The Vision of Escaflowne/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Hey, It's That Voice!: Using The Ocean Group, it's bound that' you'll hear voice actors from various anime like Inuyasha, Gundam, Dragon Ball Z to name a few:
  • Maaya Sakamoto: She voiced Hitomi and sang the songs. She initially was hired only to do the former, but then Yoko Kanno said she could do both. And for more bonus, Hitomi was her breaking role as a seiyuu.
  • Screwed by the Network: Fox Kids tried to sell the dub as a kids show without realizing it delved into some fairly mature stuff in the latter half of the show. They quickly shelved it and tried to forget about it. Meanwhile up in Canada, YTV realized its true nature early on and began airing it during primetime hours.
  • Super Robot Wars: Has only appeared in Compact 3 so far. Notably, it holds the venerable honor of being the only show to appear in the series not to be featured on a cover art.
  • What Could Have Been
    • Escaflowne was originally going to be directed by Yasuhiro Imagawa. Yes, that Yasuhiro Imagawa. We can't exactly say for sure if this would have been bad or fucking awesome, but it certainly would not be the show we have today.
    • Not only that, but it originally supposed to be a World War I-styled spinoff of Macross called Air Cavalry Chronicles before the creators decided to change it to a fantasy shōjo series. The only things that remained were the concept of transforming mecha, the name of the opposing kingdoms (Fanelia and Zaibach) and of course, the love triangle.
    • To quote series co creator, Shoji Kawamori: "if Macross was robotic mecha and love songs, why not a story about robotic mecha and divining powers?"
    • Another example: Fans of the show wanted this series to air on Cartoon Network so it would be given a proper treatment on Toonami (this was before Adult Swim came into existence, which thankfully aired The Movie uncut). Instead, Bandai gave the license to Saban, where it was horribly butchered and cancelled after less than ten episodes. Imagine what the show would have been like had it aired on Cartoon Network...
    • It was also originally planned to have a plot spanning 39 episodes. Due to budget constraints, the story was carefully compressed into two-thirds of that length in order to retain its subplots and characters (which were at risk of being cut for time). This is why the story moves at such a brisk pace compared to many other animes (both before and since) and yet feels very carefully plotted. While nothing was really changed story-wise, however, who knows how the story would have felt to -- and been received by -- audiences, had the creators the necessary budget on-hand.
  • Yoko Kanno: The musical score.