A Reinterpretation of Escaflowne’s Social Order and Conflict

by Moonlily on Aug.09, 2009, under Anime

Escaflowne: More than meets the eye...

One of the interesting things about being sick is not having to do much since you’re drugged up most of the time which leaves you delirious at any rate. It just so happens that I get interesting visions when I’m delirious and although the thoughts that emerged are pretty weird, they are also pretty interesting and deserve at least some degree of attention. To be honest, I’m not sure how much stock to put in this line of thought, so I’ll simply present what came to mind and leave you to arrive at your own conclusion.

Escaflowne is known for many things, from its very enjoyable and oftentimes sympathetic cast of characters (moreso if you remove that obnoxious catgirl), glorious soundtrack (that only Yoko Kanno can deliver unto us), and generally excellent fight scenes. The plots within the series are also pretty straightforward: Zaibach has been aggressively expanding at the expense of its neighbors and now, a coalition made up mostly of Fanelian survivors and Asturian Knights has been mustered to launch a counterattack. While all of this is going on, Hitomi, the female protagonist, finds herself torn between Van Fanel and the Asturian Knight Allen Schezar. The story then goes about trying to resolve the war and the romance, both of which end in a manner as to be pretty satisfying.

Except (and you probably saw this coming)… what price victory? That’s the question that really got my attention. Yes, the Coalition forces were eventually able to stop Emperor Dornkirk’s misguided plans to bring about a utopia by harnessing the power of Atlantis, but at the end of the day, one can view it as a conflict between an aristocracy intent on keeping the status quo (the Coalition) and a group of revolutionary upstarts who wish to pursue a permanent peace (Zaibach). The problem that I’m running up against in this scenario is that Zaibach is portrayed as being overly bad when this is not the case. Through Dornkirk’s rule, he was practically able to bootstrap Zaibach from a backwater nation into one that was so sufficiently technologically advanced, it practically surpassed all of the other nations economically and militarily, turning Zaibach into a force to be reckoned with. Or to put it another way, Zaibach found itself in the middle of an Industrial Age while the other countries were still mired in an obsolete feudal society characteristic of the Middle Ages.

Poor guy... he isn't a bad person. Just deluded at worst.

Following this logic, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out which nation should have a better standard of living. In a post-Industrial Revolution society, people live longer, hunger is less of an issue, and the military is better-equipped, leaving them better-defended. I’ll bet they’ve advanced as far as being able to industrialize stuff like grain production, had a functional sanitation system, and a solid manufacturing base. So as far as life goes, their citizens get a pretty sweet deal. Unfortunately, we never really get to see this side of Zaibach since the show paints it in very unflattering terms; a lot of dark colors which might be representative of what cities undergo when they’re in an Industrial Age, but little mention of the populace or anything that might make them more sympathetic in the viewer’s eyes. Make no mistake about it: the show is definitely not rooting for Zaibach.

These guys are the ones who oppress peasants.

On the other hand, Fanelia is shown in a far more flattering light… and really, it probably doesn’t deserve that sort of treatment. After all, that nation still lives by the feudal code in that the land is owned by aristocrats who lease it out to peasants who pay the lord a share of the crops in order to get the right to work on the land. It’s certainly not an efficient production mechanism and only serves to highlight that age-old image of a society where lords rule as they see fit, which pretty much means going around oppressing the peasantry since that’s about all they can do. Fanelian society would be much better off if they had decided to take their head out of the sand and go about the modernization process like what Zaibach did, where most of the populace will presumably stand a chance to prosper. Unfortunately, the formation of a politically active third estate is hardly something that the aristocrats are willing to put up with and as a result of its rulers’ short-sightedness, it’s unlikely that industrialization is in Fanelia’s plans in the near future.

So Zaibach has definitely been on the road to industrialization and there’s no doubt that people living there should be much better off economically if not politically. Fanelia and Asturia are almost backwards in comparison and while the nobles enjoy a decent amount of freedom, the large majority of the populace are still bound by the feudal (futile?) structure. Because of this, I’m continually puzzled by why so little attention has been given to Zaibach’s story and why they’ve been painted with the ugly mark of the aggressor. This might be me reading far more into things than they need to be, but it’s a point that is worth considering at the bare minimum. If nothing else, I’ll be interested in seeing whether anyone will offer the opinion of Escaflowne as a pro-feudalistic tract.

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:Anime, Editorial, Escaflowne

6 Comments for this entry

ghostlightning
August 9th, 2009 on 2:40 am
I really like it when fans of a show indulge themselves into readings like this.

Industrialization as a trait in ‘evil’ civilizations|nation states is very Tolkien. There is a nature|technology dichotomy in some (if not most) fantasy literature, and I think this is more the case in The Vision of Escaflowne. The society that dares to create, almost always ends up being portrayed as one with members aspiring to godhood.

What’s valued instead is some kind of harmony with nature: hunting, gathering, and farming. The feudal system portrayed in Fanelia (not very extensively at all) presumes that there is a very benevolent King that is fair to his subjects.

