Category: Throwback Thursday

Hello everyone and welcome to the penultimate post on The Vision of Escaflowne! This is a big week. Escaflowne throws my words back in my face, Hitomi pulls off the unexpected and we finally enter the endgame. So without further ado lets dive into the episodes!

Starting off I need to wipe some egg of my face. Last week I had a lot to say about how Escaflowne handled Folken. That there were a lot of missed opportunities, that he should have had some one-on-one time with Hitomi, etc. I say that we need some time for the ramifications of Folken’s betrayal to run through the cast. That a decision like this warrants more than a quick one-off scene. And what happens? Just that! It’s nice in a way that Escaflowne recognized the same problems I did. That it knew it these things needed to happen and just did them in a different way. It actually gives me a good deal of hope for the finale. Because even if they weren’t done perfectly, they were done. And that means someone is paying attention to their story. Now onto the episodes!

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 23/24 [Storm Premonition/Fateful Decision] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to another (late) post about The Vision of Escaflowne! Where last week was a great example of Escaflowne’smoment to moment storytelling, this week is one of the issues with that approach to narrative. What do I mean? Lets dive in and find out!

To start off, what do I mean by the weaknesses of this moment to moment approach? To put it simply: Escaflowne seems to be focusing on the episode to episode experience, on memorable highs, rather than fitting them into a coherent story. Take the transition between episode 20 into 21 for instance. Hitomi gives herself up to Zaibach for a cliffhanger ending only for that to be resolved almost immediately so that Escaflowne can jump to its next plot thread. It never follows these things through. Instead feeling like its written to jump from cliffhanger to cliffhanger. I want to be clear, Escaflowne is still a grand, fun show. I enjoy watching it. It’s just that because of this I don’t think its going to leave a lasting impression on me beyond “That was fun”.

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 21/22 [Reaction of Fortune/The Black Winged Angel] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to my weekly late post about The Vision of Escaflowne! After the action of the past couple episodes its time to slow down and reflect on how far we’ve come. To look at where we have yet to go. And also to wreck some homes, both literally and physically! So without further ado, lets dive in.

Starting off we have the section I’m sure many of you are tired with but I like talking about: Production. And while Escaflowne didn’t have much in the animation department this week, lots of stills and pans, those stills and pans looked really good. Like I’m talking some of the peak storyboarding, shot composition and coloring we’ve seen in Escaflowne so far. From the framing of the wedding to Folken’s little play. And how can I not mention the bridge in episode 19? I’m being vague here on purpose because these are spoilers before the break, but seriously these looked really good. They are proof that an anime doesn’t need bombastic Shounen sakuga to look good, to stick in your mind. That stuff just augments it. All you really need are scenes like this. Good job Escaflowne. I knew you could do it.

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 19/20 [Operation Golden Rule of Love/False Vows] – Throwback Thursday” →

Hello everyone and welcome to another week of The Vision of Escaflowne! This is wildly late, prepping the new season and our Yearly awards, along with snowstorms knocking out my power, take up a lot of time. My apologies for that. Feel like I’ve had a lot of those lately. Without further ado though lets dive into the episodes!

First up we have episode 17, “The Edge of the World”. Escaflowne did a lot of things with this episode, most of them I like! From answering questions and explaining the mechanics of the world to a clever twist on Hitomi’s power, there was a lot to love here. Take for instance the history of Gaea: The confirmation that this Atlantis is the same Atlantis from our Earth myth actually does a lot for me. I always suspected something like this. But I was never sure if there was a legitimate connection or if Escaflowne was just borrowing western myth and words without truly connecting them like so many anime do. So this confirmation that Gaea and Earth are intertwined rather than just existing parallel to each other is great.But the connection goes even farther!

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 17/18 [The Edge of the World/The Gravity of Destiny] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome back everyone to the last Escaflowne post of the year! No doubt this is going to be late but considering we are covering 4 episodes, I think thats understandable on my part. Thats right, 4, welcome to the longest post I’ve made since Black Clover. So enough with the preamble! Lets strap in and talk Escaflowne.

First up we have episode 13, “Red Destiny”. This was easily the worst of the 4 episodes I’m going to talk about today. In fact I would go so far as to say it was the most awkward episode Escaflowne has had yet. The whole thing was just paced horribly. We skipped the siege of Freid, skipped Chid and Allen’s relationship, skipped Hitomi’s PTSD, burned through the second siege, and killed the Duke all in a single episode. This could have easily been 2 episodes of content with plenty of character work to break up the big fights. Instead Escaflowne just kind of… sprinted through it. This made for a really unsatisfactory end to our time in Freid even if the fallout of these events in future episodes were really good.

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 13/14/15/16 – Throwback Thursday” →

Note: This was supposed to go up Friday morning but the auto-scheduler didn’t work. So this time I have a legitimate excuse and know not to use it again!

