Escaflowne Episode 8
(FOX episodes 6 and 7)

Summary: Hitomi has a dream that she's back on earth with Allen. However, at the end, Allen ditches her for Millerna. Hitomi has the falling-and-the-winged-guy-saving-her vision once again. She wakes up to find Van and Merle sitting with her. Van tells her that if she can't go back to Asturia, she's welcome to come with him. Back in Asturia, Allen has been thrown in jail, and Zaibach is mounting an attack on Freid. However, Allen escapes to warn Freid. Back on Van's side, the three come upon a dragon's graveyard, where Zaibach soldiers mine energists. He decides to destroy the energist depot, to cut Zaibach's power supply. However, Hitomi gets captured and is held hostage. After some distraction courtesy of Hitomi's pager (man, I want her service!), they all escape, but the energist depot blows up. Hitomi falls into a deep crevice created by the explosion, and Van flies, literally, down to save her. He sprouts feathered wings and catches Hitomi, just like in her dream.


Time: 00:00
21 Seconds
Once again, FOX figures we're smart enough to remember what happened before the commercial break, so cuts the recap (but it'll probably be used in the next episode).

Time: 00:21
The scene opens with a shot of Esca-dragon sitting on a ledge from the beginning of episode 9.

Time: 00:21
39 Seconds
The first part of Hitomi's dream is cut. It begins with her calling someone on a payphone, then Allen shows up, holding a pager. The two go bound around town together, doing random stuff, such as trying out new fashions (Allen in a baseball cap!), attempting to get UFO catcher dolls, and hanging out in an outdoor cafe.

Time: 00:21
And there's yet another thing wrong with the beginning. The music here used to be "Tomodachi" (er, I think that's the name), which is also the song that played in episode 6 when Hitomi listens to the CD (but that music was cut, too).

Time: 01:05
10 Seconds
During Hitomi's dream, Allen says he gave up everything to come to earth to be with her. Instead, that scene was cut, and the dialogue there was Allen's introduction in episode 3 ("I am a knight of Asturia, and I will protect you.").

Time: 01:33
10 Seconds
After Hitomi sees Allen and Millerna kiss in her dream, the world around her goes black, and she looks up to see a tower. The "Falling Tower" tarot card is superimposed over the image, and the tower crumbles, along with the ground she's standing on.

Time: 01:59
When Hitomi is rescued by the winged guy in her dream, she calls out for Allen. Then, the image of Allen with wings, which was originally cut from episode 3, is shown.

Time: 04:26
23 Seconds
After Hitomi mentions her family, she starts going off on what a pain her little brother is, and how she always gets blamed for stuff he does. Then she complains about how her parents are always telling her how to live her life.

Time: 06:40
7 Seconds
Hitomi looking fondly at Van after he promises to get her back home.

Time: 06:40
When Hitomi looks back at the earth, a big recap of episode 1 is added (probably because since they lost so much of the episode in editing, they needed something to fill time). This lasts a good minute and a half, and includes the, up until now, taboo subjects of Amano and Yukari. After the flashback, another commercial break is added.

Time: 08:29
1 Minute, 9 Seconds
Hitomi, Van, and Merle fly over the dragon's graveyard. The Commander there (whom all my friends call the "Dilandau wanna-be", since he's fruity, scary, and kicks people instead of slapping them) sees Escaflowne and just assumes it's a dragon coming to die. I'd suspect that they'll add this scene back in when they air the next episode.

Time: 10:00
2 Seconds
When Millerna falls in the dungeon, she originally hiked her skirt waaay up, showing a hefty amount of flesh to the guard (hey, it's a distraction ^_^*).

Time: 10:06
1 Second
Gaddess clubs the guard over the head.

Time: 10:12
1 Minute, 1 Second
Van and the girls spy on the dragon's graveyard, and Van explains what energists are for. Again, they'll probably add this scene back in with the next episode.

Time: 11:35
8 Seconds
The crew of the Crusade stand around, wondering what's taking Allen so long.

