#varie

[ruinsoftime]

Animedia No. 189 October 1996

Artwork: Yoko Kikuchi (Zero-G Room) Source, personal collection.

[smallscreengifs]

[mysticrunawayjellyfish]

[teenagedirtstache]

[folcanta]

🪽 translated a passage from one of the artbooks—

i guess it's up to interpretation (and i don't think google translator is all that good) but this wording somehow makes a lot more sense to me. the draconians are harbingers of crisis. mothman. weird dragon animal people from heaven who don't behave like humans because they're not. they don't die, Varie didn't die, she's not a ghost in the mystic valley, she's just doing her own thing. these bugs don't do anything to prevent disaster, they're just moths to its flame. thank youuuuuu Varie......! LOVE your work mama!!!

oh right: and the wings. Okay! so once again, no real difference between the series and the film in this regard? their wings aren't a physical phenomenon firstly so much as a mental one. regarding the film, we can think "aww she got her wings" is kinda corny, but in both the series and the film, it was undeniably really important to convince us that the ultimate source of Hitomi's power is herself. not the pendant, not the tarot, not the boyfriend. (although that's a perk.) it wasn't her choice to be helpless within hopelessness. she finds power in acting for herself and for others, out of compassion, not bootstraps bullshit.

also, kinda hard to avoid Buddhism when talking about desire. Just gonna throw that out there, do what you want with it.

it's only through Hitomi's experiences/actions with others that she grows and reeatablishes herself to herself. if she didn't need the company of others, the story of Escaflowne wouldn't exist. needing help/community isn't shameful, it doesn't take anything away from her and how she grows. this is a collectivist story, not an individualist one.

i do strongly believe this is why she's a runner, too. running requires only her own stamina. if it were another sport/activity, especially if more reliant on probability, we might link her wishes to her success in a way which unintentionally diminishes her. but on the off chance that a viewer doesn't quite follow the physics of how the pendant/wishes work on Earth vs Gaea, Escaflowne can instead show you that inadvertently causing injury, or taking a shortcut, etc., will not make Hitomi a faster runner. and we know speed is what she focused on, not so much endurance. the track is just linear points A-B. i think this was pretty deliberate. we see her run with proper form over and over, for fun and for survival, to remind us that this skill is owed entirely to mundane effort.

Hitomi has fixed her sights on Amano, but by chasing after him, she can't seem to beat her own best time— but look at that long jump she did to rescue Van in episode 5, and running to the bridge in episode 6! And so on.

the wings are yet another literal metaphor in Escaflowne, double meanings, layers. Everything with a counterpart. (Cause/effect, action/reaction, character/character.) like so many other things, they manifest out of force of will/want. Varie telling her sons to hide them isn't only "don't show these to people or they'll hunt you for sport," it's also "hey suppress your emotional and spiritual sense of self for me, k babe?"

if it's true that the wings, through will/concentration/awareness, can either be used for conquest or for saving lives, this in the film gives more grave and tragic implications to Folken's claim of abandoning his. Not only is he not using them for any purpose, to abandon them at all is to abandon himself. the same way he was abandoned by the divisive, inequitable traditions of their clan that drove him away from Van, who he loved and still loves beneath the jet-black clouds of agony...

... again, just like in the series, but diverted down a different path. Hitomi and Folken are, from the very first moment on the train platform (and later by Folken's white-knuckled insistence) set up as one another's counterpart— just like in the series. They are the people who care about Van most, they share each others' abilities in the series just as they do in the film, and in the series they get along almost instantly. They are each other's counterpart, and surely this is part of why Van feels so strongly for Hitomi.

AGAIN, FUCK, OK, LISTEN TO ME: JUST LIKE HOW EVERYTHING ABOUT DILANDAU AND ALLEN IS SUPPOSED TO PARALLEL— THAT IS, EMPHASISE— THAT IS, LEAD BACK TO— FOLKEN AND VAN, THE SAME GOES FOR THIS!!!!! Van obviously takes a lot of comfort in Hitomi because she's similar to Folken, who he is hurt by and can't seek comfort from— and this is the basis for a real sense of safety, of platonic love firstly, not like ALLEN "HUH?" SCHEZAR who gets a whiff of Moon + Girl and goes in for the kill. freak

In the film it seems like an odd juxtaposition at first (wish it went a little harder on Hitomi's end) but it's the same juxtaposition that brings her closer to Van; she sees his suffering, finds kinship in pain, and a shared hope for better. Folken is bereft of hope from anything but total rebirth— just as he does in the series, but different! In contrast to the series, Van has been without Escaflowne for how long? And Folken hasn't killed him despite his claim that this all he wants. Both Folken and Hitomi are exceedingly lost, wanting to die, strongly enough to reach through space. Through all their pain they just come to different conclusions :( and even then, Folken is trying to reach her. Not romantically, and he takes her seriously. She's a means to an end, but she's also a person to him.

i love depressed Hitomi. by the time i saw the film (grade 8?) i had already grappled with abuse and depression for many years, and what she depicted was something so raw and real to me, something still hard to find. starting her off at that low place vs her anxiety in the series made her arc seem much stronger. if anything i wish it had gone even deeper, but the strange listless dreamlike dissociation was real in a way that e.g. Known Depressive Evangelion never hit for me.

Sora single-handedly represents Atlantis/Draconians, a clan who put their faith into the wing goddess and have a connection to the technology/deity of ancient Gaea (instead of the cycle of rebirth containing Atlantis and Gaea, now it's Gaea that's repeatedly reborn.) She has the same court eyebrows as Varie, so she has/had status. She's otherworldly, a Tennyo, or a celestial maiden.

if Sora's people worshipped the wing goddess but were wiped out, is she sore that the wing goddess didn't appear to help her then?

The commentary in the Newtype Film book says that just as Folken's will upheld the black dragon clan ships and this is why they fall apart upon his death, and this is also why Escaflowne disappears into Sora at the end of the film, when she dissolved into mist. Varie is a harbinger of calamity, Sora is here as a witness.

If wings are a symbol of personal liberation for Hitomi (according to Buddhism, Wisdom and Compassion are to enlightenment as wings are to a bird) then the wing goddess is also you!? Maybe? By empathising, by feeling compassion for another and their pain as your pain, you can understand yourself and your pain better, too, if you focus. But remember this is a story, and that means one day returning. over and over, forever, if you will it. You're older now. It won't be the same. But it will be familiar.

Hey by the way, now that i've talked about the film so much— pretty sick move to upcycle the unused concept of Series Van's heterochromia for Film Folken.

[aliscanta]

Paris stole my heart 🤍 pt.2 [1]

@aliscanta

[esca-ss]

Goau meets the woman he was destined to marry.

2023 ESS gift for

@eireanness

 ! I hope you enjoy. - Seven