New MSTing!

  In a once-a-year (or even once every two years!) announcement, Megane 6.7 and I have published another brand-new MSTing.  It's not available at our main A MSTing For All Seasons site due to access issues that will hopefully be rectified shortly.  It can, however, be read at Mediaminer by following this link .  Thank you for all your support and patience!

Sierra On-Line 1991 Video Catalog

  Back in the 80s and early 90s, I used to work for a computer store and on Sundays, I sold software and console games at a flea market. On occasion though, we worked at specialty shows such as CompuFest, World of Commodore, and the like.

  During one of these shows that I worked at, Sierra On-Line actually had a booth set up and as you might imagine, it was hard to keep a huge fanboy like me away. They were giving away VHS tapes of their 1991 Video Catalog. I had previously ordered and still own the 1989 catalog from their Sierra News Magazine and have kept the 1991 catalog all these years until I sold it to someone else and made a copy to DVD-R.

  However, I didn't realize just how truly rare this tape was until I visited SierraGamers, which helps preserve Sierra On-Line's history by offering scans of just about every piece of merchandise, magazines, catalogs, etc, Sierra ever put out. I found the 1988 Video Catalog on there, which I didn't know existed, but they didn't have the 1991 version. A search of Google and YouTube, likewise, turned up nothing. So, I decided to rip the DVD-R, and upload the video to YouTube for the world to see and enjoy.

  The link can be found HERE. It's ten and a half minutes long and pretty cheesy to be honest, but I enjoyed it, especially the 'commercial' for the Laffer Utilities. ;P It's a piece of Sierra On-Line history and I'm glad to share it with you all. :)

#2LR Too Late Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

I suppose that it would REALLY be "too late" if this Too Late Review was for the novel, but tonight's review is for the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey released in 2012.  I am unsure if anyone here has read the book or watched the movie as of yet, but consider the following to be Spoiler Space.

The Hobbit starts, weirdly enough, just before the events of Fellowship of the Ring, with Bilbo Baggins writing his story as Elijah Wood/Frodo talks to him about party preparations.  It's a charming way to bookend the movie, I suppose, especially since I'm guessing we'll see this bookend again at the end of the second sequel (!!) to this.

Bilbo flashes back to his younger years as he writes, and ruminates on his first encounter with Gandalf after many years.  Gandalf is still grey, but has the chance to go into Tolkien's love for language, debating the exact meaning of "good morning" after Bilbo gives him the customary greeting.  Gandalf marks Bilbo's door, and in the evening all of the dwarves start showing up and making a mess out of Bilbo's house.

While Bilbo starts fuming over the doilies, Gandalf and the dwarves fill him in... he's to be the fourteenth member of their company, on a quest to return the dwarves back to their ancestral home.  We were treated to the story of Smaug... and the WHOLE TIME, I was expecting at least one person to yell "Fus ro DAH!". Guess I've been hitting the Skyrim too hard.

Bilbo demurs, but Gandalf has intimidated too many dwarves to let this opportunity go.  We'll go through this at the bottom, but Gandalf reminds Bilbo that he wasn't always a fat, happy, sedentary halfling... he used to frolic in the fields, and has "more than a bit of Took" in him.  (I wonder if Bilbo's signing up to be a burglar jived with Tolkien's love of language when Tolkien wrote that his mother was a Took.)

The dwarves leave without Bilbo temporarily... but Bilbo comes rushing out of the Shire, more than happy to join up with the group.  As they journey through the woods, they meet up with orcs on the mainroad.  Radagast the Brown, in the most high role since either Bill or Ted, serves as the decoy to try to get the group into Rivendell and the elves... where the dwarves really don't want to be.  Incidentally, I absolutely loved Radagast's rabbit-drawn sleigh.

Once in Rivendell, Gandalf meets up with Elrond, Galadriel, and even Saruman.  It has been forever since reading The Hobbit for me, but Christopher Lee played Saruman with a whole lot of foreshadowing. At the very least, it's not hard to see Saruman's attitude that he is only there for himself and is not concerned about anyone else.  Gandalf has to take time to convince Elrond and Galadriel of the dangers that Saruman dismisses, and then has Elrond read the map that shows the dwarves the backdoor to get rid of Smaug.

