulled back to Van's home world, a planet called Gaea.
Van who is trying to become the king of his country needs a lot of help to protect his kingdom from the Empire of Zaibach. He starts to travel to get to know the secret behind a giant suit of armor called Escaflowne.
Hotomi keeps having those weird visions about what will happen in the future. This helps Van a lot, but when the enemy finds out, what will they do? Will Van be able to control the Escaflowne or will his country fall for Zaibach?



Animation/Design
Rating: 8
This is a piece of good art. The series really got it's own style. Sometimes you really can't stand the way they drew their noses but it's also really original. The coloring is soft and really neat. You can tell they actually have thought about all the colors in it.

Story
Rating: 10
This series had one of my favorite stories. You are caught from the beginning to the end and you can really feel what all of the characters goes through. They are all well described and have great personalities.
And the story also contains some romantic moments. There is a little bit of everything in this story.


Music
Rating: 7
There are two good track that especially I fell for. The Ring and Sora's theme. I think the singer have such a beautiful voice. I can't listen enough at Sora's theme. Just the way they recorded it and everything makes you shiver. But except from those two I didn't found the music that good.

Overall (not an average)
Rating: 9
What would be expected since this is one of my fave series. This is a must for all anime fans to watch I think. You won't be able to call yourself a true anime watcher if you haven't watched this one. And since the series contains a lot of different kinds of genres I would recommend it to everyone.

Escaflowne is one of my favourite animes. It has great character development, an awesome musical score, a fantastic story, and yes, it really does have amazing artwork. I too would recommend this series to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

[sothis]

escaflowne was a great series, not too cheezy, fun robots... unfortunately it had an ending that made me mad but thats 98% of all anime i think :p

[Freakzilla]

Don't want to get too much into spoilers, but I just wanted to say that although the ending of Escaflowne can be perceived as an unsatisfying one, it actually ties very well into the general purpose of the story.

I won't say anything more than to say that the concept of "fate" and "destiny" was prevalent throughout the series, both in obvious ways (Hitomi's tarot cards and her obsession with divination through them, etc.) and in more subtle ways. I think the ending of Escaflowne, in its way, was done the way it was to show Hitomi rejecting what is supposedly fated, and the show itself I think makes a more general statement about this notion.

In some ways I would say that Escaflowne is atypical in how it ends, and this ending was done on purpose.......the large majority of anime would end with the traditional and expected "happy ending".

I like Escaflowne a lot, and I also respect Shoji Kawamori a lot as a writer, as he always puts a tremendous amount of thought into his shows, same as with Macross.

-Freakzilla

Escaflowne was a series i didn't even think about downloading, I went and BOUGHT it! Too good of a series. Allen, Van, Hitomi, Delandou they are all great characters! The series does a great job of developing them! Escaflowne's ending is a bit odd and surprising, makes u want more or really mad! But to all that is wondering about The Vision of Escaflowne, go and get it. It redifines Mecha to a Medievil future of Technology. Beware they can alter ur Fate!

Drfunk's Rate:
9/10

peace

[Freakzilla]

I think Kawamori really just loves doing open-ended endings......he basically did the same thing with Macross.

-Freakzilla

i use to see rumors about Escaflowne having 3 alternate series, or that they will come out. i saw these rumors on random sites, but it explained that in the alternate series, Hitomi would make the oppisite decision, so u end up with a: Happy ending, Sad ending, and a neutral ending. not sure how valid these rumors are but i figured i would tell u guys anyways.

peace

[Kamirura]

hmm sounds like a false rumor....
I have never seen any other version of escaflowne...
But in the movie you can say you get another version of the serie because the movie has nothing to do with the serie. It's like they've made an another serie about the samething but a bit different.
Personaly I don't like the movie.... maybe it was because I saw it after the series and then thought it would become a part in it, but it wasn't.

@_@

I completely agree with you on that one, Kamirura. The movie was good don't get me wrong, but it's just not the same... In a way it's not meant to be exactly the same.

[Freakzilla]

Yeah, I really wouldn't expect to see anything more with Escaflowne like alternate endings or whatever to the main series. The most they did was authorize two different people to do manga versions of it, one a shoujo manga and one a shounen manga, but that's about the extent of it.

-Freakzilla