Scene 8 - Recap
The sun has set and Hitomi and Amano are ready to start Hitomi's test. After Hitomi shouts that she is ready, the track field's lights suddenly turn on, turning Hitomi's attention to the right — it's Yukari who turned on the lights. Hitomi is happy to see her. Hitomi then gets into starting position, in an almost perfect shot-for-shot recreation of the start of Scene 2.
She looks at Amano and his words from earlier play, “Focus everything you’ve got, and launch yourself forward.” In the present, he calls out, “Ready!” Hitomi rises, and says to herself, “Focus…” Amano drops the pendant from his hand and shouts, "Go!"”
It’s so beautiful in motion but the still images are awkward (a sign of perfect animation, imo). Hitomi bursts forward, and as she rises, the motion slows before cutting to the pendant slowing as it reaches its maximum point before swinging down. There is a slow zoom on Yukari's anxious expression. Hitomi runs towards the camera in slow motion.
Suddenly, Hitomi is sprinting in real time, feet pounding on the track, breathing hard, sweat flying. And the camera cuts back and forth between her and Van. The sound of her feet pounding on the track matches up with Van's steps, too — they're in perfect sync.
Amano counts to 8 seconds when suddenly, he is awash with white-blue light. Everything is, and it comes from the end of the track in a frightening, unstable beam of light. Hitomi is running straight for it. The aerial shots look familiar hmmmmmmm like an iris and pupil PERHAPS?
The light beam wavers with energy as it hits the track with a sound like thunder. The same events of Scene 2 play out as Van touches down in the center of the beam, but when Hitomi runs into Van, they collide. His first words to her are, "Who the hell are you?" lmao
Van looks around, angry and stunned, shouting, “Wha… Where am I?” Amano and Yukari run to Hitomi, shouting her name. Yukari bends down and asks, “Are you okay?” Hitomi stares up at Van in a daze, not answering, until she exclaims softly, "That guy... That's the guy I saw in my dream!"
Amano tries to ask Van who he is, but Van interrupts, shouting suddenly in a foreign language. According to the fan wikia, "Director Kazuki Akane coined the foreign Gaean words Van says by mixing Portuguese word pronunciations. [Al]guém qual é diabo [Avu]ge-n ku(a)ru e ji(i)a-b roughly translates to 'What are you, devils?'" To Yukari's shock, Hitomi understands Van, and tells him they're not "people from the demon world" lol.
The confusion is very well done. Hitomi is brave, speaking confidently and matching Van's intensity as she speaks to him, while Yukari is nervous at Hitomi's shoulder. After introducing himself as "Van of Fanelia," Van looks past the two girls and says, "Then he's probably coming too..." He then sharply yells, "Get away from here, girl! A land dragon's coming!" Hitomi says, "A dragon?" He shouts again for her to get away.
I love that Amano in the subtitles literally tries to walk up to Van while saying, "Now look here, pal," before Van shoves him away lmfao. Van stands ready, sword pointed at nothing, until the light shows up again.
As the light grows, Amano steps back with the girls, saying, “It’s happening again…,” and Yukari asks, “What? Now what’s coming?” Hitomi suddenly gags right before a rift opens to reveal a forest:
The dragon is here!
It arrives looking right at Van, spitting and growling. But as it rears up, it notices Hitomi, Amano, and Yukari, and stops roaring and growling. Instead, it brings its head slowly lower. It looks at them with its left eye, pupil wide. It blinks its third eye and is completely silent. Van then shouts at it, trying to draw its attention back on him:
The dragon inflates its gular skin, glowing pink, before breathing fire at Van. Van blocks it with a collapsing shield, and aims a crossbow at it, both of which we never see again lol. Oh hey the color of the arrowhead??
Please note the color of the blood. It’s really important lol.
The dragon flails in pain, falling down on its back. Van wonders, “Is it dead?” The dragon’s scorpion-like tail lifts and swipes Van out of the way, where he rolls and lies flat against the track. Yukari screams as she and Hitomi tremble with fear. Van manages to lift himself, and vomits blood before looking up at the dragon as it thrashes and screams from pain.