After the dwarves sneak out of Rivendell, they start for the Misty Mountains.  Two storm giants awaken out of the rock of the very mountain, in a rather cool effect, and start fighting like Rock'em Sock'em Robots.  The dwarves and Bilbo all take refuge in a cave, which happens to be the front porch for an goblin cave.  Bilbo gets separated from the dwarves, and then my favorite part of the whole book takes place.

In the bottom of the mountain lives Gollum.  He eats stray goblins that fall into the crevice, but Bilbo is relatively unharmed (!).  As Gollum dispatches the orc that Bilbo was fighting, the One Ring falls to the ground, unnoticed.  Bilbo sees the ring fall and picks it up.  After a couple of quick cuts back to the dwarves, Bilbo meets up with Gollum and they embark on the game of riddles... if Bilbo wins, Gollum shows him out.  If Gollum wins, he gets Bilboburgers.

After four riddles, Bilbo wonders aloud what's in his pocket.  Gollum takes it as a riddle (stupidly enough, that's a complete cheat) and asks for at least three guesses.  Of course, the One Ring is in there... and after Gollum's guesses are up, he realizes what's happened.  Bilbo accidentally wears it (in a scene that looks identical to Frodo's first wearing of the ring in Bree, in Fellowship of the Ring) and Gollum, in an attempt to find him, leads him out to the exit.

Just before, the dwarves manage to break free from the goblins in quite the long running battle, featuring the very wizard who is never late serving as the catalyst.  As platforms galore fall down around the company, the dwarves all manage to find the exit with Gandalf bringing up the rear.  As they exit and refind Bilbo, the last sequence of the movie starts... it seems that the leader of the dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield, has made an enemy of the goblin on the white warg.

The goblins and wargs take up the dwarf chase, managing to tree all of the dwarves and Gandalf.  Thorin Oakenshield tries to run the lead goblin off, but gets beat up.  Bilbo comes out of his tree to save Thorin... and again, just in the nick of time, the eagles that Gandalf has called for come to scatter goblin and warg alike.

At this point, the first third of the story ends.

Spoiler Space over.

There's lots to cover here.  Firstly, watching a movie such as this... a trilogy that is literally one book... is almost like watching a book on tape unfold on the screen.  Tolkien's love for language comes out in Gandalf's semantics as well as the songs that the dwarves sing in the beginning.  When I was re-reading the book not long ago, I was struck by how much poetry/song that Tolkien interwove in the book.  The poetry and songs add to the feeling of "so long ago", when only oral traditions were handed down in communities because so few people could read or write.  They managed to choreograph the dwarf song in the beginning, which I'm sure was not something that ran through Tolkien's mind when he drew up the scene decades ago.

Of course, the riddle competition between Bilbo and Gollum falls in this category too.  Riddles were the way to measure intelligence and wit... you had to think outside the box in order to get your answer.  Of course, it helps Bilbo immensely when Gollum gives him the answer to the riddle that he had the toughest time with... this just shows more of Tolkien's attention to detail and enjoyment of language, all the metaphors that can be ascribed to concepts and ideas that are somewhat incomprehensible when not in context.

Radagast the Brown also gets a call-out here.  It's been such a long time since I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but I seem to recall that there was no screentime for him in the subsequent trilogy.  Seeing him here... fulfills all of my expectations.

The last point though, and I suppose that this shouldn't be a surprise to me but it is... as I watched this movie, I managed to come to the realization that this isn't just a high-fantasy book, it's not even just a quest book... it's Bilbo's coming-of-age story.  In some ways, this reminds me a whole heck of a lot of Ferris Bueller's Day Off -- Bilbo Baggin's Day Off.  Gandalf telling him to live it up, going off with the dwarves, constantly winning by the skin of his teeth.. I guess that John Waters isn't too far off from this, even if the settings are so wildly different.  I suppose that this is the way that the books work so well too... they're escapism, but it's escapism in such as way that it's universally recognized, even if subconsciously.

