Comments on: Escaflowne

By: Dustin

Dustin — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:34:07 +0000

How the heck were you supposed to figure out that the villain was Newton? I never picked up on that until I read Wikipedia…

Overall, I thought it was a waste of four Netflix slots, but at least it was better than Record of Lodoss War…

By: L6

L6 — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:40:44 +0000

Series had a great soundtrack.

By: Mitch H.

Mitch H. — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:14:05 +0000

I’ve never seen the movie, although word is it sucks. The TV series is pretty good until they rushed through an ending to fit the 26-episode format. But it’s definitely not Steve’s sort of thing, and I wouldn’t have expected it to be your type of thing, either.

It’s your typical wish-fulfillment schoolgirl-goes-to-Oz fantasy, with a schizo-tech setting - giant robots in dragonland. There’s a somewhat confusing plot organized around mechanized fate - the *actual* villain is Isaac Newton (seriously, no kidding), who has been building an empire in fantasyland to support his research into constructing a vast fate-manipulation device.

It was grand eye-candy for its day - mid-late Nineties, and it was the last really good show Shoji Kawamori produced before that cult ate his mind & doomed us all to endless pointless variations on eco-mysticism and random rubbish like Aquarion.

Think of Escaflowne as a more shoujoish variant on mid-Nineties post-Evangelion mecha-angst.

Good music, though.

By: fledgling otaku

fledgling otaku — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:12:50 +0000

agreed, but I have two queus - the most-watch and the “what the heck”. They get processed in parallel. Ranma actually moved from one to the other.

By: Steven Den Beste

Steven Den Beste — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:07:27 +0000

Why bother with it when there are so many other things out there that you’re more likely to like?

By: fledgling otaku

fledgling otaku — Sun, 11 May 2008 04:22:05 +0000

Otto, I am holding judgement on the series. But frankly neither am I motivated to give it a shot anytime soon. I will probaly watch it eventually.

By: Evil Otto

Evil Otto — Sat, 10 May 2008 12:11:04 +0000

The movie was terrible, but *please* don’t judge the series by it.

By: Jonathan Tappan

Jonathan Tappan — Sat, 10 May 2008 00:18:50 +0000

I agree that the Escaflowne series is not in the same league as Twelve Kingdoms. However the movie sounds much, much worse than either.

By: HC

HC — Fri, 09 May 2008 22:06:13 +0000

The movie and the series are completely different. The movie follows a long tradition of “look at all the pretty pictures” and “plot? What plot?” movie adaptations.

That said, no, the series isn’t as good as 12k.

By: fledgling otaku

fledgling otaku — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:08:46 +0000

yeah, it was the movie. I couldn’t help but compare it to Twelve Kingdoms in my mind. I guess I shouldnt write off the series, but whats the likelihood it was as good as 12K?

I totally thought the same thing about Bowie and Labyrinth!