The dragon eventually rights itself, and turns its head, looking with its right eye. It notices the other three with its remaining right eye.
Van says to himself, "So it wounds its prey and finishes it off later..." put a pin in that alright?
Van limps forward, calling out to Hitomi, “Get out of here, girl! Hurry! Get out of here!”
Hitomi shouts back, “Yes! Come on, Amano-senpai! Let's head for the mountain!"
As they run away, the dragon growls, and Van runs to pick up his sword. He strikes its back and sparks fly, the scales too strong to penetrate. The dragon looks back at Van and he gets ready to fight again.
Scene 8 - Analysis
LET’S FUCKING GO!!!The light direction in The Vision of Escaflowne and the 2001 film Escaflowne is extremely thoughtful and stunning, and what better time to bring it up than now? The opening of this scene between Hitomi and Amano would have remained in the dark without Yukari arriving to turn on the field lights. Light symbolically can mean revelation/awareness (a flash of light*), knowledge (to bring something to light/to shine a light on something), and the truth. Darkness means the opposite: ignorance, the unknown, secrets, lies.
Yukari tells Hitomi the truth about Amano leaving school, Yukari encourages Hitomi to tell Amano how she feels, Yukari shines the light on Hitomi —
And then a big ass beam of light appears!! Transported in that beam of light is the boy Hitomi saw on the track in Scene 2, Van!! WHY?
What did Hitomi wish for in Scene 4? She said she wished she could be as fast as Amano — but we know something she doesn’t. She wants to be as fast as Amano for a specific reason that she can’t articulate: she wants to close the distance between them. So, her wish to be faster can’t and won’t be granted, because that isn’t what she wished for, and to be a better runner, she has to change, not the circumstances around her.
This means that if Hitomi wasn’t aware of what she really wished for in Scene 4, she also wasn’t aware of what she wished for in Scene 2 — but the audience can know what she unknowingly wished for, because we saw it in her left eye: Van.
Because she does not know herself, because she does not know what she truly wants, when she thought she wished for Amano, she wished for Van.
I mentioned the use of color to create a rhythm in the analysis for Scene 3, and I’m going to use the word rhythm a bit throughout this analysis of Escaflowne, because it is a huge element to how the story is crafted. I’m talking about the blueprints the audience aren’t meant to notice, the beams and support structures behind the artistry. Here, there’s a new rhythm, and it’s in the emotional scale of events. The “same thing” happens back to back in this scene: Yukari turns on the lights, and then a huge, fantastical, impossible beam of light occurs — we see the mundane, then we see the extraordinary.
The use of the extraordinary is implemented to make the audience feel like the characters, and Escaflowne is successful at this in a way that I think is rare. A dragon appears on a high school track field after we’ve been shown a 100% sincere love story between two normal students, and the characters react to it like real people. There are no jokes to cut the tension, and the one guy here who seems to be The Hero is clearly scared and nearly gets killed. The characters believe in what is happening, so the audience is forced to think about the show in the same way — pair that with an incredible soundtrack and animation, and it’s hard not to be swept away. The show is uniquely evocative, and this is why: if the audience can feel the emotions of the characters, the plot will unfold through them, and remain less predictable despite the truth being right in front of us all along.**
But let’s not get swept away for a minute here!!
The dragon steps onto the track with its head low, teeth bared, and growling at Van. When it notices Hitomi, Yukari, and Amano, it raises its head and looks at them with its left eye. It is only when Van yells at it that the dragon looks away, observes Van’s behavior, and then attacks him. Van then quickly blinds the dragon’s left eye.
What does Hitomi mean again? Oh fuck that’s right, “Likely 人 (hito, “person”) + 見 (mi, “see”), in reference to one's own reflection when staring into someone else's eyes.” One’s own reflection when staring into someone else’s eyes. Put a pin in it, bitch, that’ll come up again later!!
The dragon can then only look through its right eye. It can only look at the immediate world around it, and choose to attack Hitomi, Yukari, and Amano.