So the conflict is not so much systems of government, or economies (you may want to check out Legend of the Galactic Heroes for this), but rather ‘being’ with nature vs. ‘mastering’ it.

That said, I’m happy about the indulgence in this post. An industrial society is not without great evils. What it did is to enrich private individuals (a limited number), allowing them to attain a quality of life formerly reserved for nobility and royalty. This standard of living is built on the backs of labor. Labor conditions during the industrial transformation of Earth’s history (the emergence of capitalism) got so out of hand that thinkers such as Marx and Engels became very upset. Communism and its related revolutions are a product of this industrial transformation of civilization.

What I’m trying to say is that it may not be the case wherein the serfs and vassals of Fanelia may be worse off than the laborers and citizens of Zaibach: who not only take part in an industrial labor system, but also remain subjects (and perhaps even serfs themselves) of the King.
2DT
August 9th, 2009 on 2:43 am
Kind of a Marxist reading. I like it.

It’s typical of the post-Romantic age, though, don’t you think? As we live in crowded cities full of rude people slogging through crappy desk jobs, of course we’d like to dream of an older time, a BETTER time, with knights and princesses and honor and all that good stuff. Never mind that such a time has never existed.

I don’t know about Escaflowne being “pro-feudalism,” per se. But it’s certainly escapist fantasy.
Moonlily
August 9th, 2009 on 4:56 pm
@ghostlightning
It was a spur of the moment post. Glad you enjoyed reading this though

You are right in pointing out that in classic literature, technology was something perceived as being unnatural and something to be feared since it’s upsetting the natural order. That’s something that’s always bugged me to some degree now that I think about it because it suggests that harmony with the current state of affairs is the way to go without considering the benefits to be gained through change. It also happens in those stories that those who try to upset the balance through some sort of innovation are always the bad guys and receive some sort of karmic retribution when the good guys triumph at the end to put the baddies back in their place. It’s as though there’s a bias against thinking beyond the current societal state regardless of outcome.

As for the other part, it’d be interesting to see if Zaibach had gotten to the point where the labor movement has sprung up and you have active labor unions putting pressure so that they can get a cut of the wealth being generated.

@2DT
Like you said, that older, better time never did exist and castles might have been a cut better than your peasant’s dwelling, but they were drafty and cold; not exactly comfortable like modern dwellings. Knights were also bullies and honor was an ideal that was mostly self-serving to the aristocracy, which means reality effectively shatters this romantic outlook. I think that this sort of nostalgic yearning could be mitigated if people turned to more creative pursuits beyond the desk job, but that’s my opinion.
Syke
August 9th, 2009 on 5:05 pm
I honestly see where this entry is coming from, as I too am the sort to analyze social and political situations in what I indulge myself with. And I can say that despite not watching Escaflowne in its entirety there is a good point here, on both sides to the argument, really. I was going to argue against a post-Industrial Revolution society having its faults as well, but ghostlightning did that better than I could hope for. Let us not forget the Robber Barons, yeah?

What appalls me the most about fiction with royalty, nobility, prominent families, etc. is that most of the time, as Moonlily pointed out, said privileged families are never shown by what they are from a sociological perspective, that is, exploiting the lower classes, when the truth is this was (and is) almost never the case in the real world. Bonus points when one or more main characters are from said prominent families and everything is shown in a flattering, sympathetic manner. Sure, their kingdom is about to get overthrown by the evil empire(!!!), but why does it matter? Every kingdom citizen automatically supports the true king to the throne and will fight the evil empire. Of course, this doesn’t delve into why the citizens should care, seeing as how in the end they’ll be ultimately under the control of another family whose power is inherited because their ancestor did something great. This could be somewhat justified by the empire naturally committing evil acts, but this of course omits why the original regime was more desirable; it doesn’t matter how it was, anything’s better than being occupied by aggressive foreigners, right? If they went for a “lesser of the two evils” thing, then that’d be more interesting. Or even more amazingly, if they *convinced me why the regime we’re supposed to cheer for is worth fighting for*.

Speculative fiction, to me, seems to go out of its way to “justify”, even if subconsciously, why inherited power and prestige is desirable, if not ideal.

Take the Abh from Crest/Banner of the Stars, for example. The Abh are portrayed are perfect in every shape and form. They’re physically beautiful, aesthetically romanticized, and mentally and ideologically superior. The half of humanity under the Abh are shown as good, kindly sheep being guided by their Abh shepards, to put it bluntly. (It’s obviously shown in more flattering terms in the series.) The half of humanity not under the Abh are shown as physically mediocre or ugly, ideologically misguided, politically brainwashed, and almost redshirt incompetent. Take the Abh Empress’s meeting with the Four Nations Alliance (human) diplomats. Not only does she outwit the four of them *combined*, but she does it elegantly, gracefully and without breaking a sweat, while the pathetic human diplomats struggle to keep up with her shrewd intellect (two of them barely even SAY anything!). And then, when she declares war on all of them, they act shocked and surprised, like they didn’t even see it coming! Hello, guys? You’re invading Abh space and DESTROYED ONE OF THEIR SHIPS? It feels like a Harvard graduate in a debate with four high school dropouts. This could be taken as a sort of racial superiority, but the Abh are quite human sans the genetic engineering, and it could perhaps be justified by said genetic engineering, but when the commoner humans of low birth are portrayed as ugly and dimwitted compared to the beautiful people that are the Abh, it becomes simply egregious. Did humanity devolve and lose their brains on their way to space? Or is royalty once more being portrayed positively to show how they came to rule all the peasants?

