Vintage Anime Review: Tenkuu no Escaflowne (or how I was a loser in grade school)

Vintage anime holds a special spot in my heart, along with corn dogs and Kraft Dinner. When I was in the eighth grade, I was desperately seeking some sort of creative outlet. I had one friend, Jay, and she and I were kind of the biggest losers at my elementary school (more like, hands down, the biggest losers ever). We loved beanie babies, boy bands, tamagotchis, video games and Lunchable’s pizza. It was just the two of us for the most part and we spent every day after school together.

The first time we noticed anime was one night was on a Friday at 7:00 PM. We were idly watching YTV, talking about our favourite Final Fantasy characters when this dashing looking raven-haired boy flew across the screen with more grace than an emaciated ballerina at an audition. Intrigued, we stopped talking and continued watching the episode, only to become addicted and suddenly devote that part of our lives to the rest of the series.

Which anime do you ask? Well, that would be Tenkuu no Escaflowne (or known to us native-English speakers as The Vision of Escaflowne). Prior to Escaflowne, many other animes had been big hits in North America: Sailor Moon, Pokemon and Digimon are all examples of what Western kids were eating up. I myself had been a big Digimon fan, even co-running a fansite dedicated to the series, but Escaflowne was the first anime that really made me appreciate the genre of animation.

Tenkuu no Escaflowne premiered in Japan in April of 1996. It features a now long-lost art style: long noses, big oval eyes, realistic mouth sizes, teenage girls that actually look like teenage girls, medieval-looking steampunk mechas, beautiful costuming and not a bouncing, gravity-defying titty in sight. It was focused primarily on story and the interactions between characters, as well as stunning visuals of the planet, known as Gaea. To this day, Escaflowne is the only mecha-involved anime that I enjoy. For the most part I avoid series like Gundam Wing, Evangelion and the like because the focus is purely on the mechas. But Escaflowne is a stunning marriage between mecha and fantasy, which happens to be my favourite genre of everything.

The series stars Hitomi Kanzaki, a young athlete from Earth. Her biggest problems revolve around her highschool crush, her track coach Amano, and her incredible ability to… well, be fast. She is a track athlete, after all. Hitomi is somewhat dull looking, with short mousey brown hair and literally no sex appeal, thanks to her awkward personality. In Japan, especially in 90’s anime, having mousey brown cropped hair is not a good thing as it indicates that the character is supposed to be “plain” or “boring”.

After a mysterious incident on the highschool track during a mock race that includes a dragon, an angry young man, some blood and a beam of light straight out of Star Trek, our young protagonist is transported to a whole other world, one that hides behind Earth’s one moon. On Gaea, there are two moons: the regular, run-of-the-mill moon and Earth, which they don’t see as a planet.

Hitomi, after a minor freak out, realizes that she is in the company of the handsome young gentleman asshole who guides her to the kingdom he is from, Fanelia. His name is Van Fanel, and sadly, he is why all of my adult relationships have failed due to poor choice in men. Hitomi meets a dashing, flamboyant knight, with long, golden locks that could rival Usagi’s (Sailor Moon) and the puffiest, most unrealistic outfit that looks like it could be straight off of a couture runway, much less a knight’s wardrobe. His name is Allen, and he is almost a mirror image of her highschool sweetie-pie, Amano. Therefore… yes, she must have him!

The romance storyline is actually a relatively minor plot point. The rest of the fantastic, rich story focuses on Hitomi’s mystical fortune telling powers, a war between the Zaibach Empire and the rest of Gaia and a secret that Van is hiding from the world. And on top of all the action-y awesomeness, the legendary Yoko Kanno wrote the entire score! Therefore the accompanying music is perfection, naturally.

All of this was incredibly alluring to two virginal, naïve young girls who had never had boyfriends. Jay and I were delusional kids living in a fantasy world. She bought tarot cards and we regularly did readings of whether or not we would be transported to Gaea and if Van Fanel would fall in love with her or me. Looking back, we were embarrassingly obsessed with the series. Instead of doing homework, we obsessively drew in our notebooks.

Bullying is wrong, but I totally see why we were picked on by all of the douchebags in our year. While they were having sex (starting at the ripe age of twelve, folks), Jay and I were gushing over dragons, tarot cards, angsty princes and angel wings. In retrospect, I have no regrets. If I had never started obsessing over Escaflowne, I would never have started going to conventions for the past eleven years, cosplaying as ridiculous anime characters and lording my elitist vintage anime knowledge over all of the misinformed teenagers dressed up as Bleach characters.

I highly suggest checking out Tenkuu no Escaflowne, especially if you’ve never interested yourself in anime made before 2001. I love it and rate it a big 10/10! It is one of the most stunning examples of animation and storytelling to come out of 1990’s Japan, hands down.