*Originating from Hinduism, Tibetan/Vajrayana Buddhism uses the symbol of a lightning bolt (vajra/dorje/kongōsho) as a metaphor for truth (as in, the truth of the word of Buddha) and enlightenment (sudden knowledge/awareness of the truth); Vajrayana Buddhism is one of the largest and most influential schools of Buddhism in Japan. And technically, it is a symbol that combines a diamond with a lightning bolt, just look at it, it's really cool.
**Oh you mean like how in-story, Hitomi interprets the future incorrectly despite the facts being present in front of her even before they occur? Yeah, it’s really metatexual, lol. It’s uhhhh fucking crazy huh!!
Scene 9
RECAP
Amano is in the lead, Hitomi following, as they run out of the school and across a road to the woods. Yukari trips, her ankle twisted. Amano carries her on his back, and Hitomi now carries her duffle bag as they run up the mountain.
The dragon ignores Van to run after the other three, and I love the way this thing runs loool big chicken. I love the dragon’s vestigial back legs also. Ugh they’re so funny. But also when it runs across the street, OHH BABY, THE JUXTAPOSITION!!
The trio run through the torii lining the path up to the Shinto shrine on the mountain. The dragon is halted by the torii, unsure of how to continue chasing. Van shouts, “You’re not getting away!” and tosses out a grappling hook, latching onto one of the dragon’s scales. The dragon climbs over the torii and drags Van along with it. This shot of the dragon running is SO BADASS UGHHH:
The trio stop at the shrine, assuming they are safe, but of course they aren't. The dragon can fly, and it launches itself to the shrine, and the trio keep running through more torii to another level.
The dragon lands and slams its tail to the ground, tossing Van off, who quickly rights himself. The dragon turns toward Hitomi, Amano, and Yukari, and again Van shouts, “Hey! Over here!” rapidly grabbing its attention. It spits more fire at him, and when he tries to charge at its face with his sword, it uses its head to toss him aside. Van gets up and hisses to himself, "This sword just can't cut through those scales!" The dragon looks at Van with it remaining eye narrowed.
At the top of the stairs, Amano says, "I wonder if he's gonna be okay..." before the camera cuts to Hitomi. She is leaning forward, horrified, mouth open, and the camera rotates around to face her head on before zooming into her right eye.
There, we see an ocular-migraine-esque vision. Wreathed in a pink aureola, Van dies from the dragon's scorpion-like tail impaling him from above. Gasping as the vision ends, Hitomi is drenched in sweat, trembling from what she's just seen. The next shot is clearly her pov, looking down on Van and the dragon from above, an omniscient and disempowering perspective.
Hitomi mutters, "He's gonna die," before saying louder, "He's gonna die!"
Back to the shot of her standing next to Amano and Yukari. Amano says her name, but Hitomi just runs down the stairs, leaving Amano to scream after her.
Cut back to the dragon’s eye as it stares at Van, pupil narrowing, before it charges at him. Cool pose, what arachnid does this remind me of hmmmmm? As Van continues to fight the dragon, Hitomi comes running towards the camera with her head up in nearly the same shot as when she does it in Scene 2 before passing out as she shouts, "Look out! Above you!"
Hitomi covers her eyes, terrified. Van dodges just in time, but the animators wanted to freak us out with Van's shirt almost looking like blood as the dragon's tail destroys his armor.
Unscaled underbelly exposed, Van shouts, "Now!" and leaps to slice the dragon's... well, cloaca, probably, before running back around to the front to stab it in the chest.
The scene falls silent. Van is breathing heavily, drenched in the dragon's green-blue blood. Exhausted, he cuts into its chest, revealing a glowing pink gem, which he takes.
He watches as the dragon's body dissolves into the air, first its flesh, then its bones, and the blood it shed.
ANALYSIS
Torii* are the gates to Shinto shrines. Their purpose is to mark the threshold between the mundane** and the sacred, of letting you know you are entering another realm. Pretty obvious why they’re here in this scene lol.
The dragon again avoids killing Van when it swipes him out of the way with its head. I think Van's remark that his sword can't cut through the dragon's scales is interesting, too, and I'll tell you why in Episode 2's analysis.
