MovTV
Lifetime Total
1+
IMDb Member
15 years
Reviews
Tenkû no Esukafurône (1996)
Disappointment: Escaflowne is not exactly all time classic
I am reviewing the English version of Bandai release. This is not Fox Kids release.
Escaflowne is remembered by most anime fans who viewed the show as a great series. However if we look closely at this anime, we find that the diamond does have a lot of cracks.
Plot: Escaflowne is a typical rabbit in the hole story of animes. Hitomi, the main character of the anime, ends up on a world called Gaia with Vahn, a boy king of a country in this world. Hitomi haves a strange psychic link with her tarot cards. Whatever fortune she gets from the cards comes true. With this, Hitomi is made a target of a evil empire who wants to use her powers for their own means. To get rid of this threat, Vahn and Hitomi travel to a mystic city to get aid.
Now the bad: Escaflowne does try to add mysteries to the story to make it interesting. The main mysteries is what is Hitomi's grandmother's connection to Gaia and what happened to Allen's sister. At first, viewers think that both are connected somehow. The writers do give red herrings in order to add twists to the plot to keep the viewers guessing what wil happen next. But the results of twists are performed badly, are way left field, and make the characters look more undesirable and hypocritical to viewers than they should be (ex. Allen---daddy issues mixed with weird love affairs)
To make the flaws of the anime worse, a major plot hole was lefted to confuse the intelligent viewers even more. The hole begins with Hitomi finding a CD for sale. Gaia does not have the technology to produce a CD. Hitomi thinks (which is a good possibility) that someone else from Earth came here to Gaia. However the only two people, as revealed in the story, that came to Gaia are the grandmother and Issac Newton (the main villain!!!-Huh I am not joking. It's real <_<). However Netwon and the grandmother came from eras that didn't have CDs. The story makes us assume that Netwon, with his genius, made the CD. However if you think logically, Netwon could not be so advance in his knowledge to have produced a CD since he came fromt the 17th century. In matter of fact when you think about it, Newton couldn't have been able to develop the high technology of the empire without complex modern science and math. Some might claim magic or new learning caused Newton's knowledge to expand to that level but I think that is stenching the believability in a senseable story and makes it wackier than it should. If a fourth Earther was methods or hinted, the fatal flaw may have been ignored easily.
To top it off, Escaflowne haves some of the worst character designs in anime. "Doonsbury" noses on every character on the show!!!. It wouldn't be so bad if three characters had it but everyone seems to have one. Didn't the artist know how to draw different noses and actually make them cute besides that one!?. It becomes distracting if its ugliness and makes you less focused on the anime (if you haven't turned out from the bad plot by then). However mechas and monsters were good in design especially the dragon in the first episode. The skin was odd with its early CG skin which wasn't really not that bad. It looks impressive and fresh in design for an anime.
Music: The another good and possibly the only good thing about this anime was the music. From its Gregorian chant battle music to its poppy 90s ending music to its shojo opening, the music is actually good to listen to. Vocals were done correctly and made you feel part of the story. If only the writing should have done that for the overall anime.
Overall, Escaflowne is not good anime to me. It is watchable till the end but it made me disappointed that a highly budgeted anime of its time would allow all the flaws it did to happen, and highly intellect people (cough the director and producers) would prove the scripts and character designs when the writers and the artist would have fired on the spot for their sloppy and poor work. If you have to watch a old-school anime adventure, try SDF Macross or Outlaw Star first then try Escaflowne (but be prepared to watch a bad anime).
Escaflowne is remembered by most anime fans who viewed the show as a great series. However if we look closely at this anime, we find that the diamond does have a lot of cracks.
Plot: Escaflowne is a typical rabbit in the hole story of animes. Hitomi, the main character of the anime, ends up on a world called Gaia with Vahn, a boy king of a country in this world. Hitomi haves a strange psychic link with her tarot cards. Whatever fortune she gets from the cards comes true. With this, Hitomi is made a target of a evil empire who wants to use her powers for their own means. To get rid of this threat, Vahn and Hitomi travel to a mystic city to get aid.
Now the bad: Escaflowne does try to add mysteries to the story to make it interesting. The main mysteries is what is Hitomi's grandmother's connection to Gaia and what happened to Allen's sister. At first, viewers think that both are connected somehow. The writers do give red herrings in order to add twists to the plot to keep the viewers guessing what wil happen next. But the results of twists are performed badly, are way left field, and make the characters look more undesirable and hypocritical to viewers than they should be (ex. Allen---daddy issues mixed with weird love affairs)
To make the flaws of the anime worse, a major plot hole was lefted to confuse the intelligent viewers even more. The hole begins with Hitomi finding a CD for sale. Gaia does not have the technology to produce a CD. Hitomi thinks (which is a good possibility) that someone else from Earth came here to Gaia. However the only two people, as revealed in the story, that came to Gaia are the grandmother and Issac Newton (the main villain!!!-Huh I am not joking. It's real <_<). However Netwon and the grandmother came from eras that didn't have CDs. The story makes us assume that Netwon, with his genius, made the CD. However if you think logically, Netwon could not be so advance in his knowledge to have produced a CD since he came fromt the 17th century. In matter of fact when you think about it, Newton couldn't have been able to develop the high technology of the empire without complex modern science and math. Some might claim magic or new learning caused Newton's knowledge to expand to that level but I think that is stenching the believability in a senseable story and makes it wackier than it should. If a fourth Earther was methods or hinted, the fatal flaw may have been ignored easily.
