Name: Enjoyable dark AU with beautiful music, but may not be for people who loved the original
Item: Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea
Rating: 80
Author: banichan

Waifra

Enjoyable dark AU with beautiful music, but may not be for people who loved the original · Waifora

I rewatched this film recently, and personally it still works for me. I'll just lay out a few thoughts I had. Note that I have only had minor exposure to Escaflowne the series and have not watched the whole thing.

It's pretty likely you'll be disappointed if you really loved the original Escaflowne series and are hoping for something similar to that. This film has a different tone, a different storyline, a completely different theme, and also removes Hitomi's fortune-telling. Luckily for me, I had very little exposure to the series when I saw this movie the first time.

Thematically, this is very much a post-Eva type of anime - dark, bloody, emotional. In some ways, it reminds me RayEarth (the OVA), which was a darker AU rewrite of the original bright fantasy adventure Magic Knight Rayearth. I don't mind this sort of "dark reboot" if it's done well, and Escaflowne is definitely better comparatively than RayEarth - Escaflowne's storyline is internally consistent, people have at least basic motivations, and the magic system doesn't feel like it's being pulled out of nowhere as we go.

I actually felt most of the characters were more interesting here than the impression I have of them from the series. Allen, instead of being some sort of doofy dream knight, is straight badass. Hitomi starts out kind of annoying, but is also (as I recognized more and more with time) a decent portrayal of depression, imo. I also just really prefer this Millerna.

I really appreciate how they handled the main emotional storyline. Specifically, I find it compelling that, at the beginning, all 3 of the main characters (Hitomi, Van, and Folken) are in the same general place - hurt, angry, bitter and lashing out at their friends because they don't know how to handle it. The Gaea storyline then ends up becoming one centered around finding people and things to help you, or continuing to lash out and push everyone away.

The music is wonderful. I also still find the art pretty solid as well - this film has a lot of very good imagery and the director clearly had a direction and made some very purposeful shot choices. The "Tree of Hearts" sequence is still one of my favorites.

Finally, maybe this is just a me thing, but I actually liked that there wasn't a super strong romantic emphasis. You can easily interpret Hitomi/Van as being a thing, and even Folken and Sora have some one-sided love vibes, but there isn't anything overtly romantic in the story. I know this is a pretty big change from the series, which had a frankly soapy amount of romantic entanglements, but I've never been huge on romance-heavy stories, and I think it's worthwhile to also celebrate close relationships that aren't romantic.

Just to clarify, though, I don't actually think this movie is perfect. Here are a few criticisms:

The way the story is set up does lead the viewer to potentially compare Hitomi's initial problems (seemingly just modern depression) with the Gaea characters' problems (destruction of entire civilizations and war PTSD). This is by no means me saying that depression isn't a real problem, it's just that the movie sort of unintentionally leads you to compare the background of why the characters are depressed, which leads to this weird sense of scope imbalance when Hitomi's depression doesn't have the same sort of dramatic root.

The movie was pretty short, so there's not enough time to shows us much of the side characters. I would have really loved to get at least a little more of the caravan crew, and what the stories were of the cool new Allen and Millerna.

Also probably due to time restrictions, a few things felt like they jumped a little fast. The biggest example is Hitomi's stay at the village, where things feel like they suddenly progressed a little faster than entirely realistic. (Sorry for the vagueness, trying to avoid spoilers.)

Overall, I still really enjoyed it years later as an adult. Maybe some of it is the nostalgia, or the fact that I got into anime around the heyday of dark post-Eva 00s series, or just because I watched RayEarth (which was honestly not very good) recently. Still, I think it's worth a try, particularly if you don't know much about the original or are okay with a completely different AU.