I rewatched this film recently and personally it still works for me. Ill just lay out a few thoughts I had. Note that I have only had minor exposure to Escaflowne the series and have not watched the whole thing. Its pretty likely youll be disappointed if you really loved the original Escaflowne series and are hoping for something similar to that. This film has a different tone a different storyline a completely different theme and also removes Hitomis fortunetelling. Luckily for me I had very little exposure to the series when I saw this movie the first time. Thematically this is very much a postEva type of anime dark bloody emotional. In some ways it reminds me RayEarth the OVA which was a darker AU rewrite of the original bright fantasy adventure Magic Knight Rayearth. I dont mind this sort of dark reboot if its done well and Escaflowne is definitely better comparatively than RayEarth Escaflownes storyline is internally consistent people have at least basic motivations and the magic system doesnt feel like its being pulled out of nowhere as we go. I actually felt most of the characters were more interesting here than the impression I have of them from the series. Allen instead of being some sort of doofy dream knight is straight badass. Hitomi starts out kind of annoying but is also as I recognized more and more with time a decent portrayal of depression imo. I also just really prefer this Millerna. I really appreciate how they handled the main emotional storyline. Specifically I find it compelling that at the beginning all 3 of the main characters Hitomi Van and Folken are in the same general place hurt angry bitter and lashing out at their friends because they dont know how to handle it. The Gaea storyline then ends up becoming one centered around finding people and things to help you or continuing to lash out and push everyone away. The music is wonderful. I also still find the art pretty solid as well this film has a lot of very good imagery and the director clearly had a direction and made some very purposeful shot choices. The Tree of Hearts sequence is still one of my favorites. Finally maybe this is just a me thing but I actually liked that there wasnt a super strong romantic emphasis. You can easily interpret Hitomi/Van as being a thing and even Folken and Sora have some onesided love vibes but there isnt anything overtly romantic in the story. I know this is a pretty big change from the series which had a frankly soapy amount of romantic entanglements but Ive never been huge on romanceheavy stories and I think its worthwhile to also celebrate close relationships that arent romantic. Just to clarify though I dont actually think this movie is perfect. Here are a few criticisms: The way the story is set up does lead the viewer to potentially compare Hitomis initial problems seemingly just modern depression with the Gaea characters problems destruction of entire civilizations and war PTSD. This is by no means me saying that depression isnt a real problem its just that the movie sort of unintentionally leads you to compare the background of why the characters are depressed which leads to this weird sense of scope imbalance when Hitomis depression doesnt have the same sort of dramatic root. The movie was pretty short so theres not enough time to shows us much of the side characters. I would have really loved to get at least a little more of the caravan crew and what the stories were of the cool new Allen and Millerna. Also probably due to time restrictions a few things felt like they jumped a little fast. The biggest example is Hitomis stay at the village where things feel like they suddenly progressed a little faster than entirely realistic. Sorry for the vagueness trying to avoid spoilers. Overall I still really enjoyed it years later as an adult. Maybe some of it is the nostalgia or the fact that I got into anime around the heyday of dark postEva 00s series or just because I watched RayEarth which was honestly not very good recently. Still I think its worth a try particularly if you dont know much about the original or are okay with a completely different AU.