![]() When I revived this blog series two years ago, I did so because I found the OP to Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight so moving that I had to share it. Look at me, though! I haven’t even talked about the OP. I find myself wanting to check out more from director Akane Kazuki and writer Kawamori Shouji because of it… which means that I’ve got to watch Macross, ugh.Īllen Schezar and Princess Millerna share a brief moment of regard in The Vision of Escaflowne Escaflowne is one of those overstuffed nineties anime where more happens in a single episode than in an entire cour of some anime today and, while not all of it works, its ambition and enthusiasm is undeniable. Their pursuers, the seemingly undefeatable army of the Zaibach Empire, appears only to grow in strength, which makes the second half of the anime, during which the hidden powers of Hitomi and the titular Escaflowne are revealed, feel even more outrageous. ![]() The Vision of Escaflowne is a sweeping adventure carried out at breakneck pace, forcing Hitomi to be on the run with her friends Van Fanel the just-deposed king, Allen Schezar the ever-victorious knight, and Merle the always-obligatory catgirl from the second episode onward. Still, overall, Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea failed to leave much of an impression on me, which is what makes the TV series that came before it such a revelation. A power fantasy it most emphatically is not. Later on, after the isekai boom took off, I was impressed by how much time the movie spent on the protagonist Hitomi’s terror and confusion over being transported to a strange world full of magic and strife (something that The Twelve Kingdoms, for all that I hated it at the time, also handled well). ![]() I was impressed by the way that the high-tech mecha (here called “Guymelefs”) were integrated into the medieval setting without seeming a deliberate incongruity, like steampunk-adjacent aesthetics often do. Almost half a decade ago, I watched the movie version, Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea, and found it impenetrable and offputting, which honestly shouldn’t have been a surprise to me as someone who’s seen literally any movie version of a multi- cour anime series. So why not The Vision of Escaflowne? Well, I can’t say that I wasn’t intrigued. Van Fanel stands in the ruins of his kingdom in The Vision of Escaflowne Eventually, I was watching Space Runaway Ideon without irony, wherein the giant robot that gives the show its title is just the bluntest possible symbol for the dangers of ceding our humanity to technology and losing the ability to connect with others. Next there was Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, a six-episode OVA digging deeper into the giant robot as the armor of masculinity that separates the boyish daydreams of war from brutish reality, and after that Turn A Gundam, which incorporated the mecha aesthetic into its Vernean fantasy of invaders from the moon. I see, in hindsight, that that was a slipperier slope than I knew, mecha-as-metaphor being a vein that anime’s been content to mine for decades now. The exception was, of course, Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I told myself wasn’t actually a mecha anime but a post-apocalyptic psychological thriller with giant robots standing in for the twin burdens of adulthood’s expectations and parents’ failings. I found the giant robots in them to be fatuous distractions from the sci-fi settings that they tended to populate, and putting one on the DVD case was a good way to make sure that I wouldn’t give it a second look. In my teens and early twenties, I think I was just against the idea of mecha anime in general. I’m not entirely sure why it took me so long to get around to watching The Vision of Escaflowne. It’s not an April Fool’s prank, though! Instead, I have a real gem to share with you today: the OP for The Vision of Escaflowne, “Yakusoku wa Iranai” by Sakamoto Ma’aya. I know, I’ve been gone for over a year, but social distancing is getting to me and my plans for a big comeback aren’t quite together yet.
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