Set on Gaea, a planet in orbit around the Earth but magically invisible, Escaflowne is an entertaining fantasy anime with some elements taken from the mecha genre (it's by Surise, there had to be mecha in it). It explores a few themes common to many anime, like finding one's path in life and the coming of age, inserting them in an entirely original context. It blends two different genres, shounen and shoujo, to create something new and unexpected.

Animation

While a few elements, like a dragon in the first episode, are overly detailed and fail to blend into the rest of the animation -- that particular dragon was overly detailed for the sake of putting some wow factor into the beginning of the anime and hook more people -- and while the character design admittedly has a few problematic features -- like long noses a lot of viewers found annoying and ugly -- Escaflowne's animation (by BONES) is overall very consistent, technically good and can easily be told from from other animes'.

Indeed, although now it looks dated, Escaflowne has one of the most beautiful animations of its time (1996). If you do a quick search for anime released in that period, say from 1995 to 1997, and if you're familiar with most of them, you'll see that only Ghost in the Shell (1995), a movie, had a better animation. Escaflowne is one of the most visually beautiful anime made before 3D really started to be [over]used.

Sound

The soundtrack is very good overall, perfectly suited to the fantasy genre; unfortunately, near the end of the series the choirs singing "Escaflowne, Escaflowne" all the time are quite boring, even tiring. The Japanese dubbers did a good job, nothing exceptional though. Maybe Marle's dubbing deserves a honorable mention, but she screams "Van-sama!!" so many times she can be annoying, too.

Story

In most people's minds dragons and mechas are entities that come from entirely different mythologies. In most people's minds, they presuppose very different settings. Escaflowne's creators ignored this and just went ahead and put them together in the same show.

Making conflicting elements from different genres coexist in the same show, like tarots, mechas and dragons, and blending two opposite genres, shoujo and shounen, may seem an obvious attempt to get as many fans as possible but all those elements are inserted in Escaflowne's world so well, nothing ever feels unnatural or forced. Moreover, Escaflowne, unlike many of the anime that try to appeal to as many people as possible, is about as extreme as anything on TV can be. It's violent and gory like the most gruesome shounen, full of love triangles like the cheesiest shoujo but still doesn't feel as over the top as it should.

The comparison with Ayashi no Ceres seems almost natural; after all, Ayashi did realize, 4 years later (2000), a new fusion between shoujo and shounen. However Ayashi didn't blend two different genres, fantasy and mecha, like Escaflowne did. Escaflowne's fusion is not just about the target audience, it pervades all of it, the story, the setting and the characters and as far as I know it stands unchallenged in that regard.

Another noteworthy element is the absence of an uber-evil character and the lack of a clear demarcation between good and evil. It may look like there is one during the first half or so, but Escaflowne is deep enough that claiming its story is yet another war of good vs evil would be unfair. Indeed, none of the three possible candidates ends up filling the role of The Evil One. Evil comes from everyone and nobody, it's in the relationships between characters and in the conflicts between the futures they try to bring about.

Finally, the rhythm is praiseworthy: Escaflowne is never too fast nor too slow, useless episodes are only a couple or so and there are no real fillers.

Characters

Van and Hitomi are nothing like anything you may have seen in other shows -- although in the beginning they do look like they're going to be cliches -- and undergo a very interesting development.

The rest of the cast is mostly static and almost uninteresting. Except maybe for Marle, the cast is made of useless characters like Dryden and Millerna or underdeveloped and unoriginal like Folken and Allen.

Dilandau is instead a very interesting guy. He's the "mad character" type, one of the best I've seen so far, but he gets smuggled out of the main story for no good reason. Too bad.

Personal enjoyment

The second time I watched Escaflowe I liked it even more than the first. It's one of those anime I loved most, although I'm not as crazy about it as I am about Ghost in the Shell, Millennium Actress, the first Macross and a few others.

Overall

While many of the characters are nothing to write home about, the anime is overall a big accomplishment. Sunrise and BONES are a great couple and probably made more quality anime than anybody else.