SYNOPSIS

Hitomi is a high school student who’s just about given
up on life. Not even her best friend is able to lift
her spirits. Hitomi just wants to fade away from this
world that’s caused her so much sorrow. A mysterious
stranger hears her wish and appears to grant it by
sending her to a distant world called Gaea. Soon after she
emerges on this strange new world, Hitomi meets a
young man named Van (pronounced Vahn) and the group of
warriors with whom Van fights. She soon learns that her
life is intertwined with the people of Gaea in a way
she could have never imagined and that the fate of Gaea
rests on a gigantic living suit of armor called
Escaflowne (pronounced Eska-flow-nay).

COMMENTS

Escaflowne: The Movie is absolutely gorgeous. From the
luscious character designs to the silky-smooth
animation, this movie is an amazing work of art. Of course, I
would expect no less of an animated film that took
four years to create. The character designs are vastly
improved over the ones in the Escaflowne TV series even
though they still resemble the ones in the series. The
character designs in the movie are far more detailed
and, thankfully, the long and pointy noses the
characters had in the series have been replaced with more
realistically drawn noses. The background artwork is
detailed and vibrant and beautifully succeeds in bringing
the fantasy world of Gaea to life. The gigantic living
suit of armor Escaflowne is a sight to behold. It’s
intricately detailed and its movements are so smooth and
lifelike that it almost seems real.

Before I get to my thoughts on the story, I feel I
must say that the only episodes I’ve ever seen of the
Escaflowne TV series were a couple of butchered episodes
on Fox Kids a long time ago. Because of that, I really
have no basis for a comparison between the movie and
the series. But the two really shouldn’t be compared
anyway, and the reason they shouldn’t is that
Escaflowne: The Movie tells an entirely different story than the
series.

That said, I loved Escaflowne: The Movie’s story. It
struck me as a fairy tale that was crafted for mature
audiences. I found the story to be both enchanting and
melancholy at the same time. This isn’t a perfect
little one-dimensional good triumphs over one-dimensional
evil fairy tale and I wouldn’t want it to be. The
sadness and depression affecting characters on both sides
of the conflict is what defines the character
development in the story and is (other than the bloody
violence) what makes this movie a fairy tale for mature
audiences. Now I will say that certain parts of the story
did feel a bit rushed to me and I feel that it might
have helped the movie to be about a half-hour longer for
added character development, but I still think this is
a fantastic animated film nonetheless.

Escaflowne: The Movie’s music was composed by Yoko
Kanno (Cowboy Bebop, Macross Plus, Brain Powered,
Escaflowne TV series) and Hajime Mizoguchi (Jin-Roh, Macross
Plus, Escaflowne TV series). Most of the music is very
good and has a grandiose feel to it, but I didn’t find
much of it to be particularly memorable. The most
memorable tracks for me were Dance of Curse II (basically
a faster tempo version of Dance of Curse which was
used in the TV series) and Sora (what I consider to be
the main theme of the movie). The one track that I could
immediately tell Yoko Kanno composed completely by
herself was the oddly named What’cha Gonna Do??? (yes,
the song title does have three question marks). To me,
this song sounded more like something Ms. Kanno would
create for Edward (a Cowboy Bebop character) than
anything else.

The only problem I had with Escaflowne: The Movie’s
score is that the closing credits track felt very out of
place to me. Remember how jarring it is to watch a
Disney movie and then hear a really bad R&B version of
the movie’s most memorable song in the closing credits?
That’s similar to what I experienced when Escaflowne:
The Movie’s credits began rolling. The song that
played (Yubiwa) sounded to me like a Japanese attempt at
R&B. It wasn’t an R&B version of a song that had played
in the movie, but it was still jarring. A remix or
extended version of Sora would have been much more
fitting.

PRESENTATION

Escaflowne: The Movie is available on DVD in two
forms: the movie by itself and a box set that includes an
extras disc and a soundtrack CD. I recommend getting
the box set if you can afford it. But if you can’t, the
only thing you’ll really be missing out on is the
extras disc since the disc with the movie itself on it has
the option of playing the movie with the score only
(no voice acting or sound effects) for those of you who
want to just listen to the music. Another interesting
feature on the main disc is the option of playing the
movie with corresponding storyboards appearing in the
lower right corner of the screen as the movie
progresses.

The extras disc in the box set is filled with cast and
creator interviews. The entire creative staff and the
core Japanese voice actors are interviewed and there
are also short interviews with Yoko Kanno and Kelly
Sheridan (the English voice of Hitomi). Footage from the
North American premiere of the movie at Anime Expo
2000, a large production art gallery, a movie poster
gallery, and all the trailers for the movie round out the
disc nicely.

The artwork on the cover for the movie-only release
looks a lot like many American movie posters I’ve seen.
It’s difficult to describe it adequately, so I’ll just
say that you’ve undoubtedly seen similar artwork on
boxes and movie posters for American films many times
before. That’s not to say the artwork is bad, though -
it’s actually quite good. All I’m saying is that
it’s... familiar.

The artwork for the box set is very different. On the
front cover of the box itself is a beautiful drawing
of a sleeping Hitomi lying against a fossilized
skeleton of a dragon. On the back cover of the box is a
screen shot of Escaflowne brandishing its sword. Inside the
box are three DVDs in separate cases. The case for the
main movie disc has a screen shot of Hitomi next to a
screen shot of Van with a screen shot of Escaflowne
brandishing its sword below them. The case for the
extras disc has mug shots of the movie’s villian
characters. The case for the CD soundtrack looks much like the
artwork on the case for the movie-only release but with
different coloring.

Also included in the box set is a booklet containing
comments from the movie’s creative staff and from the
Japanese voice actors for Hitomi and Van.

I noticed no problems with the DVD’s picture quality,
but I do have a minor complaint regarding the sound
quality. On DVD, the movie can be watched only in Dolby
Digital 5.1 or in DTS. No Dolby 2.0 Surround or stereo
options are available. I don’t have the equipment
necessary for 5.1 or DTS sound, so it would have been nice
to have other options at my disposal. But I will say
that it only made a big difference for me in one scene
in the English dub of the movie in which a character
is speaking a few lines of dialogue several yards away
from Hitomi in the rain. At that point in the movie, I
could tell that everything he was saying was intended
to be heard clearly through one of the surround
channels, but since I don’t have those, I couldn’t make out
what he was saying at all over the much louder rain
and I ended up having to turn on English subtitles for
those few lines of dialogue. It was a minor
inconvenience, but it was still one that could have been avoided
if a 2.0 option had been included.

CONCLUSION

Escaflowne: The Movie is a dark fairy tale with
beautiful artwork and a moving story. It is a bit lacking in
character development, but I still think it has plenty
to offer viewers. I recommend purchasing this movie
for the gorgeous animation alone, but I think you’ll
enjoy the story a great deal as well. If you watched and
liked the TV series, there’s a chance that you won’t
like the movie because of how very different it is from
the series, but I encourage you to keep an open mind
and give the movie a shot. As fairy tales go,
Escaflowne: The Movie is the most compelling one I’ve seen in a
long time.
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