Genre: Adventure / Drama / Romance / Mecha / Fantasy / Sci-Fi / Shoujo
Anime Type: TV Series
Director: Kazuki Akane
Original Creators: Hajime Yatate, Shoji Kawamori
Character Design: Nobuteru Yuki
Distributor: Bandai
ANN Link: http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=240
Availability: Common
Package: Complete Collection, 8 DVD's, 26 Episodes.
Price Paid: ~$32 
Retailer: Best Buy (Retail Storefront)

Suppose you are a 15 year old freshman high school girl on the school track team. Then suppose one day in your classical myth class you have a particularly interesting lecture on the myth of Atlantis and then your next class is physics and a lecture on Issac Newton's theorys. Also suppose that you, this young high school girl, had an interest in fairy tales with knights in shining armor, and you and your best friend have a crush on an upperclassman on the track team. Let's also throw in that you're Japanese and you think "big mecha" anime is cool (or, O.K. you grew up in the 80's and liked Transformers). Now suppose you got bored and were playing with the pendant on your favorite necklace and began to day dream a fantasy which blended all these things together. Your day dream might look an awful lot like the anime Escaflowne.

At least that's what I thought of while watching this series. 

First and foremost this is a "teenage" drama filled series, which typifies the anime subgenre of shoujo to me. Shoujo for those of you with me in North America is typically defined as Anime aimed at a female demographic. Now I know that Escaflowne is rather popular among most Anime afficianados, gender notwithstanding, but to me it really is pointed at teen girls. We have a young girl trying to find herself, a typical love triangle scenario (one side of which is the requisite bishounen character), and a lot of drama and suspense revolving around said scenario and characters. Now don't get me wrong the characters and scenario is all developed rather well, but this friends, is not my idea of a great time with 26 episodes of anime. It's just not my thing, espeically for an age 27 male.

The reason I picked up Escaflowne, was because it has always been highly recommended among other Anime fans and reviewers, especially because of it's animation. As well it was reasonably priced in a bundle of all 26 episodes. Now normally mecha Anime doesn't do much for me, but this was somehow supposed to be non-futuristic "fantasy" and I'd even read reviews likening it to fantasy Anime like "Record of Lodoss War". Hardly. You could say both Escaflowne and Lodoss War revolve around a headstrong male youth who are both pretty good with a sword, and Nobuteru Yuki worked on the character design and artwork for both series; but that's about it. 

Escaflowne actually revolves around two main characters, the first and most important of which is a young teenage high school girl named Hitomi. Hitomi runs track and along with her best friend, has a crush on an upperclassman boy on the track team. We have a typical series of development, mostly about Hitomi until one evening Hitomi asks her crush (his name is Amano) to kiss her if she can perform a lap around the track in 13 seconds or less. Before Hitomi can make it around back to Amano, a blue beam of light appears and a young man wearing armor and weilding a sword appears fighiting a dragon, this is our second major character, Van Faneil. One thing leads to another and Hitomi is transported, along with Van, back to his world, a planet called Gaea. Remember all those suppositions I asked you to make? 

Gaea is the setting whereupon most of the Anime will take place. Gaea apparently exists somewhere in an orbit between Venus and Mars because Earth and Earth's moon appear in Gaea's sky. The Gaean's call Earth the "Mystic Moon". Gaea is a strange world. While it does feel somewhat midevil fantasy, it has that wierd "only-in-Japanese-Anime" merger between a fantasy style world and strange technology. This strange technology apparently enables giant mecha suits, called "Gaimelif", piolted by knights. The Gaimelif of course look similar to midevil battle armor (with that Japanese flair) and must fight eachother with, yes of course, really big swords. The series takes it's name from Van's Gaimelif "Escaflowne". This is a fair enough premise, it's obviously evident by the box, so not a surprise. I've delt with enough Anime and Japanese RPGs to be accustomed to this kind of thing. However I had a problem with it.

To me, Escaflowne is off the chart in terms of odd technology. I could buy into the idea that dragons have an odd crystaline power source inside their bodies that can be harvested to use to power the Gaimelif. As well the large "levistones" that are used to create great flying airships is also not really that unusual in Japanese fantasy fiction. Pulling out Atlantis myths and reconstructing them into the mythos of Gaea is also somewhat innovative, actually. However, and perhaps this is a spoiler but it is the key, the absurd idea of controlling luck and fate through some kind of particle physics is beyond even some of the worst technobabble in your average Science Fiction series. I truly did think that a concept this ridiculous was one that had to come from the adolescent daydream of some high school girl. It's because this concept enables very strange romantic twists sure to delight shoujo fans. However to me this is one point where other "fantasy" shoujo series like "Scrapped Princess" or "The Twelve Kingdoms" are much stronger. They take things kind of far, like most Anime do, but not into the abjectly absurd. They at least stay grounded in real fantasy fiction (the D&D / Lodoss kind) or pass things off on magic (of which there is none in this series other than scientific sorcery). Even if this was Science Fiction and not Fantasy Fiction, I'd say the same thing. Geordi and Scotty did some wierd things with the transporters on Star Trek (which sometimes enabled the plots of entire episodes) but they never put "Intensified Luck Blood" into neko girls! Although Scotty and Bones once did put Spock's brain back into his body while Spock's mind was concious and told them how to do it. However It's not supposed to be a comedy series, because in THAT context I could understand.

