Escaflowne - Forever & Ever (Vol. 8)
This popular "magical girl" series reaches its conclusion as the battle between the Alliance and the Zaibach Empire reaches a fever pitch that includes the deployment of deadly and unexplained new weapons. After a brief visit to Earth--where she's reunited with Amano, whom she nurtured a crush on 23 episodes ago--Hitomi returns to Gaea, despite her distaste for its wars. The story by Hajime Yatate and Shoji Kawamori takes some odd turns and leaves a number of plot points hanging. Its most serious flaw is the failure of any of the heroes to eliminate Dornkirk/Sir Isaac Newton, the evil emperor of Zaibach. Viewers have seen him launch unprovoked invasions, dispatch murderous dopplegängers, conduct sadistic psychological experiments on kidnapped children, and attempt to subjugate an entire planet: a more powerful resolution is needed than a chat about the nature of human desire with Hitomi. The attempt to fuse elements of the magical-girl, mecha, and sword-and-sorcery genres may have been too ambitious an undertaking for the filmmakers, or Dornkirk's real fate--and some of the other unanswered questions--may be dealt with in theEscaflownefeature. Rated 13 and up for violence.--Charles Solomon