So on Saturday my friend and I got together and we ended up watching some movies (Cowboy Bebop, Pitch Black, and Escaflowne in that order; not that it’s relevant).
I’m not too familiar with anime, so I’m wondering if I’m missing something, or more accurately, everything, after Escaflowne. About half of the characters that were in the movie had essentially no relevance to the plot at all, and the plot itself was rather simple and formulaic. Parts of it were pretty cool, like when Van(sp?) raided the airship by himself, but then most of the while the movie was set in the real world, it was dull and pointless. It was also dissapointing that most of the characters weren’t even really used.
The movie and series are retellings of each other. The series is considerably lighter than the movie version (the movie was made that way because apparently 80% of Escaflowne fans are female). Watch the series as well.
The movie is an alternate look at the plot of the series; they both follow the same basic story, but there are differences in characterization, character designs, settings, and even a lot of the plot. Because of the limited time in the movie, they couldn’t make use of all the characters to their full potential. Most if not all of them get much more depth in the series, but they’re essentially completely different characters.
If you liked the movie at all, I’d seriously suggest watching the TV series. The plot’s pretty compacted, but that’s part of its charm, in my opinion.
The manga is also being translated, or I should say one of the manga. There are two separate manga series’, as well, and the Shounen (geared for guys) version is what’s being released. From what I’ve seen, it’s as different from the anime incarnations as they are from each other.
To sum it up:
“…the various incarnations of ‘Vision of Escaflowne’ bear the same name and often the same character names and maybe even a few key elements, they are all very different stories with very different characters.”
-The Escaflowne Index(Escaflowne: The Movie)
I only saw the movie, not the series. I understood everything that happened, it’s just that there seems like more should have happened. The movie is utter crap on it’s own, except for the fighting, with all the blood and the blood and the, well, blood. Aside from a little bit in the beginning before we figured out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, the only confusion was in wondering if “wing goddess” was a mistranslation, which eventually we discovered it wasn’t.
I saw the movie not too long ago and if not for the series, I would have been scratching my head, saying, “WHA?!?!” during most of it. Not much creativity went into the plot, I must admit, but the magic using and fight scenes were good! ^^
Was it just me or was Hitomi such a bitch before she went to Gaia? I wanted to kick her in the head. She was so mean and depressing! KICK
Escaflowne (the TV show) was very good, it reminds me of the Lunar RPGs in a way. I saw only the American version, but Fox took it off the air before airing all the episodes. >_< The movie version IS very different, since they had, for example, Hitomi thinking of commiting suicide! I haven’t seen it yet so I can’t judge it, but I’ve read a bit about it, and I’m not too thrilled, either.
Well, I’ve seen the movie and (most of) the series and I can say that to really understand any of it, you have to watch the series.
The mocie is a big WTF?! experience compared to the series, mostly because the series have time to actually tie up the loose ends at the end.
If you’ve seen teh series you can understand the movie, but it’s kind of hard to get everything unless you watch it.
And if you watch both, you’ll never recognize Folken, he’s like a completely different person in just about every way (and especially looks).