Video - 3.5/5 There were a bunch of things that I didn't like about the video. First of all, there was quite a bit rainbowing on the first DVD, and the first half of the second DVD. The rainbowing was fairly constant, and was kind of a distraction. The video quality itself was quite clear, but there were signs of compressions when the screen flashed, or when the screen was really dark. Besides that the video was very nice looking. It looks like the source was analog since the side of the screen was scrolling. I'm going to guess LD, but I'm not exactly sure. All in all, the video was better than bearable, but not really superb.

Audio - 5/5 I saw no problems, and for the most part the audio was crystal clear.

Audio - 5/5 I saw no problems, and for the most part the audio was crystal clear.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the vision of escaflowne. This TV show was hyped up quite a bit, and was actually able to meet that hype. This DVD set was a really good buy considering that the Region 1 set is $200! However, with a $25 price tag, this set does exhibit quite a few flaws, including some video nastiness, and it's share of crappy subs, but I'll move on to the review to touch on those points. Content - 5/5 I have make mention that this series really is worth watching. The battles are really great looking, the animation doesn't seem to suffer near the end (like many series do), and the story is outrageously good. If you plan on buying these DVDs, at least buy a copy of the Vision of Escaflowne. In conclusion, the DVD set is really pretty good. It's short comings are kinda glaring, but the fact that this is such a good series redeems it almost totally!
edited by kakomu on 01 Dec 2002 10:48 am

Video: 4/5 OK Audio: 3/5 I don't know if it was my DVD player, but I always got noise whenever it got a little bit louder Subs: 3/5 nothing perfect, but understandable Something weird is, that the wonderfull opening (with music from Yoko Kanno) was on the 2nd and 3rd disc.

VIDEO: Pretty awesome, but nothing spectacular. Everything seemed fine, all in all. GRADE: A- AUDIO: I have almost no problems here. It's just that there were quite a few of those annoying pop-offs, but they all lasted a very short amount of time. The longest one was about five seconds, maybe. Still, it was awesome. GRADE: B+ SUBTITLES: The first two episodes are very understandable. I had no problems with them, minus the rather-subtle engrish. Though, I'll admit, episodes three through twenty-six were hella better. GRADE FOR FIRST TWO EPISODES: B+ GRADE FOR LATER EPISODES: A+ SERIES: In my opinion, there is not one thing on this entire planet better than The Vision of Escaflowne. Not one thing. Movie, book, series, anime, food, drink. Nothing. GRADE: A+ (DUH!) MENUS: Very, VERY pretty artwork in the background of every menu, including all the sub menus. Very enjoyable. Also, there was no background music, which wasn't a problem, really GRADE: A+ PACKAGING: I just ordered this recently, and I got the pretty artwork set. So, hah, hah. As a lot of people say, (I just don't know where this quote actually comes from.) "Don't hate me 'cause I'm beautiful!". GRADE: A+ CHAPTER STOPS: I hate explaining this every time I review something. One for every episode. Which, isn't really a problem to me anymore, because I'm so damn used to it by now. GRADE: B+ EXTRA FEATURES: None. GRADE: N/A EXTRA FEATURES: As much as I love this set, I have to tell you to buy the Region One discs from Bandai. Along with the Ultimate Edition of the movie. The series is just so darn good, that you have to. HAVE to. GRADE: Despite what I said, I give it an A+

Escaflowne is a weird little show that I watched originally on fansub, and just recently found out they were on HK DVD. (Call me stupid. I don't mind.) I bought them immediately. Video-- (4/5) Quite good. Though, I've never seen Escaflowne look BAD because my old fansubs were masters straight from the fansubbers! =D At a few places, the color would bleed rather badly, so that sucked. Other than that, perfect. ^_^ Audio-- (5/5) Perfect. No problems at all. Subtitles-- (5/5) As the previous reviewers have stated, the first two episodes have pretty horrible subtitles. With lines like "WAIT! BEWARE OF TOP!", and "Take out the courage...". ^_^ Still, they were completely understandable, just engrish-ridden, and with terrible grammar. When episode three begins, the subtitles take a miraculous turn for the good, and become perfect, and they stay that way 'til the series' end, too! Just with a few grammatical errors. I guess Manga International found a fansub script, or something then. @_@ Content-- (5/5) Vision of Escaflowne is my favorite anime, and my favorite anything of all time. I love it more than I love my dog.

By now im sure you're familiar with the technical details of this set, so ill just say a little about the content. Its hard to put Escaflowne into any particular genre, as it manages to incorporate so many into the 26 episodes, but when it comes down to it, it is an epic tale of love, war, and adventure. There are a huge range of characters introduced throughout the series and all of them are introduced, explored and have an influence on the storyline without the main characters feeling left out. infact it draws you closer to them and by the end you are left feeling as if you know them. I dont want to give spoilers away, but there are twists and turns in the plot before it brings you to a climatic yet satisfying ending. The Storyline is blended with the characters and artwork to produce an engrosing world to which you wont regret entering. Buy now!

This series is worth its weight in gold. Video- 4.5 very good Audio- 4.5 same deal subs- 3.5 ehh... the subs were a little off at times and some engrish... nothing too distracting but the font could have been a little better i thought. Amazing series. Something for the ages. I hope to show this to my kids... ha haha... in like 20 yrs... lol.

