Article Number

RV0027

Author

Gerry

Toy Line

Escaflowne

Manufacturer

Yamato Corp.

At last, the long awaited promise of Yamato to release a fully transformable Escaflowne figure has finally been realised. I remember when I owned Robozone I started taking preorders for this item around 2000. After almost five years, the long anticipated wait is finally over. The Escaflowne was originally sculpted by Billy Wong, the same sculpter who brough us the Macross Plus toys by Yamato and I believe Giant Robo as well.

Background Info

Escaflowne is based on an animation series known as The Visions of Escasflowne which aired in Japan in 1996 and produced by Sunrise. It is a 26 episode series which is perported to be one of the best sci-fi fantasy anime series to come around in a very long time.

The story's central character is a 15 year old girl named Hitomi Kanzaki who seems to have the ability to tell the future and ends up on another world known as Gaea after helping a strange boy battle a dragon. She then takes a pink gem out of the dead dragon and she and the boy who is later known as Van are transported to this world. She later learns that Van is to be crowned king of his country known as Fanelia on the planet Gaea. During his coronation, invisible giants attack and Van and Hitomi are forced to flee. They end up in a room where the guymelef "Escaflowne" is dormant. Van takes the pink gem retrieved from the slain dragon and inserts it into Escaflowne and with Hitomi's help, they defeat the invisible giants.

I have never seen the series, the above brief synopsis was taken from several web sites around the internet. From what I have read and also in obtaining the figure, I just recently ordered the 26 episode DVD collection as the story premise sounds very interesting.

So much for the background info on Escaflowne, let's talk about the toy.

The Packaging

The box that Escaflowne comes in is rather large. It measures approximately 12x11x5 and has a window display for Escaflowne in guymelef mode. (E-01) The box art though sparse is a nice touch with most of the art depicted on the back panel. (E-02) In addition, the two side panels each contain one of the wing pieces along with the sword and other accessories. (E-03, E-04)

When opening the box, the wing pieces and accessories are anchored to card-board inserts which pull out rather easily from the side panels. They are strapped down with those annoying wire ties which seems to be the industry standard these days. Extra accessories include left and right wing pieces for dragon mode, an extra right fist so that Escaflowne can hold a sword, a giant sword along with a display stand for displaying Escaflowne in dragon mode and of course an instruction booklet. (E-05)

Guymelef Mode

Escaflowne comes in guymelef mode or humanoid form. I tell you I really wasn't impressed with this toy upon first glance after taking it out of the box. The left shoulder seemed to be sagging a bit and the head was positioned up way too high leaving me to believe that I got a broken toy. (E-06) However, I was happy to discover that the ball joint that joins the shoulder to the chest area must've popped out in transit and it was just a matter of popping it back in. I wasn't impressed with how easily the joint popped out to begin with. (E-07, E-09)

This toy was reported to be manufactured out of 80% diecast and 20% pvc. Unfortunately, it has turned out to actually be the other way around. With about 20% of the toy being diecast. With the diecast content being limited to the chest piece (E-10) and parts of the lower legs. The cloak that comes with Escaflowne is made out of a thick rubber material and is only anchored at two points underneath the left and right shoulders. (E-12) As you can see in E-12 it looks like the cloak is barely hanging on. It should probably have additional anchor points in the center to reduce the pull of gravity. I tried various positions of the shoulders to try to not get it to hang so much but without much success.

After handling the toy for a while I was really getting frustrated because the right shoulder joint kept popping out as well which can be seen in (E-13). Also depicted in E-13 just behind the head you can make out a sword hilt at the back which can be removed upon transformation from guymelef to dragon mode. A nice touch and probably anime accurate but I don't see the point to this extra piece. The toy probably should've been designed to house the entire sword which Escaflowne holds in it's hands. Finally after many attempts at posing the toy with the sword in hand, E-16 shows the best possible positioning of the toy I was able to achieve. The hands are removeable and can even be recessed into the forearms by pulling the forearms out. (E-20, E-19) E-21 shows the pink Energist gem being clutched at the torso area. After finally getting this toy to look the way I wanted it to, I snapped a few pictures which about says it all. The toy is definately impressive once you start to get things to go right. (E-18, E-22)

Dragon Mode

I sure am glad I had the instructions to transform Escaflowne into dragon mode. I surely would've been stuck transforming this item without them. Which is to say the transformation is good and complicated which is how I like to grade my transforming toys. Transformation starts with the legs that transform into the dragon's tail. (E-26, E-28) The cloak is then removed and the head is manipulated so that the part of the back behind Escaflowne's head becomes the base of the neck and also the sword hilt is removed. (E-29) The next few steps involve taking the pieces out of the chest of Escaflowne and using them to assemble the head, including the diecast chest piece. Also included in the chest area is the lower jaw piece which must be removed by pressing a lever inside the chest area. Finally the back of Escaflowne's head in guymelef mode is also used for constructing the dragon's head. (E-30) Next both arms are removed where they are connected at shoulder and back and manipulated and repositioned into the body to help support the draon wings which are then added.

The above transformation method is drastically abbreviated as according to the instructions there is a total of 27 steps to transform Escaflowne to dragon mode. As you can see by the remaining pictures this is quite an impressive toy in dragon mode measuring at least 18 inches long.

Conclusions

Due to the difficult nature of transformation, it somehow makes up for this toy's shortcomings. However there are a few things as mentioned in this review that I have complaints about.

• Poseability - Most difficult to pose in guymelef mode. The joints keep popping out at the shoulders.
• Rubber Cloak - Way too heavy for the toy. It needs to have more than just two anchor positions and seems to sag constantly.
• Diecast Chest piece - In guymelef mode, has a habit of popping off from time to time and doesn't seat properly on a little peg underneath.

What saves this toy is dragon mode which is most impressive and of course the transformation process which indicates to me that some serious thought went into the engineering behind it. Though maybe a few more months in development may have fixed the problems indicated above.

Overall I'd have to rate this toy a 7 out of 10. Which is probably the lowest rating I've given a Japanese toy in a very long time. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go out and purchase this item, I picked this item up on ebay for about $35.00. But don't dally too long as I am sure they will be long gone after a while.

Gerry