The Vision of Escaflowne

Episode 11-12

Some things are kept secret for a reason.

Oftentimes the reason equates to “common sense,” as in Hitomi and her allies wanting to keep Zaibach from learning that she's the reason why Van is always able to find them, cloaking technology notwithstanding, and why Van and Hitomi are so darn hard to kill. Clearly the people of Gaea have very mixed feelings about the Mystic Moon, so there's simply no way to know how Zaibach will react, but also Hitomi is just one teenage girl with psychic powers that don't even include telekinesis, i.e. a really easy target. Probably no one was expecting the leaking of that secret to Dilandau to lead him to declare Hitomi a target specifically because she ruined his perfect face (seriously, Dilandau, you need to get over that), but in all honesty I suspect that no one expects anything he does other than the fact that it will be some permutation of “insane.”

So that cat's out of the bag, along with Folken's identity and Asturia's complicity with Zaibach, or at least their total lack of care about what Zaibach does. That Zongi replaced Plaktu also comes to light, and that one proves to be the final straw for poor Hitomi. She's seen some horrible things during her time in Gaea and participated in several battles, but her vision of Zongi's death crosses a very specific line for her as a sheltered modern Japanese teen: she's never truly been a witness to violent death up close. When she sees him consumed by liquid metal (could mercury poisoning be part of Dilandau's problem?), the sight is so frightening that she loses control of her vision and becomes consumed by the same material he is. That feeling isn't one she can shake off, and now where she used to glimpses of the future, all she can see is Zongi's death over and over again. It's so horrible that it leads her own temporary death–because she's killed in her vision, she truly believes herself to be dead, and her heart stops. While this, fortunately, is only a temporary state thanks to Millerna's medical know-how and Van's strength, it leaves a scar on her psyche. And like Dilandau, it's not one she's getting over any time soon.

It does, however, help to solidify Van's fondness for her. While it hasn't quite moved into romantic territory, Van clearly now views Hitomi as a friend and partner, and he's fully aware of what she brings to the table. When she says she'll go with him to look for Zongi, he doesn't waste time trying to tell her otherwise; they just head out on the dragon version of Escaflowne. He's confident about their upcoming battle because he believes that he can ask Hitomi to help figure out where Zaibach is coming from. And when she refuses? He's surprised, of course, but he's also not pitching a fit or demanding anything of her. Van likely knows what it feels like to go from “regular kid” to “exalted figure;” his life underwent a very similar change. This doesn't mean that he likes it or that he won't feel like Hitomi could have prevented whatever casualties are coming their way next episode, but a piece of him really does understand why she's just done.

Unfortunately, things are rarely, if ever, fully over, and more secrets are crowding around the edges of the story, just waiting to be told. Obviously the big one that Millerna is just figuring out is that her adorable nephew is actually Marlene's child with Allen, conceived before she was married off. Allen and the duke both clearly were aware of this (as Marlene mentions in her diary, the duke can count), but neither was going to say anything to preserve the peace. Millerna, however, is so shaken up that she can't process what it would mean if it came out that Chid wasn't the duke's biological son. She's hurting emotionally and maybe starting to realize that Hitomi was never the problem when it came to Allen's affections. It's a terrible thing to have to deal with for basically everyone involved, except maybe Chid, who is secure in his father's love, even if the duke is harsh with him at times. If nothing else, it shows that no family is without its problems, something that Van perhaps needs to hear as he's going to fight his brother.

There's still one secret that only its keeper seems to know: when Folken tells Dornkirk that Hitomi is from the Mystic Moon, Dornkirk, having cut the call, refers to it as “Earth”–something only people from there call it. Is Dornkirk, then, another traveler who washed up on Gaea's shores decades earlier? His name sounds a little like “Dunkirk,” as in “The Battle of,” a fight that took place in 1940 during World War Two. It was a loss for the Allies, which hopefully isn't being foreshadowed in the fact that Zaibach has a distinctly German sound, and given that Dornkirk is an old man in the show's 1996, it seems plausible that he could have come from that very place and time. At this point that's still a secret Dornkirk is keeping to himself.

But secrets rarely stay that way for very long.

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The Vision of Escaflowne is currently streaming on Funimation.