Vision of Escaflowne was one of the best anime ever made, period. The character development, pacing, and wonderful artistic styling (not to mention the insanely great music) flow together flawlessly to create an intricate (if not cliche) story that certainly deserves watching... But NOT like this!

Here we have the entire 26-episode TV series compressed down to only 3 hours -- less than a third of the original running time. How anybody doing this project expected to do this and still maintain some modicum of story cohesion I can't imagine. Yes, the story is got across, but at what price? Massive amounts of character development is missing, some of it very important -- like the foreshadowing of Hitomi's psyonic abilities!

There should simply have not been an attempt to tell the complete story in less than a third of the running time. The editing is well done, but without a clear outline of a small part of the plot that should have been focused on (whatever it may have been), the result is a muddled, fast-paced, confused mess. The magic, the emotions, even the mood of the series have all been reduced to the pacing of a Japanese toy commercial. Even with additional narration from Hitomi, one can barely follow the plot, never mind any emotional effects!

What we have here is a concept flawed to its very core. A sword & sorcery shoujo anime was not meant to play out like a bad thirty-second spot for the latest Bruce Willis movie. I really wish AnimeVillage would have instead brought out the uncut episodes of this series instead of attempting to market this as an alternative to the entire boxed set -- Those at least have some bit of redeeming value.