Tag: anime

Welcome everyone to the final episodes of The Vision of Escaflowne! This week is all about war, love, fate and all manner of other cheesy buzzwords. And a quick note, there is a poll at the end of the post for my next series. So without further ado lets dive in!

Starting off, for the last time, the visuals. For all the issues I might have with this ending, this is not one of them. These two episodes had some of the best cuts/animation of Escaflowne’s entire run. In particular I want to point at the final Guymelef between Van and you know who, keeping spoilers for after the break. This is the kind of giant robot fights I want to see. Giant monsters of metal that actually feel like they weight what they should. Sparks flying at every little scrape. The momentum of their blows carrying through their entire body. Yeah there were other good scenes, Dilandau continues to have fantastic faces. But this is what I wanted from Escaflowne’s finale more than any big battle scene. And it makes me happy that I got it.

Continue reading “The Vision of Escaflowne – 25/26 [Zone of Absolute Fortune/Eternal Love] – 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” →