When you have the better part of eight and a half hours to paint a picture of one story, you're going to get a lot of detail.  I suppose that if there's anything to ding the movie on, it's the length.  I'm not even sure it'd take me nine hours to listen to the audiobook of The Hobbit... on the other hand, I'm not exactly seeing all of the escapes and set pieces as well as the lush yet stark New Zealand landscape either.

Final rating: 3.5

Quick notes, general maintenance, and slight status update:

Finally, May.  There's just something about this winter that really lasted for quite a while for me.  I suppose my first task is to not write posts like this to invite some instant karma, but now that winter's over and I've been on the new job for two months, I feel far more optimistic.

We have made an effort to step up the posting, and I'm still extremely glad to have the Too Late Reviews series to continue.  I apologize for the recent downswing in posting, but I must admit that I've not been looking out for new stuff lately.  Escaflowne is still progressing and while I don't have too much pinpointed recently, I'll be working on figuring out a few other new articles to post in the next month as well.

On the MSTing front, Megane 6.7 posted his "Let's Play", a commentary for one of the shortest and most bizarre puzzle games I've ever seen, "Paul Quest".  It's pretty much a Rifftrax plus the game video itself, it's in four pieces and about fifty minutes total.  It's also pretty funny, please check it out if you have a few minutes.

In other news, Megane 6.7 and I will also be publishing a new MSTing very shortly.  We'll be announcing it here and posting a link to A MSTing For All Seasons when it is up, so stay tuned to this space!

Thank you to all our new readers.  We're more than happy to take suggestions, so please feel free to drop a comment on this or any other post if there's something you'd like us to review or comment on.  We are cross-platform to some small extent; Megane 6.7 is available on Twitter at @MSTerMegane67 and I am on Twitter at @ZoogzMST.  I also upgraded my Google account to Google+ and hopefully can be found via the name link at the bottom of this post.  I typically write a post on Google+ whenever the blog is updated.  Without cable anymore, I'm not sure if I can do a live commentary on anything going on, but I'll see if I can't get a few more quick-hit comments on Twitter if anyone's reading.  Whichever place attracts activity, I'll be there.

See you again with another #2LR soon!

#2LR Too Late Reviews - Castle in the Sky

I love our local (now, Chicagoland) library.  Not that our previous Wisconsin library was bad, but there's just so much more selection here.  On our first trip there, we borrowed a copy of one of my favorite Studio Ghibli movies,Castle in the Sky.  I realized as I went through some of my previous articles that I hadn't written a review of this movie, so I made sure to watch the movie closely so that I could put up a Too Late Review and a few comments.

Not that this really needs Spoiler Space, but here's the warning nonetheless.

This is the story of Sheeta and Pazu.  Sheeta is the long-lost princess of a magical floating city in the sky, Laputa.  In the very first scene of the movie, Sheeta is being held on a airship.  Suddenly, air pirates led by the matronly Dola arrive to attack the ship.  She tries to hide outside the airship, but accidentally lets go.  After a couple seconds, the necklace that she took from the guy inside the ship glows, and she floats to the ground unharmed.

At this point, we meet Pazu.  He's an eager sort who wants nothing more to help... he goes to help Sheeta while on an errand to help his boss.  He manages to catch Sheeta before harm comes to her, and after his shift is done he takes her back home for her to continue to rest.

In the morning, he plays the trumpet as the day starts.  I mention this because the soundtrack rocks, and there'll be more at the bottom about this.  The pirates have figured out where Sheeta landed, and the army has too.  In a rather wild piece, Pazu and Sheeta run and run and run from everyone and both end up falling... so that Pazu can experience the power of Sheeta's amulet.

