Watch Escaflowne: The Movie For Free

I love this movie so much

Fresh and Exciting

It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"Escaflowne: The Movie" is an average anime film. The animation was quite good, and the music, made by the great composer Yoko Kanno it's incredible, but the plot is just average. It changes a lot from the excellent TV-series, turning the story into a typical fantasy:Van it's more immature than in the TV series and also has a more aggressive (Without any apparent reason) personality. Hitomi became in this movie a more depressive character and Allen don't have any romantic interested on her, and now Allen looks like Sephirot. This movie don't have so much romance and drama as the TV- series, focusing in the action instead. The result it's not necessarily bad, but the TV series is much better. However, in the good side, you don't need to watch the series first to understand this movie: Both are completely different productions without different values.

When I first watched this Anime I didn't know anything about it, but it turned out to be the best Anime I've ever seen!! I love the drama and the romance, and the whole epic feeling (The musical score is just great). I love the darkness mood of the movie too, and for those who love dramatic stories, and dark stories, I really advise you to see this, you'll really enjoy it very much, it's really well made and with feelings, much of the anime out there don't have them, I like movies with feelings and great stories, it's essential.. Well, the drawings are amazing too and the characters have rich personalities. This Anime lies in my heart, and if you let yourself in, you too will enjoy it!!

I saw this film for the first time two years ago, and my general opinion of it wasn't cemented until I watched it again. It really is a beautiful work; the animation quality is very enriched, and the narrative, both simple as a groundwork is able to create a sense of many layers under its surface. I have never seen the series in it's entirety, but the movie alone works well as a fantastic adventure, if not an often violent one, and the heart of the work; the maturing love between Hitomi and Van touched me the most. The last scene made me cry.I will often value a movie great when it stands out on several levels, and in this case the strongest feeling I came away with was a sincere empathy for the characters. Really great movies will do that, and I think this is one.

First of all, I watched this movie once before I even saw any of the series, so I was fairly confused--especially by the amount of characters who appear for a few minutes and then disappear. I knew it was supposed to be a retelling and not a summary of the series, but even on that level, I didn't really "get" Hitomi's reason for caring so much for Van all of a sudden, why that blonde captain (Allen, as I learned later) was even there, or what the hell Dune (or Folken, take your pick) was all about. The confrontation with Dune was so incredibly anti-climactic that I almost hoped for that old horror cliche of the villain coming back to life a few times to up his kill stats. No such luck, though.Having just gone through a marathon session with the series (all twenty-six episodes in two days), I decided to watch the movie again this morning. Well, I had fun identifying all the characters from the series, who were all--down to the cat girls--developed into realistic characters throughout the television series, and it was kind of interesting to compare Hitomi's character (in the movie, she's totally depressed but realized the pain she was causing others; in the series, she was lively, but in being so, she missed the signs that she was hurting people). However, the story (which recasts Hitomi as a "Winged Goddess" figure instead of a girl with skills at fortune telling, and Van into an uncontrollably violent person, but sweet and gentle when he's not killing people) isn't all that interesting (and seems to have been more influenced by the Evangelion series and movies than by Escaflowne), and 96 minutes is far too short a time to tell what should have been a sweeping epic. Instead, despite the claims that it is a retelling, it ends up feeling even more like a truncation of the series.That said, I thought the animation was good (in an anime genre sort of way--I wouldn't expect a lot of other people to care too much for it, the way that even anime haters tend to like Studio Ghibli films), and the design for Hitomi, though not as kawaii as the series, really did fit with the darker tone of the movie.6/10