"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.

I must admit I haven't seen the series, so I'll comment on this as a stand-alone production.

I understand that the characters are nicely developed in the anime series, but you shouldn't base a film on that assumption. The characters looked very interesting, but apart from Lord Van, Hitomi and to some extent Folken the characters are presented but not introduced. You have some gist of what they are about and a feeling that maybe if you watched the series you could connect between with the secondary characters.

Unfortunately the storyline itself is also rushed and the Hitomi/Volken/Van relationship has been totally blown and borders on being ridiculous. the emotions being thrown between these characters are unbelievable, even corny, and the jumpy script gives it no justice. Basically it felt like it wanted to be more intelligent than it actually was.

On the plus side is great animation and some very interesting scenes full of exquisite ideas.

Not I have watched this movie twice the first time was with the Ocean/Bandai dub and the second time was with Funimation dub which I finally saw last night.

The films plot was pretty good, I admit I was actually expecting this movie to be a sequel or a build up to the original series. But, when I found out that it actually isn't I was pretty upset, because I really want to see stuff like Van and Hitomi's relationship build up, what is life like now in Gaea, and what new evil will they fight.

Like with Eureka Seven at least they never removed the main characters relationship and I admit I feel their relationship was portrayed a bit better, since Allen wasn't a third wheel in the movie like he was in the series . Though Van never confused like he did in the series.

While I didn't quite like how his brother was evil to the core unlike in the series where he redeemed when, Dornkirk killed the two cat ragdolls who were still in the movie. Speaking of Dornkirk I am surprised he wasn't in the movie. Also, why wasn't Balgus in the movie? Also, Dilliandau was a strictly a male rather than genderbend.

In terms of the newer designs for the movie I was rather mixed, I mean was Van supposed to have Armor which made him look like a wrestler or why was all of Van's alies in black uniforms. Some of the designs I didn't mind such as Millerna changing her hair colour from blonde to brown at least she still looked hot. Also, Hitomi's new uniform made her a lot hotter in the movie, she was hot in the series but she was more hotter in the movie.

It did still have good action scenes and even moments which would still give me nightmares.

Both dubs were pretty good but I am leaning more toward the Funimation Dub.

Overall, it was a good movie but not what I expected.