5/5 Mecha Anime for Mystics
  by Chinese Zen student (Toronto)
Visions of Escaflowne is my favorite anime (along with Neon Genesis Evangelion and Rurouni Kenshin). Although Escaflowne features mechas, it's quite different from your Super Robot and Real Robot shows. If anything, Escaflowne is a blending of different genres including action, adventure, romance and fantasy, all in equal measure... And that's probably Escaflowne's strong point. It's one of the most well-balanced anime titles out there. You'll be hard-pressed to find another anime that blends so many different genres together.

The atmosphere in Escaflowne is also incredible. The series has a deep mystical atmosphere that completely absorbs your attention. If you're a person who loves exploring mystical and exotic things, the atmosphere in Escaflowne will blow you away. It's by far the most atmosphere mecha anime i've seen. The soundtrack (done by the same person who did Cowboy Bebop's soundtrack) is one of my favorite soundtracks in an anime. My favorite track is the one that Folken whistles when he meets with Van ("The Cradle Song"). You should definitely check this track out on youtube to get a sense of the Escaflowne's amazing soundscape. It's one of the very few anime series that i've seen with lots of heart. Escaflowne is simply beautiful.

So if you're looking for a mecha series filled with tons of adventure and fantasy, you can't do better than Escaflowne. Not since Xenogears (an anime-ish mecha RPG) have i encountered a mecha story filled with so much adventure.

5/5 great series
  by Dustin W. Walker
I just finished up escaflowne and it lived up to the praise that i had heard

5/5 One of the Animes You'll Never Forget
  by SapphirePrincess
I remember watching this anime almost five years ago. It was actually the second anime I had ever watched. Since that time, I have watched many more anime, and believe me when I say you won't be forgetting this one anytime soon. For all those years that I didn't own this anime, I'd remember it and think on it; for it has many interesting points to think about.
This anime would be for any age. It has the action, romance, and poetry for the younger kids, and the subtle messages and all of the above for the elder.
The packaging that the anime comes in isn't the best out there, but it is quite durable if your careful with it. Hopefully you are. ^o^
Oh yeah, I would recommend that you watch this anime in the original Japanese with the English subtitles. The English voices, I think, don't have enough emotion in them to do the anime justice.

2/5 Highly over-rated
  by Troy Heagy (Forest Hill MD)
A friend of mine lent me his store-bought copy of Escaflowne on VHS tape, and I sat down and watched it. I thought it was a typical anime, but nothing outstanding.

A year passed and then I found the reviews here on Amazon about how this is "the perfect television show" and how it deals with complicated political issues, and so on. So I sat down and watched the whole show a second time, thinking maybe I had missed something.

Well I'm still unimpressed. It isn't a bad show, which is why I gave it 2 stars instead of 1, but it isn't a great show either. In fact it seems rather juvenile and simplistic in the way it deals with problems - something akin to a CW teen soap opera but with Japanese style. In any case, twice viewed is enough for me. I won't be watching Escaflowne again.

In my humble opinion if you're looking for depth (in terms of politics, religion, and interpersonal disputes), then you should look elsewhere like Star Trek DS9 or Babylon 5. Or if you prefer animation then try Macross.





4/5 Fantasy, steampunk, and mecha...
  by Lesley Aeschliman (Enumclaw, WA)
Escaflowne Complete Collection is an eight-disc DVD set that contains all twenty-six episodes of The Vision of Escaflowne. The first two discs each contain four episodes and bonus features. The remaining six discs each contain three episodes and bonus features.

The bonus feature on the first disc is four music videos for The Vision of Escaflowne (a textless version of the opening theme, "Friend," "Blue Eyes," and "Into the Light"). This feature runs for about thirteen minutes. On discs two through seven, the bonus feature is "Club Escaflowne." These are interviews with voice actors, production staff, and the writer and director for The Vision of Escaflowne. These interviews run anywhere in length from eight to twenty minutes.

The final disc in the set contains three bonus features. The first is labeled as "Playstation Game Footage." This runs for about eight minutes, and is comprised of what appears to be "cut scenes" from the Escaflowne video game. The next feature is a roughly two-and-a-half minute trailer for Escaflowne: The Movie. The final feature on the disc is a five-minute concert video for Maaya Sakamoto performing at a special concert at a screening for Escaflowne: The Movie.

While I understand that this box set just gathers up the eight individually released discs into one collection, I wish more effort had been taken to put this set together. It would have worked better if they had tried to get more episodes onto each disc, and then focused the bonus features on one or two discs. In the long run, the set probably would have had fewer discs in it if they had done this. But even with the flaws this set has, I would still recommend it for anyone who is a fan of The Vision of Escaflowne.