Anime Magnet Escaflowne - 2000's Netflix

For the past week at work, I've been mulling over my childhood inspirations while twisting croissants and feeling the dull throb of my ankles. And with this last batch of commissions that I opened, I've repeatedly been faced with dashing fantasy weapons and blindingly detailed armor too bright to squint at and SURELY too pointy to be functional- 90's fantasy, specifically 90's fantasy anime, has always played a huge part in why I started drawing and I miss it's wild abandon! There are too many aspects of Ma Mere, and my art in general that I think I try to rationalize in a real-world sense when it's magic. It's just magic! I don't need to explain anything, really. Maybe in my mind I think that CinemaSins is going to look at my art some day and then everyone will agree with him. I think that's where the death of suspension of disbelief began.

When I'm stressed and find myself obsessively categorizing and organizing and defining aspects of myself  I seem to return to wanting my art to move in the direction of old anime glowbloom and really solid drawing. But I get stuck in a cyclical miasma of digital polish that makes everything end up feeling flat...it's hard to push myself to try new things and when I try to complete something these days (very rare, and often only for zines) I get very...embarrassed. Everything floats in a white void, facing 3/4ths left, and never doing anything interesting. They're so boring!!! Even my zine pieces lack personality when standing next to other contributors' gorgeous works. I've tried to give myself a little bit of lenience; This year has been nothing short of maddening and constrictive. But for Christs' sake, I need to do SOMETHING!! I'm losing any bite I had as an artist and it's driving me up a wall- can't I take a single creative risk? Or will I always get "too tired"? 

Because of this, I want to have an excuse to look up some stuff about my favorite anime, The Vision of Escaflowne, from 1996. It's one of the first anime I watched solo. My VERY first anime was Inuyasha at my best friend's house in elementary school- she had two of those big unfolding CD cases that a full season would be in- a few disks were missing here and there but I got the gist.

InuYasha Season 1 DVD box set. We never had more than up to Season 2. I think. So we would just rewatch what we had over and over. I learned the word 'bastard' from this anime.

My friend had the Inuyasha:Secret of the Divine Jewel DS game too. I didn't have anything to play it with at the time so I think I just watched over her shoulder. I tried to get it on Gamefly once. Which was a video game rental site like Netflix back in 2009. The copy they sent me had a save file on it though, so I sent it back too scared to delete it. 

I was first introduced to Escaflowne through Netflix. Back in the early 2000's they operated as a mail-rental service and would send DVDs to your house to keep for 2 weeks. They came in big red sleeves you'd rip open- and then a small white slip case for the DVD itself. If you lost the DVD you'd pay to replace it. And since these were physical, therefore having a finite supply, you could be placed in a queue to get the movie next if someone else had it. It worked like a library, essentially. 

My mom opted for 2 DVDs in our delivery. One for the kids and one for Mom and Dad. I think they got movies that they'd missed out on because they were working- or dramas like LOST. We also lived too far from the movie theater to go see anything new regularly, so getting new movies that weren't at the old grocery store rental kiosk was really exciting. My sister and I got stuff that we could pick out (mostly me, I was bossy) but it was often contained in a series so my mom could just get the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th DVD in the line for awhile. That's how I watched most of the 2000's pokemon TV show. In this way Escaflowne was queued up for us to watch- my mom had picked it out because it was animated. Thinking nothing of it's rating or it's description. To be fair it looked like this. People always point out their big honkin' noses. 90's anime and it's little styles has always held a really personal charm to me.

The character in the center is Van Fanel. I have a worn-out sticker of him in my wallet that a friend gave me a few years ago. (If you couldn't tell he's a close favorite) He's introduced in the first episode as a valiant knight-lad sort of boy. Quite literally the first thing that happens to him is being struck so hard to the ground that he throws up blood. I had never seen something like that at 8 years old so of course I had to keep watching it. When I was first watching it I had a crush on him. Now I get sad for his past (and future, throughout the show)

Hitomi is the main character! I love her little bob. I won't talk about the plot so much. I'm more interested in having a session just going crazy over the visuals of this show.

How visually stunning is this, though? All of the designs are so polished- I have the art book and the sketches for the characters are just as tightly drawn as everything else. God I wish I had this line quality.

I rarely draw traditionally anymore...maybe I've got blinders on for how line economy works anymore. I can just magic away any mistakes I make in an instant and never have to think farther than that.

Look at how moody these are though. You can practically hear the main character breeze blowing.

90's anime and their vague furries were huge for me. Doubtless you can tell where I got my "furry gauge" from

I really like these two. They're important to the plot but don't get shown all that much in the show. The animal-humans in this show are called 'Beastmen' which I debated calling them in my own story, Ma Mere. But it's pretty common...I don't know. Maybe it serves its purpose well enough.

It should be said that The Vision of Escaflowne has a weird full-feature film simply called Escaflowne from 2000. It's drawn up as a re-telling of the original series but did that weird anime movie thing where everything is...different. Just enough similarities to where you can squint and say "yeah. okay" but too many differences to say it's connected in any way to the story. That being said I like it. It's stupid, but I like it. And the animation is great- one of the first sequences featuring Van is a Yutaka Nakamura cut (one of my favorite animators)

This wasn't supposed to be particularly educational. Just a post for my favorite show, I guess. New Years is coming up and I'm getting nervous for 2024. I've barely been creative this year and I have to stop grating my teeth every time I think about it. I've always seen drawing and creativity as a muscle that must be employed consistently enough to keep it in shape. What does that mean for me? Through all of my moving and readjusting to new city life and hating my job for the past 12 months. Am I just all, I don't know, dehydrated? Like a little worm? Puny? Does that mean I'll explode on contact if I make an earnest attempt at a comic next year? Maybe.