Escaflowne Episode 9
(FOX episodes 7 and 8)
Summary: Hitomi learns of Van's past. His mother was a descendant of Atlantis, a race with wings. His parents both died when he was young. After this is revealed, Hitomi and Van once again meet up with Dilandau and his DragonSlayers. A battle ensues, and Allen drops in to intervene. During the battle, a stray metal claw flies at Hitomi, but Allen gets in the way and is wounded. He is taken back to the Crusade where Millerna tends to him.

Time: 00:00
We're not missing anything. There was no recap, anyway.

Time: 00:54
When Hitomi holds Van's feather, we see flashes of the flashbacks to come.

Time: 01:01
This whole episode is gonna be tough to note because of stuff like this. Basically, ALL the scenes in this episode are jumbled around. Originally here, we see Allen making his way to Freid, but it's moved to later.

Time: 03:07
Hitomi floats around in a black screen filled with candles while people mutter about Draconians. This scene is moved to later.

Time: 05:15
When Goou and Balgus look through the forest at the mysterious woman, the music is RIGHT! Woo hoo! Even though originally it faded in, and in the Fox version, it's immediately there, it's the right BGM!

Time: 05:55
We see shots of the Atlanteans with their pendants, Atlantis getting destroyed, and all that other good stuff. We're not supposed to know this for many, many episodes.

Time: 07:58
After the flashback to Van's birth, a commercial is added.

Time: 08:44
After the flashback to mini-Van falling of the roof, the candle scene from before is added.

Time: 08:44
And during this candle scene, Hitomi has the falling-and-winged-guy-saving-her vision again. Now, what's playing here is Fox synth stuff, but it's a synth of the actual Escaflowne theme. Kinda cool, but only lasts a few seconds.

Time: 10:09
After Hitomi and Van's in-flight conversation about his pretty wings, the scene from 01:01 (Allen and the Crusade) is played here. The original commercial was also originally here.

Time: 10:11
Random added shots of Zaibach, with subtitles proclaiming "Capital of Zaibach" and "Dornkirk's Fortress" added (jeez, that makes it look so... corny ^_^*).

Time: 10:39
For some reason, after Dornkirk whines about not being able to see the future, his dialogue about the dragon still casting its shadow over the Zaibach Empire from episode 3 is reused as a voiceover.

Time: 10:44
Esca-dragon flying is cut back to after the Dornkirk scene, and the episode ends here.

Continued in the next FOX episode
Predictions for Episode 10
-Well, they didn't use all of 9, as I originally thought. There's blood when Allen gets impaled, so that'll be cut.
-Ah, the next episode introduces Mr. Body-Snatcher. A scary guy who kills people and runs around naked. Er, but they still showed him, buck nekkid, in the preview (maybe it's okay, since he isn't human).
-What, oh what will they do about Prince Chid and his (cough) relationship with Allen?
-Aside from Zongi's random homocides, episode 10 is about as uneventful as episode 6. Lots of cuts of "boring stuff" to be expected.

Time: 00:00
As is the case with every episode after this one, there was originally NO recap whatsoever. However, the recap footage was used at the beginning anyway, along with some added Hitomi commentary that was not present before. Also, the title for the next episode was used for this (since we've already been through all the stuff pertaining to Memories of Wings).
Ooh, ooh, and they got sloppy with the edits in the recap! Watch the recap when Van frees himself and slices up the soldiers. If you watch him cut the second soldier in slow-motion, the actual hitting is obscured with a flash of white, but when the flash disappears, you can still see a trail of blood flying offscreen.

Time: 10:46
To set the scene for where we pick up the episode, the panning-through-the-trees scene from earlier in the episode is added to indicate that something is walking through the woods.

Time: 10:58
The shot of Dilandau flying over the forest looking for Van was originally at 11:21, when everyone is looking around in panic. It was moved to here, after the shot of Escaflowne just wandering around through the woods.

Time: 11:35
4 Seconds
Cool! It took them this long to cut more than two seconds at once in this episode. And wanna know what was cut here? Four seconds of panning across the dark forest, looking for the invisible enemies. Ooooh.

Time: 11:58
While Hitomi is dowsing for the hidden Dragonslayers, random shots of their Guymelefs destroying stuff are superimposed over the swinging pendant image.

Time: 12:21
I still don't understand why FOX has yet to use this track. It's a dang cool piece of BGM. When the Dragonslayers make their initial attack out of nowhere, we originally get the BAM in-your-face "Machine Soldier", which adds to the element of surprise to the scene. Now, FOX doesn't even make a music change, and it's just playing some soft, random syntho-stuff.

Sound clip of original scene, with "Machine Soldier" playing

Time: 12:46
2 Seconds
When Dilandau berates his Dragonslayers for having rather poor marksmanship, one of them says that it's almost like they can see them. To emphasize this point, a quick shot of Hitomi pointing them out was, er, cut.

Time: 13:17
This only took about two seconds, and went by way too fast for me to accurately pinpoint everything, but while Escaflowne is fleeing, shots of Hitomi and Merle hanging on, Esca running, and the Dragonslayers pursuing are played out of order.

Time: 13:20
And in the middle of being pursued, we get a... commercial? What the heck, why are they putting it here?

Time: 13:46
And now that we're back from that commercial, Van runs into the river so he can see the invisible Dragonslayers. To celebrate the brilliance of his plan, FOX goes into a round of "Dance of Curse" again. I didn't think I'd ever say this about them playing Kanno-san's stuff, but.... STOP PLAYING THAT!

Time: 15:05
Okay, this made me feel a little better. When Allen comes flying in to save the day, the BGM "Flying Dragon" starts playing, which is the CORRECT BGM for the scene! Woo hoo!

Time: 15:42
4 Seconds
Allen looks over and sees Hitomi. Probably cut because of mini dialogue and scene-swapping earlier, it was implied he already knew she was there.

Time: 16:49
1 Second
When Allen gets shot, he bleeds, which is what most people do when they get impaled on big liquid metal spike things.

Time: 18:31
Millerna touches Allen's wound and comments that he's losing a lot of blood. No he's not! Look at him! He's perfectly fine! Not a drop of blood in sight! Yup, Millerna's a crazy woman. Seeing blood on him that obviously isn't there. Sheesh, and she calls herself a doctor? :P
Yeah, yeah, they edited out the blood.

Time: 20:08
The original episode ends right after the operation on Allen, with a shot of the Freid trade ship from the outside. However, now it's just another commercail break. Onward to episode 10 to continue episode, uh, 8! Tallyho!

Total amount of original footage lost: 11 whole seconds! Well, including all the snipits that I don't note, it's probably more like 20, but still, THAT AINT MUCH!

Go on to Episode 10
Go back to Episode 8
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