Now, the camera zooms into Hitomi’s right eye when she has her vision of the future. I know what you’re thinking!!! If the left eye is for the future, why the fuck —
Listen. Amano appears in her right eye, as does this vision, because that is the future that she can see right now. She cannot see Van as the answer to her wish for love because she doesn’t know him yet. She can only see fulfillment in what she understands and knows. And Hitomi is a very unaware young person! Right now, what she understands is that the dragon wants to kill Van, and so she sees the vision of that future.*** Notice how Van has a pink aureola surrounding him in the vision, while the world around him is green. I don't know if the pink aureola is something they repeat in her future visions, but I'll keep a look out for it going forward.
When she runs to save Van, she does it out of fear. Remember? Scene 6. Hitomi finally did her tarot card reading out of fear and despair. She then acted (asked Amano for her first kiss) because of what she was able to understand from the cards. That’s her M.O.
The way the dragon nearly kills Van is just like a scorpion attacking with its stinger. I believe this is an intentional reference to the Greek**** myth of Orion! Orion was a giant huntsman who threatened to kill every beast on Earth for sport. Gaia, the goddess personification of Earth, sought to punish him for his threats and sent Scorpius, a giant scorpion, to kill him.
Van is here to hunt a dragon. He comes from a planet called Gaea. In the previous scene, Van had to goad the dragon into attacking at all. The dragon almost kills him like a scorpion. The connection to Orion is here to tell the audience that killing the dragon is not the right thing to do. It also implies something about Gaea, the planet itself.
It implies something about Hitomi and Van, too! There is no evidence to counteract this, both in this first episode and in all the rest following, so I'll say it now: Van could not kill the dragon without Hitomi’s help.
Anywayyyyy, let’s talk about colors.
In Hitomi’s vision in Scene 3, the rhythm of the color schemes went red, blue, red, pink/green, and blue. Red and blue have not shown up together in a color scheme until now, and here, those colors are intentionally designed to stand in intense contrast with one another. The red of the torii and banners are the most deeply saturated color, bright even though it is dark out. Surrounded by the warm, less saturated blue, they stand out as even more intense. The audience has been given the expectation that these colors exist separately — and now when they are combined, it is jarring. They stand against one another. They are in conflict.
What happened in that Scene 3 vision? Red first appeared for fire and destruction. Van’s brother is mentioned in the somber blue scene. Red appeared again during the violent mech fight. Blue appeared again when Hitomi was saved by an angel. Red is for violence, blue is for sadness and peace. Pink and green appeared when Hitomi became the star of her vision.
The dragon’s blood is a green-blue color. Van is revealed to wear a red shirt. Hitomi’s eyes are green. Her pendant is pink, and now this gem Van has pulled from the dragon is the same color. Hm. Interesting.
*The exact origins of torii are unknown, but there are theories. They were used in the past at Buddhist shrines, which means they could have come from the similar free standing gates called torana at Sanchi Stupa in Madhya Pradesh, India. If you think this is the last time I’m talking about Sanchi Stupa, think again!!
**Yeah I used the word “mundane” to describe Scene 1 on purpose, because of this shit here lmao, so smart, right?
***I’m jumping the gun again, whatever, but there are many more forces at play that make it so that she sees this future in this vision. She is not the only element at play here. I really don’t think she’s meant to be responsible, or the cause, of this particular future.
****There’s that combo of European and Asian culture, history, and religion again!
Scene 10
RECAP
Van's expression changes abruptly the minute Hitomi says, "Um... Are you okay?" He replies, "I'm not so bad off that I need a woman to worry for me. Let me guess, you want a reward. Fine. Come to my castle, then. But don't get too cocky. It'd be an apology for involving you and your friends in the dragonslaying. You didn't help me kill that dragon, you know."
Hitomi stares at him in shock, before gritting her teeth, eyes leaking tears, right before she slaps him.
She screams, "What’s with the high and mighty routine?! I did what I did because I thought you were gonna die! I thought you were gonna... I was scared! Really scared! The least you could to is say 'thanks,' all right? I shouldn't have saved you! I should've let that stupid dragon eat you!"
She breaks down, crying into her hands. As Van's watches her cry, the gem in his hand glows.