Time: 13:14
After Millerna watches Allen leave on the Crusade, the episode ends. Until next week!


Continued in the next FOX episode

Predictions for Episode 9
-Blood! Van kinda goes on a killing spree and kills all the guards (uh, and the snake) that hold Hitomi captive. Needless to say, this will be edited.
-Wings! There's wings in the preview!
-At the end, Hitomi gets a page from Amano. Since it's Amano-related, and Amano is evil (except in really long flashbacks to episode 1), it'll be cut.
-I'm almost expecting them to tack on ALL of episode 9 to the end of this, since 9 is a massive plot episode, which deals with Van's past. There's no action until the very end.

Time: 00:00
Once again, the recap is moved to here. Episode 8 is the last episode in Escaflowne to originally have any sort of recap.

Time: 08:29
As I thought, these scenes that they skipped last week were all saved for today's episode. The episode starts here, with Van, Hitomi, and Merle coming upon the Dragons' Graveyard.

Time: 08:50
10 Seconds
The pink-haired commander kicks his messanger, then complains that no one cares about his mining site.

Time: 09:34
After Van and co. fly in towards the graveyard, the commercial break was originally here. However, FOX decided not to give us a commercial one minute into the episode.

Time: 10:12
Since the scene after the original commercial was used in the last episode (Allen in the dungeon), we cut to here, the next scene in the graveyard sequence. This is where the three are spying on everyone, and Van decided to go stop them.

Time: 13:14
And, once again, we cut past stuff we've already seen (Millerna wanting to leave with Allen, etc). This is the last in the skips, and the episode proceeds as usual from here.

Time: 13:16
5 Seconds
The commander kicks a worker (come on, this is his trademark, even though he only lasts half an episode!)

Time: 14:37
3 Seconds
When Merle escapes the guard and leaves Hitomi behind, the squirming lizard's tail was momentarily cut back to (yeah, the symbolism would confuse the kids -_-*).

Time: 15:11
When Hitomi is captured, there is an extra shot of her with the sword pressed to her neck. Then the commercial break is added.

Time: 15:12
2 Seconds
The soldiers whipping Van (strangely enough, the sound effects of him getting whipped are still there, even though the visual isn't).

Time: 15:36
1 Second
The commander smacks Van.

Time: 15:48
1 Second
And he elbows him in the face, too.

Time: 16:33
I don't really know why I noted this, but Hitomi's pager has a different beep than it originally had.

Time: 16:55
When Van goes on his mini killing spree after he frees himself, there was originally quite a bit of blood flying, all of it edited out and obscured by flashes of white.

Time: 17:21
And there they go playing "Epistle" randomly again. This is where Van goes flying in on Escaflowne.

Time: 17:36
2 Seconds
When all the Energists react, so does Hitomi's pendant. We just start to see it glow before the cut, but they cut her actually noticing it, which makes it less noticable.

Time: 19:08
A commercial break is added after Hitomi is rescued by Van when he... ::glances at notes:: "wingifies"? (this is what I get for taking notes while eating Smarties ^_^* Sugaaarrrr....).

Time: 19:09
Uhh... when we come back from the commercial, we are greeted by the missing dream sequence from episode 3. This has nothing to do with the episode, and was probably added to remind us who Amano is, since he pages her in a sec. There are also shots from mostly episode 1 superimposed over the scene when Hitomi talks about her "dream".

Time: 19:23
Note
They left Amano's page to Hitomi in Japanese. In case you're wondering, the page says "Hitomi doko ni iru? From Amano" which basically means "Hitomi, where are you? From Amano".

Time: 19:58
28 Seconds
Hitomi sees Van with wings, and the camera pans out, ending the episode. The Hitomi-seeing-Van's-wings shot is shown again at the beginning of episode 9, which is the one they use. This is the first time we make an episode transition without a commercial between. Onwards to episode 9!


Total amount of original footage lost: 2 minutes, 53 seconds.

Go on to Episode 9
Go back to Episode 7
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