Remember when people thought this was one of the greatest anime ever?

Well it is one of the greatest shows ever made... no anime that came out in the last couple of years comes even close to reaching the quality in writing this anime has... especially in the isekai or fantasy genre there is no comparison. This show tackels politics and character in a fantasy /medieval setting in a much more mature and realistic way. It manages to build in romance in a way that is not cheesy or cringe. The world building, overall progression and pacing are nicely done. The artstyle is outstanding and the animation also has its moments (granted, its probably its weakest aspect). And the OST is one of the best that ever came out of anime and make the emotional moments so impactfull.

I have to say though that I usually watch the german dub of the show, which is by far superior to the japanese and english dubs (ok the english dub is an insult anyway, with the emotionless way Hitomis voice actress speaks)... so I am not sure if I would love this show so much if it wasnt for the german dub.

@Lockensocke I mean, that's all your opinion but I'm absolutely baffled how opposite you see this show from me. The animation is basically the only good thing about it and for a 90s action show it doesn't reuse a fight footage constantly (like Gundam Wing, another Sunrise show, does quite a bit).

The politics and world building of Escaflowne are incredibly weak though. Unless the show leaves out a lot of detail from the manga I don't think there's even an answer to what exactly the political arrangement of the world is or why. Fanelia is apparently a single city in a forest or something. Asturia is "allied" with Zaibach but allows it to destroy an outpost and attack the capital without doing anything about it. Freid...exists. Zaibach kills its leader openly for no explained reason and there are no consequences other than Zaibach getting what it wants. What politics even is there, honestly? Let alone anything mature and realistic.

The world building is mostly just "Atlantis did everything amazing and we all wish we were that cool" and that's almost enough to wrap a story around but its nothing impressive. Again, there's no real explanation of why anything is the way it is everything just exists that way. Are all nations friends except Zaibach? Dunno. Does everyone hate Zaibach? Despite them being violent monsters that attack unprovoked and don't honor alliances they're weirdly respected. How did Zaibach become so huge on its own out of apparently nothing? Science *waves hand furiously to distract you*. Why does everyone fight in giant robots that are completely out of step with the rest of their technology? And why don't they use that robot technology in anything else if they can make it? No explanation.

I don't really disagree meaningfully on the other parts but I am sooooooo confused how someone could see this show as a "10/10 peerless world building and realistic mature depiction of deft political manoeuvering in a fantasy anime". Especially when you seem to think a ton of the other anime you watch is absolute 1/10 shit.

Well I didn’t say the animation was bad or anything, but just compared to its other aspects it is its weakest. I always remember the fights to be nice but after rewatching it I think the fluidity of the animation doesn’t hold up that well, while everything else does. But sure compared to other shows of the 90s its great, especially with the combination of the soundtrack.

I don’t get how many of the points you mentioned are negatives…like:


Whats the problem exactly? In fact the show seems to present a very diverse set of kingdoms and regions, which is nice.


This demonstrates my point perfectly, that the characters act in a much more mature and realistic way. They don’t just do the first thing that comes to mind and feels the best, but they consider the political consequences of their actions. Like here, Asturia being much weaker than Zaibach obviously fears annihilation from Zaibach (like Fanelia and later Freid).. so they don’t want to go to war over a mere military outpost. Especially since Zaibach seem to have an invisible weapon they don’t know how to deal with.


Seems like any war in the history book, where the victor doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of their action and just blaming the other one. While in this case attacking Freid It can be argued that this action lead to the other nations being more antagonistic towards Zaibach and then later teaming up against them.



The story was exactly that the technology and mentality of Atlantis lead to its downfall… that’s why the main characters want to stop Zaibach.. and that’s why all the people hate the winged descendants from Atlantis. Also if that is all what you get out of this anime then I don’t know what to tell you.. there are so many more messages in the show, the whole romance, the message about not being able to stay with the one you love but still finding happiness (like with Marlene/Allen and Hitomi/Van), people fundamentally wanting to wage war, the part about Hitomi controlling the fate… and so on. Also the anime is full of emotionally impactful scenes.



It seems like we two have a fundamentally different expectation of this show. Its focus is way more with its character and their relationships to each other, with romance, family rifts, all the different messages and so on. The whole war and the political things are the setting not its focus. So in my opinion it doesn’t have to explain every detail and relation of each nation to each other and the Zaibach in order to show an interesting and realistic war that serves as the stories setting.


Well you saw that many of the other nations are in war with each other and will backstab their allies if they see a change to get more power.



They are probably more feared than respected.



This is exactly one of these things that are irrelevant. All we need to know is that Zaibach was a shithole and then Dornkirk came and made it into a technological powerhouse by introducing science from earth. How exactly that happened and over what timespan and what are all the technologies he gave them is something that doesn’t need to be explicitly defined. The show doesn’t need to go deep into the technological aspect of its giant robots.. that’s part of its fantasy that needs to be excepted as its premise. It is not Star trek that tries to explain all the scientific aspect of the show. This is not what the show is about.

Also, I actually prefer it sometimes if there are some loose ends and parts for self-interpretation in a story, that’s why I think you don’t need every backstory to every interesting character.. you sometimes can image the rest and don’t need an explanation (it can be even better to leave it open because it might be more interesting in your mind than what the author comes up with)… but I seem to be in the minority since for many anime this does not seem to be the case and they rather explain to the audience every detail of their story as if they are little children.

