Escaflowne : Une fille sur Gaïa

I'm a casual anime fan, someone who doesn't know the intricate plots and history of the genre as much as I supposedly should. I think that's a good thing.

So often I watch anime that's been hailed as the best thing since sliced bread, and compared to other more mainstream (read: non-anime) features, IMO it doesn't even come close. I think fans of sub-genres tend to be blind to real critique of their favorite subjects, because they need to justify their excessive interest in it.

That being said, you still need to compare like-genre films to one another - at least to some degree, and I think in this case Escaflowne does a great job standing up to its competitors.

Someone had previously mentioned that the faces in this feature were rather badly drawn, and I tend to agree - it's odd, because the quality of the rest of the scenes/ scenery, is relatively good. The plot in this film, as in most anime is VERY disconnected, with whole chunks missing at parts. Rewinding certainly helps when watching this. However, as with most good anime, even if there is some plot missing, the end message is fairly clear. The score is amazing. It's rare you hear this kind of music in "regular" movies, much less an animated feature.

In general, I would recommend watching this on DVD, as you will want to rewind at some points, and try to understand certain elements, and/or watch the fast scenes a few more times.

I have to say as far as the animation goes the movie was well done, great art work, but the plot itself was poorly thought off. The movie might resemble the series with the characters and the setting but the plot itself was not the same. So if you guys are expecting to be like the series, is not, I found it to be a waste of time, and for those who think that the movie was good, it was just a knockoff of the series just to make money of you.

I've just finished watching the entire series of Escaflowne and then the movie, and I must say that it was a let down (though not unexpected).

On the one hand you have a quality movie - great animation, more violence and adult themes than the series would allow and already complex characters (as they were taken from the series' in their totality, rather than their presentation at the beginning). On its own this movie had every potential to be great - decent story world and concept, the problem is that it fell into the limbo of relying on the series too much and too little.

The first half of the movie is truly a great watch - you see old faces and nods to secondary characters (the cats in the nightclub are a nice touch). The problem is that in the second half it sort of falls apart - it seems to lose focus and rely on clichés and poor on screen chemistry for the lovers.

The reason for this is that the first hour or so pretty much relies on the first few episodes of the series - girl meets boy but is afraid, the world itself is introduced and so forth, but in the last hour they try to cram the remaining 24 episodes of plot into the movie. While they negate a large amount of the less relevant details in the series, the fact that they try to throw a love that only develops at the end of 24 episodes of questioning (Between Hitomi and Van) into about 30 minutes, and it just seems forced.

So in the end the movie would've been better had it not relied on the overreaching plot of the series and made its own way in the world. (or maybe do the opposite and be set at the end of the series like the Evangelin movies).

At any rate, I did feel a little cheated by the apparent lack of mech fights and 'brother battle' at the end. 3/5

Several things bothered me while watching this film. One of the first thing i noticed was the animation - the faces on the characters were horridly drawn, making it hard for facial expressions to appear believable. The animation in itself was fine, however the way the people were drawn was distracting. Secondly, the plot was disorganized and scattered; making the film hard to follow for even fans of the Escaflowne TV series. The closing doesn't redeem much of the films' weak points - I wouldn't recommend this for those new to Escaflowne or those who are fans. It would be disappointing either way.

The first thing that struck me about this film was the detailed animation and vividness of the colors. The TV series was known for it's quality animation, and the movie is far better. The story, however, is completely different from the TV series. If you watch this movie, don't compare it to the series, since it's a different story that uses the same characters. The story is fairly dark, but compelling. For action fans, you will find a lot of that in this movie, but romance fans may walk away disappointed. Overall, not great, but a good movie. 6 of 10.