kiku_756 While the film remains beautiful in its own right through its musical score and its visual artistry, the plot fails to deliver all that the series of Tenkuu no Escaflowne did. I highly recommend watching the series first if you are particularly keen to watch this film as it will help your understanding of the plot greatly. However, I recommend even more that you just watch the series, to be honest: the film is poor in comparison. Where the series takes time to introduce characters, develop how they interact and form relationships with one another, as well as develop the plot around them, the film rushes all this and hopes to cover this with pretty visuals and music. Admittedly, the series being 26 episodes long, the was far more time available for all these important details to be included where the film is more restricted but this a poor excuse. I, personally find the film to be a blemish on the 'Escaflowne' franchise. The series is awesome and the film is rubbish. End of.

usualday 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

spam1 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.

rocket26 The show of Escaflowne, the Anime show with 26 episodes, has changed my life in more than one way. For one it changed my opinion on anime, but also introduced me to a message board, where I met an incredible person.However, my comments are about the movie, and not the show, and about the show itself, and not about the good things that happened to me after watching it.The show run was amazing, and the final DVD had a Trailer of the movie. I was amazed by it, however, I was warned it would not be like the series. That didnt matter to me, and I went to see it.The movie was confusing, they did not explain WHY the characters were able to use this power, and even though the graphics were stunning, it was not enough to save this movie from a terrible, unexplained plot.