Sure, there is the “Aristocrats Are Evil” flip side, but that’s only because they [i]act[/i] evil (i.e., evil looks, evil laughter, evil beard of doom), as it rarely ever explains the true implications of class conflict.

All in all, it is all escapism, so maybe the writers are just dreaming of an ideal world where power isn’t so easily abused and noblesse oblige is an all-too-common reality. Or perhaps the writers are just lazy and shallow and are just taking a formulaic setting/plot and running with it, apathetic to an in-depth socio-political analysis. “Viewers are morons”, after all.
ghostlightning
August 9th, 2009 on 10:05 pm
@Skye

I don’t think it’s very useful to divine the behavior and intent of the creators. That said, very interesting points.

Your example of the Abh, is how I think of a ‘master race done right.’ These ‘space elves’ had none of the Xenophobia in the fantasy material I come across, nor the ‘hands off’ policy of Tolkien elves. The Abh, in the state of their civilization circa Ramaj’s reign exemplifies almost an idealization of Nietzche’s ‘master’ morality (while the colonized, and the alliance expemplify the ‘slave’ morality).

I don’t think that the show spells out a right/wrong moral system here, the same way Escaflowne does with Zaibach and the ancients they’re copying. I say this because Jinto is the most awesome person in the text, and it’s less about him being more Abh, save for some idealzation of noblesse oblige than him bringing out the more human and endearing aspects from Lafiel.
a
September 28th, 2009 on 6:30 am
Fortunately this show starred Lord Folken , and his participation , makes things a lot , a lot more interesting. His sacrifice is the most sad for the future of gaia.

One thing that we must pay attention to , is that in this anime all characters are proven to been quite naive.

Issac (Newton ?) abandoning his plan of “global peace” , instead focusing on “controlling fate” in general and in my eyes , his actions in the latest episodes are most revealing.

I assume he was somewhere between ” i wish to change the nature of man ” to ” The nature of man can not be changed , humans are despicable creatures . And he was doing the same things he was attempting not to do.

His own negativity , gave rise to the “bad” future.

Not to say that the other rulers where wise.

A paraller is Hitler (this is also related with Tolkien) only Isaac , was less insane and evil in general.

Hitler was seen as the mega-revolutionary , he had nothing to do with the old order , the aristocracy , and Germany did continue industrialization under him.

A minor parallel maybe. There are better parallers when one compares Isaac with several famous scientists of our time. The Hitler comparison has many limitations despite the similarities.

I am not even sure that he (Isaac was an evil person.) , and whether his ideology of ” means to an end” , remained till the end , or when it started. I gave an explanation about what i believed where the roots of such ideology.

We should take note , that he was surrounded with people who for the sake of “national interests” where a lot more willing to “crush their enemies”.

I don’t think his primal motivation was to crush his enemies.

Lord Falken , is the one who saw the benefits of
both industrilization and of Isaac’s plans.

he failed to realize how dishonest Isaac was with himself and with him (Falken). And in general he failed to realize what they where doing.

There is a lot focus on Zaibach being an evil empire , but fortunately beyond the cliche;s the other side of it also shines .

And Isaac’s technological inovvations possibly migrated to the other kingdoms …

But i see that Falken was the brain behind the vision. And behind several of the technological breakthroughs and of course behind the strategic thinking. He is also responsible for several of the attrocities commited , but i see that he was less corrupted , more focused on ideals and more sane and kind.

It is undoubtly tragic that Isaac gets his first “thriumph ” ( i am not sure he feels that way ) when he sends Falken to kill him , in which case he fails and kills himself.

I failed to analyze how naive all other protagonists where , but that is another matter. whether naive or not , in the end Hitomy does thriumph and that is a positive moment.

In fact i am not sure that what thriumphs is the “no predestenation camp” , i think rather we see the “good guys” finally believing in themselves and in a good future using fate alteration ,to reach that future. I am wondering whether Isaac is glad to see this future to happen or not.

Now understanding the dangers of such technology and since isaac’s danger is no more , there is less reason for Hitomy to use such technology.

Yet i don’t think she is aware that she was doing the exact thing Isaac was doing for most of the show , but she was working towards a good fortune mostly.

i don’t think she bothered with whether predestination decides her fate or anything like that.

In the end she cared about the ideal that “fighting does not solve anything ” which in this anime does not sound so cliche because we are talking about the realization of the collective wishes of Gaia , and which future they may choose.