He looks down at it, saying with surprise, "The energist… It’s…". Hitomi lifts her head to look, and second later, the ground beneath their feet begins to glow blue-white.
Amano and Yukari have come down the stairs, watching the light grow, stunned. Amano still holds Hitomi's pendant in his hand, and it is not glowing.
The light beam erupts out of the ground from beneath Van and Hitomi's feet, shooting into the sky. They slowly are lifted up in it, and Amano runs to Hitomi, reaching out to grab her hand. The pendant is raised into her hand, and she grabs it, unable to even reach Amano. She is lifted away, and Amano still reaches after her, screaming her name.
The light disappears, leaving Amano and Yukari in the dark. Amano says, "They disappeared...," and as the two of them look up into the sky, Yukari shouts Hitomi's name.
Cut to a forest plain, with the light beam shooting down into it. Hitomi lies in the tall grass and Van stands up, looking around warily, before his eyes widen with recognition. He looks skyward and says to himself, "I made it...," before looking down at the energist in his hand with a smile.
As Hitomi gets up behind him, she asks, "What did you...". I Like how as she speaks, Van curls the energist closer to his chest. Hitomi doesn't finish her sentence as she looks at the sky, where the Moon and Earth both hang.
She stands up, staggering forward, asking, "The Earth...? Why can I see the Earth?" Van plainly tells her, “We’re near the village of Arzas.”
Horrified, she repeats, "Arzas?" before wolves growling steals her attention. Glowing eyes surround them in the forest. One of the wolves stands up, revealing them to be beastmen.
Van lifts his sword, hostile. Hitomi looks forward, scared and confused, and narrates, "The card of separation and the Ace of Serpents... Now I understood what they really meant."
"I could see the Earth and Moon in the sky of this strange world, Gaea. That's the name of this place."
ANALYSIS
The character acting here is INSANE!! Van’s expressions immediately after killing the dragon and watching it disappear are complex. Without music to set the tone, the silence and the close up on his face force the audience to sit with Van in the aftermath of what he has done. Look at the change between his expression before and after Hitomi says “Um…”. Before she speaks, his expression is serious, but not angry — we know this, because he becomes angry when she speaks.
When he is immediately rude to her after she asks him if he is ok, it is standard behavior from a teenaged boy protagonist in an action hero role, let alone one who is royalty. Escaflowne is setting the audience’s expectations back to the tropified and cliched, just like in Scene 1. Even Hitomi slapping him is standard in anime. But the tropes and cliches are broken when Hitomi and Van react realistically to each other.
Hitomi’s emotions are important to the creators. The writing, the voice acting, and the character acting through the animation are all giving her the focus. The framing of the shot where she does most of this monologue is bare — as in, the audience sees it plainly, with no complex angles or close ups, no music — because the creators intentionally have stripped away everything but Hitomi and Van, and only she moves, so she has our attention. The audience is forced into bearing witness to her shock and fear.
And so is Van!
The first time the audience is shown Van’s detailed reaction to being slapped is when Hitomi says, “I was scared! Really scared!” and he is softly, silently shocked, almost dumbfounded. Because this follows his, “high and mighty routine,” the audience is being shown that Hitomi is correct — it is a routine, like a front, a mask of bravado. It isn’t his true nature, but his reaction to scaring and hurting her — feeling guilty and regretful — is his true nature.
Yeah, I know, that’s a big thing to assume right now. But is it an assumption? Lmao no, of course not!!!
Right after Hitomi says, “I shouldn’t have saved you! I should’ve let that stupid dragon eat you!” Van’s face is shown again, where he looks his most regretful. Immediately after that, the huge gem he pulled out of the dragon, the one that is the same color as Hitomi’s pendant, begins to glow in his hand. We’ve been shown that when Hitomi holds her pendant and wishes for something, crazy stuff happens, like a huge beam of teleporting light appearing out of nowhere.
And now we’re in Gaea.
Before moving on!! Hitomi just saw Van do something incredibly violent, but she still slaps and yells at him, freely telling him exactly what she thinks and feels. That is a big deal, right? She isn't afraid of him, despite everything about him.
*Sakura from Naruto, Nami from One Piece, etc. etc. etc.
