The Vision of Escaflowne - Production

Production

Shoji Kawamori first proposed the series after a trip to Nepal, during which he visited the foggy mountain region and picture a hidden world where an epic focusing on both fate and divination should be set. When he returned, he proposed the series to Bandai Entertainment and Sunrise Studios. According to Kawamori, his pitch for the series was simple: "if Macross was robotic mecha and love songs, why not a story about robotic mecha and divining powers?"

He worked with Bandai producer Minoru Takanashi to finish fleshing out the original idea. They researched various mysteries for inspiration, particularly stories centered around the mythical land of Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. As the series began taking shape, they changed the lead character from a male, the norm for an action-mecha series, to a high school girl as the lead character. Nobuteru Yuki was hired as the character designer, and tasked with crafting a design for Hitomi and the rest of the cast. He would later state that Hitomi was his favorite character because it was the first one he'd ever designed completely from scratch rather than simply being adapted from an existing medium. Initially, Folken and Dilandau were a single enemy commander, but as the story fleshed out, the creators felt the series would be more interesting if there were two with very different personalities.

Initially, the series was planned at thirty-nine episodes, with Yasuhiro Imagawa brought on board to direct. He is credited with coining the word "escaflowne", a Latin-based derivative of the word "escalation", that would be used in the title. Imagawa saw the series as being a typical shōnen series that was heavily male oriented and featuring a shapely heroine and dramatic battles. However, he left the project before actual production started to direct Mobile Fighter G Gundam. Without a director, the series was put on hold and Kawamori left to work on other projects. After two years sitting on the shelf, Sunrise revisited the project and brought in relative newcomer Kazuki Akane as the new director. In order to broaden the potential audience, Akane decided to add more shōjo, or girl-oriented, elements to the series. The suggestive elements were removed, several of the male characters were given more bishōnen—"beautiful boy"—appearances, and the plot element around the tarot cards were added. Akane also gave the character of Hitomi a complete make over, taking her from being a curvy, air-headed, long-haired girl with glasses to the slim, athletic, short-haired and more intelligent and confident girl seen in the final series.

With the series character designs finalized and the story set, Yoko Kanno was selected to write the songs for the series, including the background songs which she co-wrote with Hajime Mizoguchi. Initially they found it difficult to score the series as the plot itself was still being reworked around the new concept, but the plot changes were finished in time for them to prepare the score and give the film the desired final "epic touch." Sixteen-year-old Maaya Sakamoto, fresh from a small role in the anime adaptation of Mizuiro Jidai, was selected not only as the voice of Hitomi, but also to sing the Escaflowne theme song. Kanno is noted as saying that Sakamoto is an ideal interpreter of her work. After this project, they continued to collaborate on many other works and some consider her work on The Vision of Escaflowne to be the launching point of Sakamoto's career.

As the series entered into production, the budget required it be cut down to twenty-six episodes before work began on the final scripts and animation began. Not wanting to cut out any of the characters or the already elaborately planned plot lines, the series was instead forced to fit into the shorter length and cover more of the story in each episode than originally planned. This can be seen some in the first episode, where in the credits were cut in favor of adding more exposition.While a few scenes were deleted, as a whole each episode was left with a feeling of giving the viewer a great deal more information than in many anime series, and it added to the series epic scope. In the retail Japanese video release, some of the deleted scenes were restored to the first seven episodes.