Besides the absurdity of Dr. (Emperor) Dornkirk's "science" which powers the main conflict in the series, there is also the love interest drama of Hitomi. This is actually the major storyline of the series. When Hitomi is dragged into Gaea she is at once infatuated with Van (and must vie for his attention with Van's cat-girl companion Merle) and then eventually meets a bishounen swordsman named Allan whom she is also infatuated with, but ends up vieing for him with with a princess named Millerna. Funny thing, Allan looks an awful lot like Hitomi's crush, Amano, except Allan has a lot of long blonde hair. Again, remember those suppositions I asked you to make?

This is an obvious recipie for internal character conflict now isn't it? Of course it is. Far to much of it for my taste. I suppose if I was in high school and 10 years younger I might dig this. However even when I was in high school I found romance drama to be silly and a waste of time. So I'm biased against the tedium of such premises. I'm far more at home with the drama of battle strategies and *believable* technobabble, and single romantic interests (that pay off in the end) for the main character. I will say that if you ARE into the kind of romantic drama that Escaflowne markets, then you will not be dissapointed. The character development is very good, and the drama is very "dramatic" with all kinds of gossipy twists and turns and internal struggles to satiate your thirst. I just find it overly so. Don't get me wrong I love good character development and some drama, it's why I watch Anime, but I don't love Anime for Anime's sake, I enjoy certain kinds of stories and this really wasn't one of them.

Perhaps you're wondering if I think Escaflowne is bad, or perhaps you're a fan and you're miffed at my review thus far. Well, no Escaflowne was not bad, to the contrary it's quite good if you like the story. Which I didn't. You can dislike something but still think it is good. I also don't like popular things just because they're popular. I like them if I like them. It is one of the things I look for in reading reviews, rather than someone gushing over generalities. But let's gush a little

Escaflowne is a beautifully animated series, I believe this is one of it's strongest elements. Especially for a TV series (as opposed to an OVA). A few scenes and still paintings blew me away. The Gaimelif were very detailed and when mechanical works were shown they were rather cool. In fact most of the Mecha in the series were rather well done. However all one needs to do is look at the original creators. Hajime Yatate is a master of Mecha series, which I don't need to tell any Gundam fans out there. Besides Gundam you may recognize Yatate's thumb print on series like "Cowboy Bebop", "Gasaraki", "The Big-O", and "Outlaw Star". Indeed being an Outlaw Star fan, some scenes in Escaflowne reminded me of that series. Also credited as an original creator is Shoji Kawamori, who is billed for "Mechanical Design" on everything from Gundam and Macross to Outlaw Star, Ghost in the Shell, and last but not least - The Original Transformers. So obviously the attention to detail on the mechanical look of Escaflowne is extremely well done. Besides this but as I mentioned earlier, Nobuteru Yuki did the character designs. I am a big fan of Yuki and his artwork, from his work on Lodoss War and the Square(-Enix) video game Seiken Densetsu 3. I even own one of his compilation books. So I did find the fantasy-style character artwork to be top notch. In fact the whole look of the series is clean and crisp, on model, and just all around spectacular. I may not have enjoyed the story very much, but I sure did enjoy watching it unfold.

The music and score of the series is also quite good, as I noticed was touted in a number of reviews. I agree with most of the positive comments out there. I watched mine dubbed (as usual) and some of the voices were slightly harsh, but not distracting (to me). From what I heard of the seiyuu, it may be better.

My overall opinion of the series is 3.5 out of 5. I'm docking it on a personal level for really not caring for the story. My ranking reflects not only the technical qualites (which are near 5's) but my personal enjoyment of the series, as well as how I rate it in my collection against other favorites. While this may be low for this series to some people, I can easily see how many may consider this one of their top titles. My response is, to each their own.

OMAKE: If you're a Final Fantasy IV fan...do you see any obtuse similarities??? I'm not saying "direct" analogies but just things that seem somewhat similar...