To top it off, Escaflowne haves some of the worst character designs in anime. "Doonsbury" noses on every character on the show!!!. It wouldn't be so bad if three characters had it but everyone seems to have one. Didn't the artist know how to draw different noses and actually make them cute besides that one!?. It becomes distracting if its ugliness and makes you less focused on the anime (if you haven't turned out from the bad plot by then). However mechas and monsters were good in design especially the dragon in the first episode. The skin was odd with its early CG skin which wasn't really not that bad. It looks impressive and fresh in design for an anime.
Music: The another good and possibly the only good thing about this anime was the music. From its Gregorian chant battle music to its poppy 90s ending music to its shojo opening, the music is actually good to listen to. Vocals were done correctly and made you feel part of the story. If only the writing should have done that for the overall anime.
Overall, Escaflowne is not good anime to me. It is watchable till the end but it made me disappointed that a highly budgeted anime of its time would allow all the flaws it did to happen, and highly intellect people (cough the director and producers) would prove the scripts and character designs when the writers and the artist would have fired on the spot for their sloppy and poor work. If you have to watch a old-school anime adventure, try SDF Macross or Outlaw Star first then try Escaflowne (but be prepared to watch a bad anime).
Choujikuu Yousai Macross (1982)
Macross: a great war story with good music but some cheese
I watched the English version of ADV Films translation of this. So parts of it may be different from the Japanese version.
Plot Summary: The story centers around Hikaru, a young air show pilot. He is invited to attend the launching of the Macross, a restored alien space battleship that crashed onto Earth by his friend Roy Focker. But all hell breaks loose when the ship's original systems become active and accidentally fire upon and destroy ships of an alien fleet. War breaks out and Hikaru becomes a military pilot.
The story explores the theme of war and what it means to the characters of the story. As events of the story occur, the characters begin to doubt their views/lifestyles that happened during the war and want to change society/themselves to be happier from it. Most prevalent of this is the love triangle that Hikaru haves with the two main female characters, the military officer Misa Hayase and Chinese-Japanese waitress turned music pop sensation Lynn Minmay. His conflict with his views towards war will ultimately decide which of the women he chooses.
The character designs and mechs are great and beautiful despite the age of the anime. Vocal music of Makoto Fujiwara (opening and ending songs) and Mari Iijima (singer/voice actress of Lynn Minmay) perfectly reflects the tone of story, and it is great to listen to.
However Macross does not come without its problems. The story lays the cheese factor heavily sometimes such as the characters going gaga over the "Power of Song" that either makes you laugh if how a society canonly united/saved through music of one girl (literally!), or drives you crazy with the (Minmay) songs playing over and over again. Producers try to tone down the "Power of Song" theme with the Rebuilding Earth arc of the story and making it less effective to enemies that are constanly exposed to it.
However the producers do nothing to fix the real effect the war causes on the human population. Sure the city inside the Macross, the Earth gets destroyed, and death of some character etc reflects that war isn't great and deadly but everything is made peachy again with everything (environment and characters) nice, clean, happy go lucky and perfect again in the next episode. I know the producers are trying to keep the story upbeat but it gets stupid and repeative how they have to enforce the "happy" factor with a physical environment that would sent most of us (and the characters) to the loony bin.
Overall Macross is a good story. It is worth watching
Plot Summary: The story centers around Hikaru, a young air show pilot. He is invited to attend the launching of the Macross, a restored alien space battleship that crashed onto Earth by his friend Roy Focker. But all hell breaks loose when the ship's original systems become active and accidentally fire upon and destroy ships of an alien fleet. War breaks out and Hikaru becomes a military pilot.
The story explores the theme of war and what it means to the characters of the story. As events of the story occur, the characters begin to doubt their views/lifestyles that happened during the war and want to change society/themselves to be happier from it. Most prevalent of this is the love triangle that Hikaru haves with the two main female characters, the military officer Misa Hayase and Chinese-Japanese waitress turned music pop sensation Lynn Minmay. His conflict with his views towards war will ultimately decide which of the women he chooses.
The character designs and mechs are great and beautiful despite the age of the anime. Vocal music of Makoto Fujiwara (opening and ending songs) and Mari Iijima (singer/voice actress of Lynn Minmay) perfectly reflects the tone of story, and it is great to listen to.
However Macross does not come without its problems. The story lays the cheese factor heavily sometimes such as the characters going gaga over the "Power of Song" that either makes you laugh if how a society canonly united/saved through music of one girl (literally!), or drives you crazy with the (Minmay) songs playing over and over again. Producers try to tone down the "Power of Song" theme with the Rebuilding Earth arc of the story and making it less effective to enemies that are constanly exposed to it.
However the producers do nothing to fix the real effect the war causes on the human population. Sure the city inside the Macross, the Earth gets destroyed, and death of some character etc reflects that war isn't great and deadly but everything is made peachy again with everything (environment and characters) nice, clean, happy go lucky and perfect again in the next episode. I know the producers are trying to keep the story upbeat but it gets stupid and repeative how they have to enforce the "happy" factor with a physical environment that would sent most of us (and the characters) to the loony bin.
Overall Macross is a good story. It is worth watching