Escaflowne sites!

Ah, Escaflowne. I love Escaflowne. I mean, I really love Escaflowne. It is by far and away my overall favorite series. I own several of the CDs and listen to them over and over. Yoko Kanno's score is incredible. It's not just great anime music, or a great soundtrack. It's great music, period. I also own several of the art books. But surprisingly, I don't own the videos. I watched a friend's copy of the fansubs, then returned them. I've since been waiting for the DVDs. In October they're finally arriving, but not before the series hits the airwaves on the Fox Kids network. As you might imagine for a fan of my caliber, the waiting is driving me nuts. So I figured, what better therapy than to devote Last Exit to Escaflowne, and search for good Escaflowne websites? So I did. And, of course, I found some. But not many.

I have a theory that one dominant site in an anime can scare off a lot of other talented web authors. When a potential web author can see that the topic he or she plans to cover has already been covered, and covered extremely well, he or she is less likely to put forth the effort to make another, perhaps redundant site.

I think that could be what happened here. In this case, the dominant site is The Vision of Escaflowne Compendium. This site does an exemplary job of providing information. Check out the character page, what I consider to be the most important section of any site devoted to an anime. The character section has pages for over 60 characters. You can reference them alphabetically, or through a set of detailed charts that illustrate how each character relates to others. As best as I can tell, these charts list all the characters, not just the 60+ that have pages on the site. They're quite impressive.

Visit the character goods page for a collection of images of posters, notebooks, mousepads, and odd things that would never have occurred to me, such as report paper, cassette indexes, and telephone cards. Further items are listed, but not illustrated, such as stainless steel bookmarks, and CD carrying cases. The Japanese merchandising engine is truly a force to be reckoned with. For further evidence, visit the "Software" section to find information on the PlayStation game and the CD-ROM for making New Year's Day Cards.

I liked the design of the FAQ section, which is essentially an index to the site. Questions are listed with an "answer" link below, which then takes you to the section of the site where the answer can be found. "Compendium" is the proper name for this site, as it is more or less an encyclopedia of every piece of information about the series the author could find.

It's difficult to compete with such a site, but a couple of sites give it a good try. contains an alphabetical Escaflowne encyclopedia which is well-written, but could use more entries. My favorite section of this site was the song translations. At last I was able to learn what Merle was singing in the song "Neko no Kimochi (A Cat's Feelings)". Why is it that translated anime lyrics are never as good as I imagine them to be when I can't understand them?

If you visit , you'll find that the author's intended site isn't ready yet. However, if you then follow the link to the "old planet gaea", you'll find a nice little site with some worthwhile content. The music section contains detailed track-by-track reviews of the soundtrack CDs. Visit the "fun" section for a collection of Winamp skins (I finally installed one of those) and Windows 95/98 desktop themes.

It seems many anime series have at least one character the lady fans all fall for, despite his being someone you'd run screaming from in real life. Such a character is Dilandau. Hey, he's a handsome young homicidal psychotic. What's not to love? Such devotion is illustrated in a lovely pair of sister sites. The two sites share a similar look, with the same background design and animated fire (Dilandau's weapon of choice). However, the content is not identical, and both sites are worth visiting.

The first site, , is a collection of pages about Dilandau, both informational and silly. In the silly category are such sections as "Dragon Slayers Pros and Cons", a humorous illustration of the ups and downs of being a member of Dilandau's elite mecha corps. "Dilly Comics" features two pages of a fan-parody manga featuring the Dragon Slayers. And of course, there are sections for fanfic and fan art, although the fan-fiction section has only one entry. Speaking of fan-art, the opening page for this site features Dilandau as quite the bishonen boy.

The other site, , is slightly more down-to-earth. (Or should I say "down to Gaia"? Ha ha! Forget I said that...) This site was founded when the author ran of web space at her previous site. There is a Cosplay section with photos of Dilandaus from conventions, and a gallery of pages from the Escaflowne shojo manga. The latter is called the "Original Manga Gallery", a misnomer because the manga was based on the anime, not vice versa. There's also a gallery of pages from doujinshi, all featuring Dilandau. If you go to the "Scripts" section, there's a link to a page of clips from the English dub. There's still only one fanfic in the fanfic section, but it's a different fic from the first site. All in all, if you need your fill of Dilandau, you'll be more than able to get it from these two sites.

Another prolific Escaflowne site author calls herself "Sarah-neko". First should be mentioned her link site, . This is a collection of character sites, several of them hers, sorted by the male characters to which the pages are devoted. It uses a simple but attractive design. Of course, Sarah-neko must have a Dilandau page, and she does, . Like all of Sarah-neko's sites, it's primarily a collection of well-written essays on the character and other characters who relate to him in some way. However, content is not limited to that. This site also features a complete fanfic following "Dilandau" after the series (quotes relate to an infamous spoiler you're not supposed to reveal to anyone who hasn't seen it), as a well as "Battle Arena", a series of silly stories pitting Dilandau against Darth Maul and Captain Tylor, among others.

Sarah-neko's site devoted to Van, the series hero, and his villanous brother Folken, is . The site is split into two sub-sites, one for each character. The Van site features essays on Van himself as well as on his relationship to Hitomi, the heroine, and Merle, the cute little cat girl who adores him. The Folken site has essays about Folken (of course), and his two cat girls, who are older and sexier.

Sarah-neko also has two sites devoted to minor characters. is devoted to Dryden, a character I'd completely forgotten until I saw his picture. The "fanworks" section has a fan-fic starring the character and an even more minor character, his pet mermaid. is all about yet another minor heroic character, another one I'd forgotten all about. Not much there, but then the same was true of the character.

Although the series has plenty of moments of comic relief, Escaflowne is for the most part a dead-serious series. Leave it then to some fans to create sites which turn that attitude on its head and try to be as silly as possible. is a entire site devoted to wackiness in the name of Escaflowne. There's a collection of silly fanfics, including "Escaflowne Goes On Springer". For an idea of just how crazy the humor is on this site check out . Then when you've picked yourself off the floor, check out the site.

, a site accessible from the previous site as well as from the Turnpike, is just what it says. The 80's action hero who took on Evangelion, Magic Knights Rayearth, and Slayers now sets his sights on the world of Gaea, thanks to the magic of Hitomi's pendant and PhotoShop. It's helluva funny, especially when "the T" gets zapped by the fate-altering device.

A few more sites to conclude with:

And with that, I think I'll call it a column.
On to the mail!