I really enjoy this series. This purchased did nothing to distract me from the richness of the experience of watching it. The first couple episodes are a slight exception as they make you focus on deciphering the subtitles instead of enjoying the video. Any fan of this series would be happy with this set, even if the tri-fold is the ugly brown Manga Internation case. Video: 5/5 Video quality is excellent. I am talking about watching these DVD's on my TV using my standalone DVD player. I am sure the compression would be much more noticable on my DVD-ROM for my PC and the high resolution of my PC monitor. However on my TV, I was unable to detect artifacts of any kind without purposely looking for them. Fast motion scenes were crisp and clear. The source is definately digital [DVD or LD]. I have never watched a LD video before so I can't say if it was DVD or LD. Audio: 5/5 No problems here. Subtitles: 4/5 Episodes 1 and 2 are Engrish and are sprinkled with grammatical errors. After these beginning episodes the subtitles take a turn for the best. There are only a few annoyances with the fan-subtitles. However, being a HK set this is acceptable to me. Packaging: 4/5 Boring brown Manga tri-fold. The DVD's and cover case are beautiful though. In my opinion, who gives a crap what the case looks like... to me it still looks professional and presenatble even without Escaflowne artwork all over it. Extras: 0/5 none edited by matt__chambers on 11 Jun 2002 1:20 pm

Nothing bothersome, however, if you want to use the screencaps for art (etc.) then you might have a slight problem with the artifacts and pixelation... Again, if you are just watching it then it is no big deal.

I was very disappointed when I bought this. The packaging is now a generic tan case with the "Manga International" logo, however I could get over that. So, I pop it into my dvd player and *pixelation*! It's not so bad that it's distracting, but I still was surprised. The audio didn't bug me, but the subtitles filled that gap. I constantly had to stop and rewind the thing just so I could see what the person said. Not to mention there were grammatical errors. *bleh* Ok, I won't be too harsh. It really is worth the money. You can understand the storyline and the imperfections are rather minor. Quick Review video| 3/5 audio| 4/5 subtitle| 3.5/5

I just recieved my copy of VoE today, and was dissapointed it was the new Generic gatefold. Its the original cover glued to a plastic 'protecftion' thingy, and there's the 3 DVD standard new Manga package inside, a DAMN shame....the old one looked really nice on the pictures. I might take a picture of the set to show how it looks, its kinda hard to discribe.... Also, the disc holders are pretty rough, I almost had to fight the DVDs the first time to get them out! When you're used to the system though, it works OK. (Though I prefer the old ones) For the Discs themselfes, the're very good qualtiy, denifinetly not a bad one to buy. Video : 4 / 5 Looks like a DVD rip, or a VERY good LD rips. I think it's closer to LD, because you see a little wrinkle at the top of the screen (when watched on DVD-rom). Overall, it's VERY good. Audio : 4 / 5 Uhh...sounds good to me. Subs : first few eps, 3 / 5, later eps, 4.5 / 5 The first 2 or three eps have HK original subs, while understandable, sometimes there are weird sentences. The later eps use fansubs (I guess) wich are near perfect, with an accasional mistimen here and there...nothing to worry about. Overall : 4 / 5

Sorry but I didnt see the Anime Studio set listed here but im guessing its a direct rip of the Anime Cartoon/MI dvd set. On SailorScoutScums review he said that the subtitles got good starting with the 3rd episode but on my Anime Studio DVD set the engrish didnt stop until the beginning of the 4th episode. The engrish isnt *TOO* bad because i understood what was going on heh, the engrish consisted of the usual bad grammar but i noticed they used the word "indeed" quite excessively. I dont know if the AC/MI set has the problem with the subs flying off the screen too fast or not but the Anime studio suffered from that pretty much throughout the whole series. At times the subtitle would be on the screen 10seconds before anyone even said anything which isnt all that bad but can be annoying at times. The video isnt anything great but i didnt notice any glitches of any sort while playing it on my apex dvd player. The audio was good, I didnt hear any echoes or humming noises in the background. If youre looking into buying this series and dont want to pay the prices of R1, I would suggest you grab yourself a copy of the Anime Cartoon/MI dvd set because the boxset from Anime Studio isnt too pretty to look at, and as everyone knows those AC/MI gatefolds look really nice =). Highly recommended series, one of the best if not the best storylines.

This set contains episodes 1-26 of Escaflowne tv, across three discs. At present, it comes in the older MI style gatefold cases, complete with lovely artwork. I heard that it will be one of the first older sets to have the packaging replaced with the newer, generic gatefold cases that MI will be using for many new releases (Kare Kano, for example). In comparsion, this generic case is quite ugly. If you intend to buy this set, I'd advise to do it as soon as possible. The audio and video on this set are fine. The openings and endings on the first disc seem to be cut, yet they are intact on discs two and three. The first two episodes on this set have terrible engrish subtitles. You always know what's going on however, largely because episodes one and two are very straight forward. Then, all of a sudden, at episode three the subtitles are great. MI probably found a fansub script at that point or something. Fortunately, from that point on the subtitles retain the same quality. They do, however, have some problems- seemingly random use of quotation marks. " and " pop up quite often, for no apparent reason. I found this quite annoying, when I see quotation marks, I feel as if i need to change the tone of whats being said...but really, it's not much of a problem. Also, there are very slight mistimes here and there, nothing terribly distracting at all. Overall, this is a very good set. I was glad to enjoy one of the best TV series of the past few years with little distraction. Definately worth it, though I will hopefully be picking up the r1 boxset due for release later this year as I'd really like to own a perfect release of this great series.