Ghibli & Classics

My grail item from 1984. Was available exclusively for in-store advert in Japanese bookstores ~ got it from a friend years back and had it custom framed. Def a conversation piece

Super stoked on how it came out :)

Artist: nova.tats (he was great! would highly recommend)

Try to guess what this is...all made with recycled materials, paper dolls...all very rudimentary...NO AI obviously...

My mini pins came in so I wanted to share my whole collection of Ghibli pins that I’ve made so far 🩷🥹 I can’t wait to make more! I’m thinking Ponyo next😍✨

So, The Vision of Escaflowne. I finally started watching this show.

It’s not like it was ever under my radar or anything, but for whatever reason I just never got around to it. I think by the time it really hit the US it was already on DVD through Bandai in the 2000s? I also vaguely remember that heavily cut Fox Kids version that existed for like five minutes, though I never actually watched it.

What finally got me interested was realizing this is a Sunrise show. Somehow I never connected that in my head before. I guess I always mentally filed Escaflowne under “girls anime” when I was younger, which is funny because over the years I’ve watched plenty of shoujo-oriented stuff and ended up loving it.

One thing that immediately stood out was how young Maaya Sakamoto sounds as Hitomi. Apparently this was basically her first major role, which is kind of wild considering how huge she eventually became. Between this, her music career, and all the roles she landed afterward like Aerith from Final Fantasy 7, she really had an incredible start. Makes me wonder what the circumstances were behind her getting cast in Escaflowne in the first place.

But honestly, what hooked me most were the giant mecha fights in a fantasy setting. That combination is just cool. Medieval kingdoms, swords, mysticism, dragons, fate/vision stuff, and then suddenly these massive armored mecha. It feels like Sunrise took a fantasy RPG world and injected it with 90s mecha anime energy.

Also, the soundtrack absolutely deserves the hype. Yoko Kanno was operating on another level here. Some scenes already feel elevated purely because of the music.

I’m still early into the series, but I can already see why people remember this one so fondly. It's just a shame I never watched it sooner because of it's late/slow start in the US. It was the 2000s and I was more interested in the current anime of that time than watching a show from 1996. Vision of Escaflowne has that very specific late-90s anime atmosphere that’s hard to explain unless you grew up around this era.

Curious how everyone here ranks Escaflowne compared to other fantasy/mecha anime from the 90s?

Pippi Longstocking Sketches & Artworks by Hayao Miyazaki and one illustration by Goro Miyazaki

These illustrations were published in the book 幻の「長くつ下のピッピ」 (Tankobon Softcover – October 9, 2014). Note: I really should have included the book cover in my picture collection, too!

Sources of Images:

• Animation Obsessive on Twitter X
• The Strongest Girl in the World - On the Takahata-Miyazaki-Kotabe version of 'Pippi.' by Animation Obsessive
• https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/33p3ba/miyazakis_sketches_of_pippi_longstocking_but/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/ghibli/comments/gdqgi5/pippi_longstocking_by_goro_miyazaki/?tl=de