Here we go, the first post of four, where I look back on this show of my youth. I’m someone who usually likes to look ahead in life, and so going back to memory lane is going to feel a little weird for me. I remember the characters and the plot and the giant mechs and the Empire that our MCs have to face, but the rest is a total blur for me. I know that I can watch this show on a streaming platform a British TV network (Channel 4) have up at the moment, but I still have my old Bandai Entertainment boxset (which is still intact), and so it’ll be that that I’ll be turning to here.
Curiously enough, Escaflowne wasn’t that popular a show in Japan like it was overseas. It wasn’t really something that had grabbed their attention like it did with the anime fans in North America and Europe, who at the time, only really knew anime by the likes of Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, and of course, Pokemon. Japan had seen shows like Escaflowne come and go, but people here watched the Bandai dub and found a show to really love. Funny that, now we look back at it, the dub was pretty darn awful. We can count our blessings, then, that Funimation have since made an English dub (which I cannot access here in the UK, sadly) that apparently sounds so much better; saying that though, I’ll be concentrating more on the Japanese sub, like I often do with the shows I watch.
So how does Escaflowne begin? Hitomi Kanzaki is your regular schoolgirl who is on the track team, and has a massive crush on the team captain. She also has a hobby of tarot card reading, and does readings for others at school. Things take a different turn when she begins to have visions of dragon slayers, giant fighting mechs and a fantasy world that is completely alien to her. The latent psychic power she has only gets stronger when a dragon slayer arrives out of nowhere one night at the school track, to slay a land dragon, but as soon as he does, an energy beam takes both him and Hitomi back to his home world of Gaea. Even after watching only the first episode, I could remember a lot of things from the old me; the old me who got bored of the more futuristic and cyberpunk anime I had previously watched, and had found a fantasy show like this.
But oh boy, one thing I totally forgot was how much strobe lighting is in the show. I have non-photosensitive epilepsy, you see, but even despite this, there were a lot of moments where I just had to look away just so I wouldn’t get a headache.
As Van and Hitomi return to his home of Fanelia with the stone he took from slaying the dragon, he ascends to the throne, only for the Zaibach Empire to launch an attack on the city-state forcing him and Hitomi to flee in Escaflowne, Fanelia’s most powerful Guymelef, that can only be operated by royalty. As they escape, they meet the incredibly charismatic Allen, who commands a castle nearby, along with its men. Because he just happens to look like Amano, the track captain that Hitomi has a massive crush on, she immediately falls head over heels for him. Totally unsurprising there, I didn’t see that coming…
More memories come back for me, and I remember how much I preferred Allen to Van. The guy oozes charm, grace, valor and muscle, compared to Van who just likes like a reckless and naive kid a lot of the time in these opening episodes. With Fanelia falling, and then Allen’s castle shortly afterwards, they all flee on Allen’s ship, but the Empire, who are technologically superior, have flying Guymelefs, and are able to chase them down and capture Van, leading him to face his estranged older brother Folken, who abandoned his kingdom and turned to the Empire when he was unable to slay a dragon as Fanelia tradition commanded him to do.
I’ll say that the opening episodes of Escaflowne start off rather slowly, and it’s not really until around episode 5 or 6 when things really begin to pick up. It’s at this point where Van is kidnapped by the Empire and faces his brother again, and where Allen starts to play a much bigger role in the show, being a gallant knight to Hitomi and more of a comrade and role model (of sorts) to Van…the role model that Folken wasn’t.
Despite the moments where I have to look away due to the strobe lighting that come few and far, there was so much here that I had totally forgot about. I had forgotten how camp Dilandau was as an antagonist, and by ridiculous I mean in a good way; we all like a bad guy who’s camp. I had forgotten that, back then, I thought Allen was a way better pick for Hitomi than the brash Van and I had totally forgotten how cheesy the ED theme is, and how totally inappropriate it was for an epic fantasy show like this.
As I did some research, I discovered that Escaflowne was meant to be far more of an epic and lengthy show; the original plan was to make it into 39 episodes. It was cut down to 26 episodes due to the budget. There were also plans to turn it into a more male-oriented show, leaving out the psychic powers Hitomi has, along with her tarot card readings, both of which have a bit of a significant part to play in this final cut of the show. This was also the first major voice role for veteran voice actress Maaya Sakamoto, who was 16 at the time. The chief director’s original pitch for the show went something along the lines of “why not have giant mechs and divine powers?”; this guy (Shoji Kawamori) played significant roles in the making of Macross and Robotech franchises, so I think I’d have been sold on this pitch too, given how much experience he has in the mecha genre.
Now that I look back at these first eight episodes of Escaflowne, a part of me sort of gets why it turned out to be more popular overseas than it did in Japan. Just speculating here, but perhaps one reason why could be that it started off quite slowly, and took a while to really get going. Maybe that’s just me being a little too harsh on the tastes of us 90’s anime kids, though; I mean, I was one myself. But aside from Escaflowne, the amount of anime shown here in the UK was extremely limited. A show like this captivated the hearts of a lot of us, and made us want to get into anime more. As I said at the start, nostalgia isn’t something I really warm to so much, but I don’t regret doing this, and having returned to Escaflowne and completed a good portion of the first cour, I know that I’ll be remembering a lot more things in the show that made me want to get into older anime shows more. From what I remember, I ended up getting more into the magical girl genre after this…
The next Revisiting Escaflowne post will be about what happens after Van shows himself to be the ‘angel’ in Hitomi’s dreams, and will see me complete the first cour of the show. I’ll be whining even more about how nostalgia was never my strong suit more likely, so check that post out when it comes…