More plot is revealed in the mineshaft through Pazu's hermit uncle.  When they escape, they're instantly corralled by the army as the pirates look on in fright.  Pazu and Sheeta are imprisoned in a fort, but Sheeta arranges for Pazu's release.  Pazu goes back home dejectedly... and meets the pirates.

At this point, the pirates now are on the side of "good", or at least have a similar goal to Pazu as both want to find the Floating City, Laputa.  While in the fort, Sheeta uses the power of the amulet to accidentally wake up a robot.  The robot looks frightening, even scaring my seven-year-old son, but as the sequence goes on you can find the heart contained in the metal shell... as the movie shows that this robot has more feelings, paradoxically, than the entire army who is more than happy to shoot at it and doesn't care if Sheeta gets hurt.

Sheeta drops her amulet but is saved by the team of Dola and Pazu.  The three of them join up with the rest of the pirates to follow the army to the city of Laputa.  Sheeta and Pazu manage to get there first, and the stillness of the city is broken by robots and the occasional small scurrying animal... this structure is a city in ruin, choked and overrun with plants and animals, and very much looks the part.

The army and the pirates arrive.  Sheeta is taken while Pazu escapes to try to figure out a way to save her.  The leader of the army then backstabs the rest of the army, as we find out that all he wanted was to control the flying city and its amazing contraptions.  Pazu, through his determination, reaches Sheeta.  Sheeta, for her part, manages to free herself and obtain the pendant back, and through the power of the pendant manages to self-destruct the city.  The tree in the middle of the city saves them, as they manage to entangle themselves in the roots and float away.  We also see the pirates at the end, who managed to still walk away with a sizable amount of booty.

Spoiler space completed.

I absolutely love Ghibli characters.  Dola is definitely one of my favorite characters in this movie... she takes absolute pleasure in what she does and brings that joy into every scene.  Cloris Leachman provided the voice, and seemed to have such enjoyment through the role, matched by the animation, that it's hard to dislike her after the pirates' conversion.  Pazu and Sheeta as the lead characters are also very effective and interesting; Pazu's determination seems to see him through every single challenge, and Sheeta is no shrinking flower.  She's willing to get her hands dirty, and while she does end up getting led by Pazu a couple times, she's still willing to carry the action herself, sacrificing herself more than once for the greater good as well.  The robot from the fort gets another mention here, as hopefully the audience learns like Sheeta does that even if the shell looks frightening, it does not automatically mean that the spirit on the inside is frightening too.

The last note here is that I love the soundtrack for this movie.  The theme, as stated by Pazu (in trumpet form!) is a stately cadence, almost as if you can hear the march of time itself as the sun comes up and the people wake up.  There's the promise of a new day, and not knowing where the day may take you.  There are many other moments where the soundtrack is good, but I really thought that it shined brightly when Sheeta and Pazu landed on Laputa; both the uncertainty when they were first discovering the structure and the wonder when they realized what it was and learned of its wonders.

I absolutely recommend this movie, I would give it a 3.9 on my 4.0 scale, with the one-tenth off purely due to the length.  It is a bit longer movie, and if your attention does wander a bit it will do so towards the end.  However, it is a terrific movie, one that will be added to the collection when the opportunity arises.

BioShock Infinite

  Okay, after finishing this game, I felt I needed some time to process the whole experience and here's what I've come up with. Warning: Full Plot Spoilers  follow:

  This game, set in the year 1912, has you playing the role of a former Pinkerton detective and a generally wretched human being, Booker DeWitt. Booker narrates to us how he was hired to find a girl named Elizabeth and bring her back to New York in exchange for eliminating his gambling debts. Unfortunately, Elizabeth can only be found in the city of Columbia, which has seceded from the Union and floats above the clouds like a balloon. A very heavily armed balloon.

  Once you get to Columbia, you are awestruck by the majesty and beauty of the city and honestly, those first couple of hours exploring the city were probably my favourite part of the entire game. But it doesn't take too long for you to realize the evil that lays beneath the shiny surface of Columbia and next thing you know, you're ripping someone's face off with an skyhook. Yeah.