Nah man. I think it's a massive cop out to say that this show has incredible world building and then say that the show has absolutely no obligation to explain one of its weirdest aspects in any way because that's not what its about. It obviously is not a hard sci-fi show, which is fine, but conflating good world building with something simply being cool/interesting despite it being nonsense is silly. For example, the older Final Fantasy games use that sort of vaguely explained technology as a foil to more wholesome magic/nature. Thus, it doesn't need a detailed explanation because it has a strong thematic purpose and "uhhh science" is a good enough literal justification. People don't break it down into other wider tech because its evil and wholesome humans don't need it. Escaflowne has giant robots because Sunrise made it and that's what Sunrise does. Its not like Guymelefs are evil and that's why the science bad guys have them because even the random forest samurai village has them.

I'm not gonna dig into every single individual point and make this thread unreadable but I think you're misunderstanding how heavily I weight each point I listed. I'm not losing my mind about not knowing the deep lore of Fanelia and how it fits into Gaea's history but it being a tiny city-state that just happens to have the most important robot in the world for no reason is just lame to me. If its such an isolated nothing of a country then how does everyone know about it? It doesn't seem like they make or do anything anyone would want. There's obligatory comments about how they're "Known for their warriors" but how would an isolated city state with like 4 Guymelefs have that reputation? Especially when it is proven totally unearned in the first episode.

And honestly, the way you elaborate on how your understanding of a realistic political history is "History is full of kings causing violent wars against its stated allies for no reason and facing no consequences at all" makes me think you don't know very much real history. All empires fight and some lasted a while because they were exceptionally good at it but empires that make alliances and then flagrantly break them in open conflict for no reason face existential consequences for those actions! Attacking other countries is not the same as a king being mean to his subjects or even his vassals (which also often led to betrayal and downfall). Zaibach being horrible should have led to other countries allying against it and you even say as much but it explicitly does not! Asturia sees Fanelia and Fried get wrecked and then spends all its time trying to betray all the main characters to that they can "preserve the alliance" that has already been openly broken.

Honestly I'm increasingly hung up on how this is your ideal political anime and something like Code Geass (which isn't perfect, I'm aware) is a 5/10. I thought this was mostly just "You like Escaflowne a lot and I think its mostly a lot of wasted potential" but we just seem to fundamentally not agree on the basics of story telling and what world building even means.


Dude, lol. Normally I'd make fun of someone being this arrogant about cartoons that are literally marketed toward literal children but we're both here watching them as (presumed) adults. Rating a lot of anime 1/10 doesn't mean you have better standards than the average person on this site.

@LotteGiants

You didn’t demonstrate it being nonsense.. it may be vage and not fully explained but there are no contradictions in its story. Like the point you make about Fanelia… ok you find it lame but that doesn’t make it contradictory or nonsense. There are even real life parallels to be drawn, where a small nation like Switzerland was known for its mercenary army even though it’s a mountainous nothing nation. Also Fanelia is a nation that decides its ruler by killing a dragon… seems logical that good fighters come out of it (also proven by the existence of Vargus). It being destroyed by new invisibility technology doesn’t prove otherwise. Its like saying someone is not a good swordsman because he was killed by a gun.
Yeah maybe we have different view on what world building is… per definition it is when the show introduces new places, kingdoms, characters and so on to expand its world. For me it is good world building when these things are interesting and make logical sense in relation to the already known world. Leaving details open doesn’t make it bad per se, only if this information is crucial for the story, which in all cases you mentioned it is not.



Maybe instead of rewriting quotes you should respond to what I am saying. As far as I remember Freid was not an ally to Zaibach before its invasion, but it doesn’t even matter. Yeah history is also full of alliances, inter-marriages and so on, but especially when you look at empires, like the Mongol, Roman, Spanish or the more modern American one (just to name a few), you see a lot of destruction of small nations or killing of indigenous people without any consequences, just to get their land and resources. If you have a very powerful nation/empire they tend to get away with stuff like that. Yeah you can say that they ultimately collapsed, but that exactly what happend in the show as well.



Here you demonstrate my previous point and what I believe to be the main source of our disagreement: that you need the show to tell you these sorts of things… just implying them is not enough for you.



It almost seems like you don’t want to understand me.. I mean I clearly stated the reason I liked the show in my previous comment and said that the war and its politics are just its setting and all of the sudden you claim that I think Esacflowne is an ideal political anime (which would mean that politics is its main focus). It almost seems like you are less interested in the show and more interested into me personally, and that in a rather antagonistic way to be honest. I mean it’s a bit ironic of you calling me arrogant with the insults and the way you put words into my mouth. Is there some underlying distain because I insulted some of your favourite shows, or what?

@Lockensocke You seem confused about whether I need you to explain whether or not the show is actually good or not. I've watched it and I know its not. I was curious about the thoughts of someone that thinks its incredible and if there was something I was missing. And believe it or not, your weird rambling and condescending assertions that I'm too stupid to understand the themes and story of fucking Escaflowne didn't make me see the show any differently. As I implied in my first post, I was honestly just shocked at how bad your taste was but I didn't feel the need to be rude about it but you've kind of been an asshole about it and clearly need me to be direct about why I commented.