The Vision of Escaflowne

The Vision of Escaflowne (天空のエスカフローネ Tenkū no Esukafurōne) is a Japanese anime series produced by Sunrise Animation and directed by Kazuki Akane. It aired in Japan from April 2, 1996 to September 24, 1996.

Dubbing History
The original dub of Escaflowne was dubbed by Ocean Productions for Bandai Entertainment and produced by Saban Entertainment. In August 2000, Fox Kids began broadcasting the series in the United States. These dubbed episodes were heavily edited to remove footage, add new "flashback" sequences to remind the audience of the events that just occurred, and to heavily downplay the role of Hitomi in the series. The first episode was skipped altogether, and the series soundtrack produced by Yoko Kanno was partially replaced with more techno rearrangements by Inon Zur. This modified version of the series was cancelled after ten episodes due to "low ratings". The Canadian television channel YTV acquired Fox's dubbed version of the series for broadcast. Following Fox's planned broadcast schedule, they premiered the series on September 11, 2000 with the second episode. YTV aired all of the episodes Fox Kids dubbed, concluding with the series true first episode in February 2001. Bandai began releasing the dubbed version to VHS in 2000, discontinuing the releases in February 2001 after only four volumes had been released.

Bandai later released the entire series, unedited and in the original episode order, to DVD. Spanning eight volumes, the releases include the original Japanese audio tracks with optional English subtitles, and the uncut English dubbed track. Due to the closure of Bandai in 2012, their rights to the series lapsed.

At Otakon 2013, FUNimation Entertainment had announced that they have acquired both licenses to The Vision of Escaflowne and the movie. On February 27, 2016, FUNimation launched a Kickstarter campaign to re-dub the Escaflowne TV series using the HD materials from Sunrise, with the goal of $150,000.

Due to the High Definition Japanese restoration featuring deleted scenes not present in the original airings and dub, this necessitated these scenes to be dubbed. Due to the cost of dubbing in Canada becoming more expensive in the past decade, it was cheaper for FUNimation to redub the series as a whole with their own voice cast (similar rationale was the reason for the redubs of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Destiny.) The dub was later released on October 18, 2016. Due to the popularity of the original dub, FUNimation also included the Ocean Dub of the series as well.

Video Releases
* Edited version