The Vision of Escaflowne – 3/4 [The Gallant Swordsman/The Diabolical Adonis] – 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…

None of this is to say that Escaflowne doesn’t still have its moments of course. The opening pastel shot, with soft white outlines or not outlines at all, is stunning. As are many of the transitions into Hitomi’s dream sequences such as when the specter of death flies around her or we zoom heavily into her eye. And then we also have the detailed, hand-painted backgrounds and the well choreographed sword fights. When Escaflowne wants to look good it is perfectly capable of doing so. But it feels like Escaflowne only feels this way half the time. And that other half is… not great. This is partly because Escaflowne still likes to have characters move around or to use detailed backgrounds in these shots. It’s going for a lot. It just doesn’t give them the attention the larger, more important scenes get.

This brings me to the narrative and what better place to start then the exposition! We were due for some eventually and Escaflowne’s world is complicated enough to warrant it. But neither of those things change how dull it was hearing names I know nothing about get rattled off. Credit where it’s due, Escaflowne tried to introduce these things piecemeal and only as they were required. Starting us with the Kingdom of Asturia we now find ourselves in and its relationship with the Zaibach Empire is all fine and dandy. And the way it introduced not only our current short term antagonist, Dilandau, and our long term antagonist, Emperor Dornkirk, was fine as well. But listing of names and geopolitical situation didn’t exactly make for engaging TV. Hopefully now that it’s out of the way we can deal with this stuff at a more natural pace.

I was also thrown off by the sheer technological disparity present in Escaflowne. I thought that the mechs, the Guymelefs, were some kind of ancient relics. That these things would be rare and valuable and losing one would be a huge blow! But no. These things are about as available as a cheap Prius where even a smalltime soldier can use one. All the while the people of this world don’t even have centralized air or electrical lighting. Meanwhile the Zaibach Empire is your standard technological dystopia ala Final Fantasy and Garlemald, what with their flying fortresses and such. This kind of disparity is just a bit much for me. How has Zaibach not conquered the world with this difference? Is it a standard “Industrialization is bad” thing? If so why are Guymelefs still on the good side? It’s all very odd to me how its handled.

As for the evil empire itself we have a lot going on here! An Emperor on his Golden Throne of Terra robot throne to some kind of prophecy about a dragon and ruling the world. Its the whole shebang! On top of that there is also this Folken guy and Dilandau. For Folken it’s pretty obvious that he’s Van’s brother. His introductory conversation with Dilandau dropped a lot of hints, along with his knowledge of the Escaflowne and kingdom in general. Until we learn more about why he abandoned his family there isn’t much to go off here but I hope he lives up to what the story is connecting him to. As for Dilandau… the guy is pretty stereotypically evil. I’m curious if he will get any growth over the series, maybe turn into a good guy, or die as our first standard “villain”. I’m open to either option.

And with that we are finally done with the empire and the exposition! Did I tell you this was a long one? I think I did. Anyways next up we have Allen, the pretty boy wonder and the new member of our team! I can see why Escaflowne is tagged as a Shoujo now. Just 4 episodes in and we have a love pentagon between Hitomi, Van, Allen, Merle and Amano with Allen filling the role of our traditional Fabio-style knight. And you know what? I like him. I like his connection to Van, how he was also trained by Balgus, and how he can continue to teach him what it means to be a warrior. It lets the character continue to live on and affect the world despite only knowing him for a single episode. I hope that continues!

As for his role in the story I’ll be honest, I thought he would die. I still do. Oh Allen is going to be with us for awhile yet I’m sure. But I fully expect him to die to Dilandau or perhaps Dornkirk himself. Something to, in the big final climax, up the ante and really make us feel the stakes are real. For now though he is most likely going to act as our introduction to Asturia proper, giving us a foothold in this new nation we are traveling to, and that should be interesting. Escaflowne tells us early on that Asturia are nominal allies of Zaibach, despite their warmongering ways. This makes me curious as to if we will see much politics. Maybe the Asturian King will want to give them Hitomi and Van for peace, etc while Allen disagrees. Should, hopefully, be interesting!

Next up lets talk about the attack on Allen’s fort. This one ties back into my issue of technological disparity and how Zaibach hasn’t just conquered the world. Like… why are their mechs so much stronger? Is it just the invisibility cloaks and if so how has no one heard of or fought these before? Are they a new invention? Did I just complete miss that explanation? Because the power disparity between maybe… 5 Zaibach soldiers and an entire Asturian fortress seems ridiculous. You could say they were just scouts, sent to watch the border. But in that case why bother giving them any mechs at all if you just expect them to lose? Why place Allen out here to watch over them? It doesn’t make much sense. Hopefully Escaflowne will have an explanation as we get to the kingdom proper.

Following that we also learn what Dornkirk meant by the “Dragon”: The Escaflowne can transform! I honestly thought this was just a title, some fancy name to make it seem important, but no! It can legitimately turn into a dragon and fly away and thats… kinda cool. I don’t know how useful it will be since Van has to get out of the mech to ride it, but its still cool. Of course the question now is what is going to happen to Van. He’s sailing away alone against 4 Zaibach Guymelefs, unprotected and unprepared. He’s obviously going to escape, he’s our lead. But is this where he gets a solo journey of self discovery? Or will he somehow find his way back to our core group after they escape? Only time will tell but I think a personal journey has a lot of potential.

All in all I would say these were two more fine episodes of Escaflowne. Not as strong visually as the first 2 but they continue the narrative in a solid way and introduce plenty of new characters and aspects of the world. They also introduce us to the larger scope of the story and give us an idea of what is at stake. I think the world could still do with a bit of work, it’s not as well realized as say… Twelve Kingdoms, but we are also only 4 episodes and its unreasonable to expect it would be so quickly. My hope is that in the coming episodes, as we head into Asturia, Escaflowne expands on this and starts to let Hitomi truly immerse herself in this new land. For now though? I’m enjoying it.