Watched two more episodes of The Vision of Escaflowne.
After getting used to what this is - and as that was in the same package of recommendations as Lady Asuka (or for those that didn't follow all the other threads, that's Rose of Versailles), I should have expected it to be anything but what it was recommended for - it's actually... more on that later!
The anime follows Hitomi, the girl in the middle of the image here on an adventure she gets acidentially swept up in after a vision helps her save a strange boy from a dragon's attack. Said boy is Van, prince of some kingdom or another, and before you get the idea that Van is the princely looking blonde guy on the picture, nah, that's Allen.
I used to be a prince and was even crowned king for a bit, but this is a fantasy anime, and as such now I'm just a nobody.
Van is your average shounen character. Brash, always on the attack, wants to die for honor and glory and reacts to having his life saved by Hitomi in the only way a shounen character can, by telling her that he doesn't need help - and for sure not from girls. I said that before, but Hitomi just slaps him for the comment, which he so readily deserved.
Hi, I was just trying to run 100m in under 13 seconds, and suddenly everything is weird!
Hitomi is a nice school girl with an interest in track and field, specifically the 100m sprint. She also likes fortune telling and has her own tarot deck and a pendulum - or better put, an heirloom pendant that can double as pendulum. She does that for fun, knowing it's a tad silly, but she realizes pretty quickly that she's got more than a knack for the arts, particularily after she's whisked away and the world where she ends up enhances her abilities to actually having visions of the future.
Now, the first episode, sans the appearance of the dragon that ends up being slain by our shounen dolt up, isn't much more than three quarters slice of life and one quarter fantasy action. That changes pretty quickly after Hitomi accidentially accompanies the dolt back to Gaia, a planet apparently close to Earth as both the Earth and the moon are visible in the night sky, and frighteningly close.
Well, it's fantasy, don't expect gravity to work as it should.
After returning home by being escorted by a group of wolf-men, having slain the dragon, the dolt is quickly hailed as the whatever it is they hail him as, beause it really doesn't matter. He's crowned King of Fanelia, and we're treated to the first really strange deviation from regular fantasy tropes in the anime, the kingdom is attacked by stealthed mechs. King Dolt runs to his own mech while his Samurai Guard is slaughtered in theirs, which is revealed to be Escaflowne and powered by some crystal thing he took from the dragon, but all he can do is watch how Fanelia is burned to the ground. Hitomi does something with her penadant and they're again whisked away...
Mechs aside, there's also a slight break with the usual high fantasy population. No dwarves or elves so far, but cat girls, wolf men, mole men (no really, there's a guy they call mole and he's digging tunnels alls day long) and lots of weird technology. It takes the occasional dip into having a JRPG story because the enemies that burned down Fanelia have a... a... well, a flying fortress, pretty much a JRPG staple. There's always and airship or a flying fortress. In fact, The Vision of Escaflowne has both.
I wonder if they're looking for the mana tree here?
I'm an airship! Luckily I'm not piloted by Oswald Fiddlebender, because that wouldn't go so well...
To round out the flying, some of the mechs can fly, and Escaflowne has a dragon mode where it turnes into a mecha-dragon that can be ridden by King Dolt the Shounen.
Now, to document the sad decline of anime in the 2000s, look at the screencaps above and know this was animated by Studio Sunrise, who later went on to make this pearl of animation in 2013:
Today I ran into some incredibly big boobs! -- Tamako
Guys, for the love of god, do not just search for images entering Love Live! Nozomi boob rub gif. I mean, yeah, there's the boob rub from the Love Live! anime, but that's not the only thing you'll find. A whole lot of:
Well, and worse.
Have this here gif from Love Live! just in case you missed my posts about it:
Dancing, dancing, non-stop me dancing! Yes, actual lyrics.
So, where was I. Finish an already a little structureless post about a whole lot of nothing, the bad guys are commanded by a mysterious figure who said they're trying to restore Atlantis. Since the planet they're on is called Gaia (or Gaea, which is the same thing, anyway), I'd say they all came from Earth at some point, or are some reflection from Earth, or something. The four episodes have breakneck pacing, some mech action that's pretty bloody - people get speared to death, burned to death, hacked to death and there's some fun blood splatter going on, but it's not full Blood-C level. It's pretty violent. The shounend dolt is pretty shouneny, and the other main character that was introduced aside from the villains who are either mysterious, traitors or guano-insane is Allen, a chivalrious knight, and someone Hitomi pretty quickly develops a crush on. There's also a cat girl.
To sum up, we have a nice girl lead character who does fortune telling, a shounen male lead who is shouneny, a knight in shining armor (well, shining mech), breakneck pacing, JRPG elements all over the place, a high fantasy setting with lots of out of place looking technology and pretty much no time to breathe for anything, which makes my conclusion at the time being all the more strange, I guess. Because, really, when watching this, what I should be doing is this:
Or, maybe this:
In reality, while watching this anime, I'm looking more like this:
Yeah, no, I'm serious. I think I actually like this, and I have no idea why. With Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, at least, I knew why. That was just great entertainment and more of a special ops / superhero squad fighting of a villain with decent quality world building, great pacing and quite decent writing (I'd say more than decent, but some problems crop up at the end). With this? I have no idea. I should be groaning and facepalming throughout each episode, but I don't do that. Not when King Dolt does something stupid, not even when the Cat Girl (well, her name is Merle) is on screen and jealous of how much King Dolt likes Hitomi, as if she'd be interested in that dweeb. To his credit, Chivalrous Knight in Shining Mech explains to King Dolt that honor and bravery are all nice and fine, but surviving to fight another day beats pointless last stands, and dishonor can be carried with dignity if it means saving your people. I guess he's not a complete moron.
I'm kinda hoping that'll change and the show will do something inexcusably dumb soon so the world rights itself.