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Escaflowne
May. 7th, 2003 02:37 amEscaflowne: Finally got around to this film tonight.
In Japan, film adaptations are treated differently -- authors are allowed to discard entire histories, rearrange timelines, and even tinker with the personalities of beloved characters, without eliciting cries of betrayal from the fan-base. Around here, if you cast, say, 'Wolverine' with a guy who's the wrong height, geeks write snippy letters to you about it.
In Escaflowne the movie, the main character has been changed from an optimistic, hard-working star of the highschool track team, to an isolated, suicidally depressed track team dropout. The young, untested Lord Van is changed to a furious, desparate man intent on murdering his brother, as a last act of revenge for the slaughter of his entire kingdom. Surrounding these main players is a prophecy, apparently declaring that they will destroy the whole world.
Very dark. And with other characters squeezed in at right angles, compressing some twelve hours of the television series into one jarring conflict, everyone who should be familiar seems to be acting out of their mind. Especially with such a minimalist, poorly developed script. But this all builds up to something interesting.
At this point I've got to stop writing a simple review, and involve myself. Five or six years ago, when I was living my simple hermit life up in Davis, I rode my bike to a few meetings of the UC Davis anime club. There I saw a handful of episodes from the original Vision of Escaflowne television series -- plucky track-star Hitomi was magically transported into an alternate world, into the midst of a war. Her days of gazing out the window and wishing for adventure were replaced with that adventure. I liked that, and I liked her, with her scrappy short hair and lithe body. So the series stuck in my brain.
Probably more than I realized. When I came back to the Santa Cruz area and started attending UCSC, I got involved with a number of girls who either looked like, or acted like, Hitomi. I didn't notice at the time, and I certainly don't mean to imply that the series was the cause of it, but I'm sure it was at least part of the reason.
Finally I ended up with a girl who could have been Hitomi's twin, except for blond hair instead of brown. And she had the same mixture of courage and inner conflict. Part of her insisted that she was meant to do and find better things than her peers, and she was driven to understand and communicate as fully as possible with those she met.
But the inner conflict was not so easily resolved as in the half-hour episode of a television show. We were real people, and our relationship was an exploration, of questions that we had been unable to answer alone. The intensity we both sought was reciprocated eagerly, and we would talk late into the night, sharing our stories, and cry bitter tears in one another's arms. We went into the woods and took turns screaming, for the hell of it. We would claw at our own minds together until we drew blood, extracting the venom from conflict years before, flushing it out. I ate tears off her face, as they came. At the time, it suited us.
After several years we both outgrew it, and with such momentum gathered up, we decided it was safer for us to part ways, so we could shift gears into something different, outside the intense gravity of each other. Of course it wasn't as orderly as I make it sound. I still miss that intensity, and I'm resigned to the fact that I'm going to miss it for the rest of my life.
I gave her a few pieces of the Vision of Escaflowne soundtrack once, without explaining what they were. She kept them, and would listen to them in her room sometimes.
And now ... I see the movie, and see this Hitomi. A person I am much more intimately familiar with. Everyone else got that optimistic, pleasant soap-opera television show, but when I found her, she was like this. We abandoned pretense and screwed the tops off our heads, and this angst came oozing out. The hero was redefined as a nihilist, wrestling with unfocused and inexplicable anger. The whole world bled at the seams. To me, this film is Escaflowne as it really was. Painful, tumultous, and wordlessley beautiful.
Now I look out the window to the wavering harbor and the rest of the world beyond, still there, unchanged by the angst and intensity ... and feel sad. Worse than I've felt in a long time. Sometimes I wonder where she is. I worry that she's still Hitomi -- that she didn't shift gears after all. Or that someone hurt her, and I wasn't there to help.
My beloved has suffered loss too, and would understand, but these are still hard things to share. We both understand that the other comes with previous life intact. ... If she were here I would probably cry in her lap.
In Japan, film adaptations are treated differently -- authors are allowed to discard entire histories, rearrange timelines, and even tinker with the personalities of beloved characters, without eliciting cries of betrayal from the fan-base. Around here, if you cast, say, 'Wolverine' with a guy who's the wrong height, geeks write snippy letters to you about it.
In Escaflowne the movie, the main character has been changed from an optimistic, hard-working star of the highschool track team, to an isolated, suicidally depressed track team dropout. The young, untested Lord Van is changed to a furious, desparate man intent on murdering his brother, as a last act of revenge for the slaughter of his entire kingdom. Surrounding these main players is a prophecy, apparently declaring that they will destroy the whole world.
Very dark. And with other characters squeezed in at right angles, compressing some twelve hours of the television series into one jarring conflict, everyone who should be familiar seems to be acting out of their mind. Especially with such a minimalist, poorly developed script. But this all builds up to something interesting.
At this point I've got to stop writing a simple review, and involve myself. Five or six years ago, when I was living my simple hermit life up in Davis, I rode my bike to a few meetings of the UC Davis anime club. There I saw a handful of episodes from the original Vision of Escaflowne television series -- plucky track-star Hitomi was magically transported into an alternate world, into the midst of a war. Her days of gazing out the window and wishing for adventure were replaced with that adventure. I liked that, and I liked her, with her scrappy short hair and lithe body. So the series stuck in my brain.
Probably more than I realized. When I came back to the Santa Cruz area and started attending UCSC, I got involved with a number of girls who either looked like, or acted like, Hitomi. I didn't notice at the time, and I certainly don't mean to imply that the series was the cause of it, but I'm sure it was at least part of the reason.
Finally I ended up with a girl who could have been Hitomi's twin, except for blond hair instead of brown. And she had the same mixture of courage and inner conflict. Part of her insisted that she was meant to do and find better things than her peers, and she was driven to understand and communicate as fully as possible with those she met.
But the inner conflict was not so easily resolved as in the half-hour episode of a television show. We were real people, and our relationship was an exploration, of questions that we had been unable to answer alone. The intensity we both sought was reciprocated eagerly, and we would talk late into the night, sharing our stories, and cry bitter tears in one another's arms. We went into the woods and took turns screaming, for the hell of it. We would claw at our own minds together until we drew blood, extracting the venom from conflict years before, flushing it out. I ate tears off her face, as they came. At the time, it suited us.
After several years we both outgrew it, and with such momentum gathered up, we decided it was safer for us to part ways, so we could shift gears into something different, outside the intense gravity of each other. Of course it wasn't as orderly as I make it sound. I still miss that intensity, and I'm resigned to the fact that I'm going to miss it for the rest of my life.
I gave her a few pieces of the Vision of Escaflowne soundtrack once, without explaining what they were. She kept them, and would listen to them in her room sometimes.
And now ... I see the movie, and see this Hitomi. A person I am much more intimately familiar with. Everyone else got that optimistic, pleasant soap-opera television show, but when I found her, she was like this. We abandoned pretense and screwed the tops off our heads, and this angst came oozing out. The hero was redefined as a nihilist, wrestling with unfocused and inexplicable anger. The whole world bled at the seams. To me, this film is Escaflowne as it really was. Painful, tumultous, and wordlessley beautiful.
Now I look out the window to the wavering harbor and the rest of the world beyond, still there, unchanged by the angst and intensity ... and feel sad. Worse than I've felt in a long time. Sometimes I wonder where she is. I worry that she's still Hitomi -- that she didn't shift gears after all. Or that someone hurt her, and I wasn't there to help.
My beloved has suffered loss too, and would understand, but these are still hard things to share. We both understand that the other comes with previous life intact. ... If she were here I would probably cry in her lap.
