For this summer season, I’ll be stepping back from my usual Otaku Theater column. Instead of that, I decided to revisit something I watched when I was younger. The Vision of Escaflowne was a Sunrise show that came out in 1996, when I was 13, but I didn’t get around to watching it until the Bandai English dub came out in 2000, four years later, but the English dub for Escaflowne has a very curious history.
The first English dub was made in 1998 by Saban and licensed by Bandai, but a lot of cuts were made to each episode. Footage was removed that was deemed ‘unsuitable’ for a kids’ audience, ‘flashback’ sequences were put together and added to the show to remind viewers of what happened, Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack was replaced by a soundtrack that sounded more electronic…and even the very first episode, where the female lead, Hitomi Kanzaki, and the male lead, Van Fanel, meet for the first time, was removed altogether. This heavily edited version was cancelled on US TV after only ten episodes due to poor ratings. Bandai then decided to patch the show back together, and release it in its entirety on home video two years later – the very same dub I watched, and I’m sure a lot of others did too.
Hitomi is a schoolgirl who likes running and fortune telling. When a dragon hunter from another world lands on the high school track, they are both transported to the land of Gaea, a mysterious planet where the Earth and the Moon can be seen in the sky. Her latent psychic powers are somehow enhanced on Gaea, and so she, along with her allies, have to survive and fight against a tyrannical empire, using giant mechs known as Guymelefs, and find a way to get Hitomi back home.
I had a lot of friends who liked the show a lot too; when I went out to visit them in the US, they even treated me to the boxset that they had. It was a used copy, since they were planning on getting a brand new one, and I’ve done my best in keeping it in as best condition as I can. It’s been in storage for a long time, and has even survived a flood, but I’ve dug it out, and will be watching it once more…after so long.
However, since this Bandai dub way back in 2000, Funimation have acquired the rights for it in 2013, and also made a brand new dub, released not so long ago, with something that sounds more fluid and organic. Heck, I only learned as I was typing this post that Channel 4, a British TV network, are even showing it on their own streaming platform. I can’t access the Funimation dub in my own country anyway, so there’s a chance that I’ll get to take a look at it there, as well as the Bandai version I’ll be watching, although, I’ll be focusing more on the original Japanese sub.
The Vision of Escaflowne has action, fantasy, mecha and romance all in one, and wouldn’t be the kind of show I’d even pick if it came out now, interestingly. I suppose time has changed my tastes in shows, and instead of the sci-fi and fantasy shows I used to really absorb when I was much younger, slice-of-life shows end up being in my boat. Reminiscing like this is going to be a real experience, and as it’s a two-cour show, I won’t be covering the entire show in one episode. Instead, my coverage will be spread out over a series of four posts that I plan to put up over the following months.
This wasn’t a show that did well in Japan, but instead won over a lot of overseas fans, mostly because of how it ended up on TV and on home video so quickly. I was still so young and in my prime as an anime follower, and The Vision of Escaflowne just happened to land on my lap around this time, along with other classic shows like Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Tenchi Muyo. So what will I think of it now, after nearly 20 years? Well, let’s see. The first post will arrive in a couple of weeks, covering how Hitomi arrived on Gaea and came to learn about the Guymelefs and the Empire. There’ll be plenty more to come over the summer, and I hope you’ll stick around for it.