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by Gwynn Grandy
If you thought Vision of Escaflowne: the Movie was a movie designed to fix
the obvious error in the end of Vision of Escaflowne the TV series by
picking up where the series ended, you're wrong. It's purely a condensed
version of the TV series with nothing new added.
The TV series Vision of Escaflowne combined almost every element traditional
to anime, fantasy or otherwise. Giant Mecha robots, alternate worlds, angst,
swords, kings, dragons prearranged marriages, estranged family members,
cyberpunk technology next to horseback soldiers, people of various animal
descent, vague prophecies, and school girl outfits all combined with varying
success, but the overall series was fun, with a little bit of something for
everyone. Vision of Escaflowne: the movie kept most of these elements, but
changed several of the aspects of the story, as is necessary to condense a
26 episode series into an hour and a half movie.
Pluses: the pointy noses are gone! The characters looked so different I
spent the first 20 minutes being distracted by the noses. If you watched the
TV series and complained about the noses the whole time, you'll be thrilled.
And I don't know anyone who watched the series and didn't complain about the
noses. If you haven't watched the TV series, you won't care.
The good luck twins make a spot appearance, which was pretty unnecessary and
unexplained, but better than leaving them out for those who really
appreciated them in the TV series.
Merle the cat-girl makes more appearances in the movie, which made me groan,
until I realized she's much less annoying. She's still self centered and
focused on Van (the hero of the story), but she actually comes across as a
half-way decent cat being.
Negatives: Hitomi, the main character, is just as angsty as ever, has far
fewer visions and seems far more unnecessary. It's just a bit bizarre to
have the main character seem unessential to the plot. Also, they dressed the
princess as a clown-pirate whore for no obvious reason.
However, my biggest beef is that Folken is thoroughly evil with no real
explanation. He just seems to have decided life isn't worth living and
therefore he's going to destroy the whole world. Huh? Folken is a far more
interesting character in the TV series. In fact he was one of my favorites.
Here he's just another random villain. The producers even removed his
tattoo, which was very symbolic of his inner struggle, which was also
completely removed in the movie. You catch that he's Van's brother, but in
the movie that's irrelevant. The producers did maintain the integrity of the
insanity of Dilandu, one of Folken's generals, but didn't get around to the
explanation of his borderline insanity, which was unsurprising if they
couldn't even be bothered to explain Folken.
As far as I can tell the only vision the producers had was one of money. It
took a good TV series, and retold the same story, then counted on the
popularity of the series to sell the movie despite there being nothing new
in it. They may have fixed a few things, depending on your point of view,
but in order to cut the story down they also removed several of the most
entertaining parts, and removed all pieces that made the villains more than
cardboard cutouts. Overall, I think you'd be better off spending the ten or
twelve hours it takes to watch the TV series instead. If you're uninterested
in watching that much anime, the movie is enjoyable, or at least worth
viewing. If you've already seen the TV series, I recommend the movie for
some afternoon when there's nothing better to rent at Blockbuster.
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