Hello everyone and welcome to another week of Escaflowne! I’m writing this opening blurb on Wednesday and I can already tell its going to be late because I feel sick. So if you’re reading this on Thursday, go me! Anyways on with the show.

Starting off as usual, since I need to leave the spoilers for after the break, we have production. This was a pretty standard week for Escaflowne. Nothing terribly wrong with it, some reused liquid animation in both of Zongi’s big scenes but it looked good both times and the coloring differentiated them enough that I didn’t mind. Van’s fight at the end of episode 11 had some jank to it to of course. From sliding still frames to the rainbow distortion effect anytime they come out of invisibility. But these are only really an issue when you’re going back through looking for nice frames for screenshots, like I do. In the moment it’s totally serviceable and only minorly effected my enjoyment.

Now with production out of the way, lets head into the episodes proper!

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 11/12 [Prophecy of Death/The Secret Door] – Throwback Thursday” →

I know, I know, I’m late for another post again. And yes, it’s still Endwalker. But… I just finished the MSQ and it was one of the best pieces of media I’ve experienced in a long time so I regret nothing! I’m sorry that the Escaflowne posts had to suffer while my game of the year came out but such is life. My questionable priorities aside, lets dive into this weeks The Vision of Escaflowne.

I have a lot of positive things to say about Escaflowne this week, I quite enjoyed it. So to save my reputation I thought it best to start off with something negative: The production. I’m afraid to say that we’re starting to see some cracks in Escaflowne. In these two episodes the colors seemed muted often, as if they had lost a lot of their vibrancy. This may be due primarily to the night scenes but it was noticeable. Additionally the layering seemed to have a lot of issues. There were multiple scenes where I could clearly make out what parts of the image were layered from different cels. And then there’s the falling animation! Escaflowne must really like it because they’ve reused the same sequence… 4 times now? I don’t even mean with edits, just the same raw scene! Are these deal breakers? Of course not. They’re simply noticeable.

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 9/10 [Memories of a Feather/The Blue-Eyed Prince] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to another week of Escaflowne! These episodes see our time in Asturia come to an abrupt but eventful end. Once again a king flees a burning city! Knights are thrown in prison, then broken out! And all the while a Princess just cannot seem to get some poon. Sad days indeed. So without further ado lets dive into it!

To start, I’ve come to a realization with these two episodes. A reason for why I like Dilandau way more than I should: He gets all the best faces and lighting. His particular brand of insanity is just so… expressive. From faces of anguish and rage to cruel delight, all of it cast in stark lighting. You know, the kind with heavy contrast between light and shadow? I love that shit and he gets a lot of it. Dilandaou may be comically extreme at times, just look at how he treats his soldiers. And we may not yet know the reason behind his insanity, making it feel like a bit much. But by god does he have great faces. Escaflowne please, I’ll take as much Dilandau as you can give me if this is how he is presented.

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 7/8 [Unexpected Partings/The Day the Angel Flew] – Throwback Thursday” →

Hello everyone! Apologies for being late on this, Thanksgiving will kinda do that to a man. Food coma’s are dangerous don’t ya know? This week we finish up our conflict with the Zaibach Empire and make our way to Allen’s home of Asturia. We have a lot to talk about so lets dive in!

This week picks up where we left off, with Van leading Dilandau and co away from everyone else. And you know what? He gets caught! I should have expected this but I really didn’t. I was prepared for a half episode long chase sequence where we get to see what the dragon can do. Something that culminated in Van proving himself superior to Dilandau and flying off into the sunset! Instead he gets captured almost immediately and has to be rescued. And I’m into that for a lot of reasons. Not only does this curb Van’s power, giving him something to grow into, it also gives the rest of the cast room to flex. From Hitomi and Allen all the way to the individual soldiers, everyone get’s a small moment to shine. And the best part? The villains get to have personalities!

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 5/6 [Seal of the Brothers/City of Intrigue] – Throwback Thursday” →

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Vision of Escaflowne! This week we meet our next party member, receive our mandatory exposition dump and get to know our villains. We have a lot to talk about so lets dive right in!

First up we need to talk production because Escaflowne took a bit of a dip this week. And then a rise. And then another dip. In just the 4 episodes I’ve seen it’s already clear to me how wildly inconsistent Escaflowne’s visuals are. Sometimes you get this really strong contrast! Saturated colors, heavy blacks and bright whites! The kind of stuff I love. But other times the linework becomes thin and weak, feeling almost rushed, and the colors lose a lot of their luster. You can see this most clearly with Allen and his blonde hair. The way it loses a lot of depth between scenes and the black lines become almost pointless, or how his chin suddenly becomes a lot weaker. And then there’s the fire at the end of Episode 3! Oh that fire. It does not look good…

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 3/4 [The Gallant Swordsman/The Diabolical Adonis] – Throwback Thursday” →