TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Joanna Mccarty Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

oobrey5 I haven't really watch a whole bunch of animes, just the ones they showed on Toonami and Cartoon Network, really. So when Escaflowne came onto Fox when I was 13 or so, I fell in love with it. I loved how their noses were so long, and how the plot line developed, and how we really got entangled in Hitomi's life. The ending was bittersweet, but I can't imagine it being any other way.Other anime fans that I've shown this to don't seem to share my deep appreciation of it, but then again, this anime delves deeper into emotions than other animes, and isn't just surface based--It dives deeper, and doesn't deal so much with action as other animes.*MY* favorite anime.

danielmckay There are MINOR SPOILERS in this review. I can't state enough how much I adore this TV series. Escaflowne is an extremely moving fantasy series with very deep, complex characters and an emphasis on emotion. The production values were first rate. At the time this was made, this had the highest quality animation of any TV anime made to date. The music, by Yoko Kanno (with some additional stuff done by her husband Hajime Mizoguchi), is amazing, and on par with most Oscar nominated film scores. Yoko Kanno is one of the top three or so film and television composers in Japan, and this is one of her best work. The orchestral pieces were even recorded using the Warsaw Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra.The story involves a girl named Hitomi in modern day Japan who gets sucked into another universe, the world of Gaea, after which she quickly gets caught up in the intrigue of an ever expanding empire and the kingdoms that are still resisting being conquered, and falls into a love triangle. It sounds like a collection of clichés, but its pulled off so beautifully that they're hardly noticeable as clichés.That being said its not all perfect. The ending is kind of rushed; Some of the character designs are a bit bizarre. Unfortunately this includes the lead, Hitomi; The ending theme, "Mystic Eyes" by Wada Hiroki, is horrible and is everything that was wrong with J-Pop at the time (although thankfully not used in the final episode). The younger cat-girl character, Merle, can be kind of annoying.Still, this is a tremendously moving TV show with broad appeal that deserved much better than the butchering Fox Kids gave to it. It is not particularly appropriate for kids. There's little in the way of sex (although one of the cat twins jokingly makes a pass at her sister), a fair amount of violence (much of it involving giant medieval robots called guymelefs, but also several scenes of mass battlefield death, including a stunning sequence involving something similar to a nuclear bomb, that is treated with appropriate gravitas), and other things that will either bore some kids (romantic tension and love triangles), or go right over their heads (i.e. a brainwashed character who also occasionally switches between genders; the use of "luck" as a changeable force of nature instead of a matter of fixed mathematical probability). Unfortunately, despite the fact that Fox Kids only aired 9 episodes of the series before canceling it, they had acquired the U.S. television rights for five years, and they only recently became available again. The fact that Saban replaced most of Yoko Kanno's score so they could use music from their own crappy music department and charge Fox for doing so, is despicable. Hopefully Cartoon Network will pick it up now and put it on its Adult Swim programming block, where it'd be done justice.I know this review/commentary is about the TV series, but I'd like to dispel some misconceptions about the movie. It is not a sequel to the TV series. Escaflowne The Movie is a 're-imagining' of the TV series, in a way that Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes is a "re-imagining" of the original movie. While beautifully animated, with improved character designs and all-around awesome production values, the movie is nearly incomprehensible if you haven't seen the TV series, and is hard to decipher at times even if you have, which is a rather unfortunate trait for a piece of art that is supposed to be able to stand on its own.This review is just for the original, subtitled version. Supposedly the dub as a whole is so-so, but I've seen too little of the dubbed version to really comment on it.Anyway, I highly, highly recommend this series, as its just an amazing piece of art, that deserves much wider exposure than its gotten in the U.S. (or the rest of the English speaking world for that matter). It's hard to really reduce something like this to a numerical rating, but I'd say it's about a 9.5/10.

zandperl I first came into the middle of Escaflowne on Fox morning TV and was amazed at the complexity of the plot and character development. I know a story's good when there's more than three characters and I remember all their names. This series is an epic fantasy (with a touch of mecha) spanning many countries, two planets, and one teen-aged girl's family. Escaflowne sets the bar for all anime, and it's a quite high bar. By the time my cable got shut off, I was hooked and had to borrow the DVDs of the Japanese version from a friend. I found that as amazing as it was on Fox, the Japanese version was even better. As usual, the English voices for the female characters (especially Merle) sounded inordinately shrill. Also, Fox edited out some scenes crucial to the development of the story, deemphasizing Hitomi's abilities that lead her to such an important role in the world of Gaia. I'd suggest after you watch this, find the Japanese version and watch it with subtitles.

SonicStuart The very first time I saw this show was when I was watching the start of episodes of the 2nd Season of Digimon: Digital Monsters and it was during break when I saw an ad for this show, so I decided to take a peek. Hitomi Kanzaki is a typical high school girl, with typical problems, but when a vision of a young man battling a dragon becomes a reality, her life changes forever. Drawn into a strange vortex with the swordsman, Van, Hitomi is thrust into the strange world of Gaea. Van must learn to master the suit of armor, Escaflowne, before he and Hitomi are crushed by the ambitions of the Empire of Zaibach. Van and Hitomi will encounter both allies and enemies in an effort to unlock the secrets within Escaflowne, and Hitomi's heart, stirred by love and adventure, will, at times ache with sorrow. But why was she sent to this world? Her journey has just begun! I saw it and it was very cool! It had a lot of good animation and plots. It also had lots of action, drama and thrills! I was really upset when Fox Kids took the show off the air! I really thought it should of had some more seasons. But I think it was probably Power Rangers fault! Because Power Rangers has kicked mostly every good show on Fox Kids. But at least they still had some other good shows on Fox Kids at the time. Like Digimon, Action Man, Spider-Man: Unlimited, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century, NASCAR Racers and Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.User Rating: 10/10BOTTOM LINE: FANTASTIC!