If you haven't read my review of the TV series, please go back and read it now! This review will make absolutely no sense without the context of that essay.

If you're familiar with Macross and the TV series, and the movie, then you'll understand that the something similar happened in the translation of Escaflowne from the TV series, only more radically.

While Escaflowne the TV series was about Hitomi, a high school student in love with an older student in school, Escaflowne the movie is about Hitomi, a high school student who has become depressed and dejected about life. She quits her athletic club, tells her best friend to go away, and sleeps away as much of the day as she can. She's then (by responding to a stranger who beckons her) transported to Gaea, a planet whose inhabitants recognize her as the Goddess of the Wings, an apocalyptic figure whose appearance precedes the destruction of everything on Gaea.

The richness of Gaea that was so evident in the TV series is completely missing from the movie. Instead of having exposure to lots of countries, races, and species, you get a small glimpse of what the world might be like, hints of what it could be.

Van Fanel, whom Hitomi falls in love with, is still a King without a country, but rather than a reluctant warrior as in the TV series, he is a brooding, self-destructive man who plunges into battle without thinking too hard about it. Only Hitomi's love eventually transforms him from a berserker to a human, feeling character.

The Characters

The villains of the movie are Van's brother, Lord Folken, and his underling Dilandau. The complex relationships involving Allen Schezar, Princess Millerna, and Dilandau are completely absent in the movie. Don't expect any of the love triangles that showed up in the TV series to be evident in this movie.

I have to confess that I like Hitomi a lot less in this movie than in the TV series. In the movie, she's a very tangible, physical heroine. She does a lot of rescuing of Van Fanel, she reads the Tarot, and her occult powers drive a lot of the action. In the movie, she's reduced to being a passive lover of Van, and even the way she falls for Van is unrealistic. Or at the very least, it appeals to those with the sensibility of a Hollywood romance, rather than the TV series's slow realization of who's really in love with whom.

Is it worth 2 hours?

Absolutely not! It's not just that the story and plot is weak in comparison to the TV series, it's also that I don't like the message or what the movie is about. While the TV series (for all the time it spends on romance) is ultimately about confronting who you are and realizing that your conscious or subconcious aspirations become realized and drive how you see the world, the movie is more about coming out of your depression by realizing other people's pain.

The latter is so trite it's amazing that a 2 hour movie can be written about it at all! I'm disappointed in the movie. Watch the TV series instead. About the only good thing in the movie is the redesign of Princess Millerna as a warrior, but the movie did not exploit that line of thinking, so don't expect to see much of her in action.