Tenkuu no Escaflowne

Tenkuu no Escaflowne (The Vision of Escaflowne). Shôji Kawamori, dir. Japan: Sunrise (prod.) / Ban Dai (dist.), 1995. Yôko Kanno, original music. 26 episodes.

Animation (anime, shoujo). In his review of the series on the Escaflowne web site, Daniel Huddleston identifies Escaflowne as the guardian of the fantasy country of Fanelia: "the gigantic, robotic armor known as Escaflowne." We see Escaflowne as both like and unlike the "mecha" of the opposed, high-tech Zaibaha Empire: the "guymelfs" (gaimerufu??). Both mechanisms are like huge robots, with human controllers inside, for an image of humans protected and gaining power within mechanisms, or humans replacing the "ghost in the machine," supplying intellect (although the power sources for these "mecha" are rather mystical). For powered armor, see R. A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers and J. Haldeman's Forever War, under Fiction. For a human gaining power within relatively small armor, see Ripley in her battle with the Alien Queen at the climax of Aliens; for controllers within relatively large power suits, note alien controlling an apparently organic body in INDEPENDENCE DAY, parodied in MEN IN BLACK (1997); see also robots in ROBOT JOX (all except MIB listed in this section). Initial compiler Rich Erlich recalls Sunday newspaper cartoon, possibly Buck Rogers, featuring battles between giant robots controlled by one or more persons in their heads.