Escaflowne The Movie, movie review

Escaflowne is an anime movie released in 2000, which is a movie adaptation of the anime series of the same name. This movie is a condensed version and a retelling, as it differs from the series, as well as omitting, and changing some of the characters of the story. Escaflowne is a tale of a girl from modern day earth, who feels depressed, and alone, and she feels hopeless and that nothing ever changes. Hitome just wants to disappear, and she has a falling out with her only friend leaving her alone in the world. She has also been plagued by strange dreams. After the falling out with her friend a strange man appears and summons her to a world called Gaea, and she finds herself inside of a giant mech type thing called Escaflowne, or The Dragon Armour. She then encounters Lord Van, and finds herself in the middle of a war between a rag-tag group of rebels led by Lord Van and The Black Dragon Clan led by Van's evil brother Lord Folken. Lord Folken desires the destruction of Gaea because of his own depression and sorrow, so basically he wants to end the world because he's not happy in it. Hitome ends up becoming a part of Van's motley crew of folks fighting off the Black Dragon Clan. This version of Escaflowne is pretty straight forward and not as complicated as the anime series, it even tone down the love story, and completely eliminates the love triangle that exits in the anime series. Through out the movie we see Hitome grow and become a stronger person, and her life begins to have meaning as she fights along side of Van and his friends, and as her love for Van grows. I don't want to spend a lot of time discussing the differences between the movie and the anime, though I wish I still had a copy of the anime series on DVD so I could do a review of those as well to illustrate more clearly the drastic differences, so let's let this movie stand on it's own as it's own work of art. The story is really great, though it definitely feels rushed, and many of the characters are under developed in the story, which again is a negative side-effect of making a 26 episode anime series into a single movie. Honestly most of the movie's flaws relate back to it being such a condensed version of the story. The art is beautiful anime art work, the world of Gaea come's alive in the beautiful visuals. The English dubbed voice acting is also really decent, though Hitome tends to be a little too whiny. Over all this is a very decent anime movie. However, I am not sure exactly who is meant to be the audience of this movie, as Visions of Escaflowne fans are likely to be disappointed or even annoyed at the changes that were made to it, and I'm not exactly sure that people unfamiliar with the series would really appreciate it, because in its condensing process it loses a lot of what made the story so amazing to begin with, and I feel that some of the characters are unexplained and undeveloped because of it. I mean I enjoy this movie, but again I loved the series so much more, but I like the concept of what they did in the movie, and it seemed like a good attempt, but there were things that made it just feel rushed and undeveloped, almost incomplete. Like if the series is a beautifully written novel with beautiful flourishes, details, and well developed characters, then watching this movie is like reading the Cliff Notes of the story, or almost like just reading an outline, sure you get the gist of the story, but it also loses much of it's detail and grandness that made it such a great story. Would I recommend this movie? That's actually pretty tough, I would love to say yes, but honestly I don't think as many people would appreciate it as I do, and maybe this is a gem that I would feel better just keeping to myself. I love this movie, I think it is pretty great, but I honestly don't feel like this is one for everyone. If you do give it a watch, let me know your thoughts, I would love to find fellow Escaflowne Movie fans out there.