Another collection of Otakon news comes your way, further after the fact than ever! Joy of joys! In an effort to separate the old from the new, all information having surfaced after Otakon will be labeled with a [NEW] marker. This first Bandai report will focus on Escaflowne exclusively, as there's a fair amount of ground to cover between related Otakon news and impressions of the Fox broadcast edits.

Delays have hit our con coverage hard enough as it is, so let's cut the introduction short and get on with the recap!

BANDAI

• A much discussed topic was Escaflowne both on DVD and on Fox, the first (or rather second due to questionable editing) episode having aired this past Saturday morning.Scheduled for an October 3rd release, the first volume of Escaflowne on DVD will contain both unedited subbed and dubbed audio tracks, wholly independent from the altered Fox broadcast version, as the unedited dub was produced prior to Fox picking up the broadcast rights to the series and the production of the cut version, while dub VHS volumes will come in two separate varieties, both edited and unedited versions. DVDs buyers will also be treated to a host of extras, including interviews and Tarot cards, a mail-in offer open to both those picking up the DVDs and VHS dub.
• While Bandai has the rights to produce toy lines for Escaflowne, none are currently planned for the series, although there is a possibility of their production at some point down the road. Nonetheless, a strong merchandizing campaign is already starting to surface, an early sign of this being the Limited-Edition Escaflowne cold-cast resin statuettes currently available.
• Depending on how well received Escaflowne is on Fox, the possibility of a theatrical run for the movie looks rather promising, Bandai having expressed a fairly strong interest in it.
• [NEW] While preliminary details of the cuts Fox had planned for Escaflowne were discussed at Otakon, such as the revamped opening sequence and the omission of episode one in almost its entirety, there was still hope that much of Yoko Kanno's original soundtrack for the series would be salvaged. Unfortunately, the first airing of Fox's edit of the series has done a fair bit to dash such hopes. Here's a rundown of the changes in the first episode, shown last Saturday:
  • As was already known, the closing theme was dropped completely and the opening sequence was replaced by a techno based musical theme. The song, which while by no means particularly bad in and of itself, fails to capture the feel or mood of the original, Yakusoku wa Iranai, which was both beautiful and served well to set the tone of the series, where as the techno theme falls short of the mark. The animation was also altered to a less than impressive collection of excerpts from the show, thrown together in a half-hearted manner. The musical score itself ended up being a mixed bag at best. While Bandai fought against Fox's policy of rescoring all of their acquired series with in house music, much of their efforts were in vain. A large portion of the soundtrack was replaced by rather pedestrian instrumental pieces, often added to scenes that had been devoid of musical accompaniment altogether. While most of Kanno's original scoring ended up on the cutting room floor, a few select pieces did manage to make it onto American airwaves. This may be small consolation for all that was cut, but also serves as a small spark of hope for fewer edits in future episodes.
  • The English dubbing could best be described as passable, yet still sorely lacking in many areas, such as emotional expression and natural dialogue flow. As is often the case with mediocre dubbing, the impression of voice actors simply reading the script, rather than fully acting their roles, seems quite prevalent, leading to both forced and halting dialogue. The highlight of the dub cast is without question Van, but even he is far from perfect. Another common complaint is that Merle's VA was poorly cast, sounding too old, her voice being too deep. While I'm prone to agree with such an assessment, I can't help but try to keep in mind how a good portion of Japanese seiyuu tend to give their female characters unnaturally high pitched vocalizations. While many anime fans, myself included, have gotten used to such vocal portrayal and grown rather fond of them, it's something that may exaggerate the perception of a miscasting in a dub.
  • Many of the content cuts were made in an effort to cater to Fox Kids' target demographic of boys, approximately 6 to 12 years of age, which meant the omission of much of the "schoolgirl thing," cutting the majority of the first episode dealing with Hitomi's introduction on Earth, aiding to better develop her character and motivations. Not all of this character development was omitted, however, but rather squeezed into a very brief timeframe of 3 or so minutes, followed by Van's a toned down dragon battle. Other brief flashbacks to episode one also occur, but unfortunately both their effectiveness and flow are compromised.
  • The included scenes from episode two, of which there were many more than from episode one, fared much better, very few being cut out altogether, but rather trimmed due to time constraints and to emphasize the action of the series. This is presumably another reason for the heavy edits in this first broadcast showing, in an effort to grab the young target audience early on in the series such that fewer edits would be required later on, since a core audience would already be secured. I can only hope this is the case, as I can imagine a number of issues that will pop up should they continue with their current degree of editing.
  • The manner the first episode was cut to accelerate the pace of the show towards the more action oriented scenes in Gaea creates somewhat of a dichotomy with the way violence was handled. Violent strikes and blows were edited around, rather showing only the lead up and result of such hits, and the resulting battle damage was toned down considerably. More striking still is the almost total omission of blood, an early example of such being the removal of the energist from the bloodied body of the defeated dragon being replaced with a digitally overlayed scene of light from which the energist was extracted. Such are the costs of changing the target audience of a series... I suppose.

While many parallels can be drawn between this edit of Escaflowne and those done to Card Captor Sakura for the Kids WB broadcast, such as the shift of emphasis from Hitomi to Van, similar to that in CCS from Sakura to Li, this is by no means such a blatant hack job. Granted, many aspect of the show were severely edited, but the future degree of such edits is not yet completely clear. Additionally, one can only be comforted by the fact that an uncut version of Escaflowne is already on the market, where as no such commercial option currently exists for CCS fans, and won't exist until Pioneer releases the already-delayed unedited DVDs in November.

Expect further reports shortly, wrapping up news on the Bandai front and clearing out the backlog of news on other distributors. As was the case with this report, and to a lesser degree the last one as well, more recent news will be interspersed with the Otakon coverage, making for a fresher, more appetizing news entree.