  Some people have complained about the level of violence being too excessive with this game given the tone and setting of the story, and yeah, I agree that performing executions does come off as more than a little excessive. But to be fair, they give you the choice whether or not to perform an execution or simply melee your foe to death. It makes the game a little more difficult and the end result of death is the same, but it's considerably less bloody if you're squeamish about that sort of thing.

  As you continue your search for Elizabeth and gather information through private viewing booths and audio diaries, you also manage to pick up plasmi... sorry, VIGORS which give you supernatural powers. Now this, I had a problem with. While the original Bioshock explained the purpose and reasoning of the plasmids and why they were being used and abused, they just appear in this game for no real reason other than it's a Bioshock game. I mean, I know HOW they appeared in Columbia, but they don't explain WHY they're here or WHY very few residents use them against you.

  So, when playing the game, I made the decision to only use Vigors when absolutely necessary, such as powering up a conduit with my lightning. Again, this made the game more challenging, but oddly more satisfying. Of course the game chided me quite a bit when I didn't use them, apparently deciding I was an idiot who kept forgetting they existed, but I tried not to let that bug me... too much. ^_^;

  When you finally meet up with Elizabeth and rescue her, she becomes your companion and thankfully, she can take care of herself so the game isn't just one long escort mission. In fact, she ends up bailing you out of trouble by throwing health and ammo at you, and I can honestly say she was probably the most useful NPC I've ever seen in a game.

  The makers of the game spent a great deal of time and effort on her character and it shows as she reacts to everything around her and had a well developed personality. By the end of the game she does become a bit 'Q-ish', but I guess that's unavoidable when you wield that much power, I suppose.

  Before I go on, there is one major annoyance I want to address. Unlike the first Bioshock, you can't manually save your game here, autosave is your only option. I don't like that practice and I wish it would stop but the main reason it became a big deal for me is because the autosave is buggy and I actually lost about 4-5 hours of gameplay at one point.

  It's either a testament to the game's greatness or my own patience that I was willing to play through the game again to finish it, but I was NOT happy about losing that time and I STRONGLY recommend they patch that issue sooner than later. ^_^

  Now I'd like to talk a bit about the story. The villain of this game is an insane, extremely racist, self-proclaimed prophet named Comstock who is all but God in this city and declares Booker to essentially be the Anti-Christ who needs to be stopped at all costs. As a result, you're constantly fighting wave after wave of policemen and soldiers as you enter each area.

  While the enemies do get tougher as the game goes on, I found it to be a little too repetitious at times and I wish the first person shooting could have been interrupted more often for alternative gameplay other than a few optional fetch quests for ciphers. Perhaps the future DLC will cover this, I dunno.

  I will say that the tougher enemies can take quite a bit of damage before they fall, especially the Handy Men, who, while not nearly as compelling character-wise as the Big Daddies in the original Bioshock, are considerably tougher and will kick your ass from one end of the street to the other if you don't keep moving.

  Back to the story, Comstock has big plans for Elizabeth, who only wishes for her freedom and the chance to travel and visit places like Paris. She possesses the ability to create small riffs in time and space and either bring back items to help Booker or step through into another reality. It's more than a little convenient for you and even Elizabeth directly refers to it as 'wish fulfillment' but I can't deny its usefulness and it does make sense in the end, more or less.

  However, Elizabeth previous attempts at escape are always thwarted because of Songbird, who is basically a Big Daddy reimagined as a huge flippin' bird. Once considered her friend and protector, she now sees him as her jailer and deeply resents it. She can't even escape to another reality because Songbird just appears there shortly afterwards to stop her. Elizabeth even begs Booker at one point to kill her rather than let Songbird capture her again, showing just how desperate she is to escape captivity.

  There are other plots going on as well, the city of Columbia exploits and abuses minorities due to Comstock's blatant racism and another prominent figure named 'Jeremiah Fink', a capitalist's capitalist who sees minority workers as nothing more than cattle and treats them even worse.

  One of these minorities, a woman named Daisy Fitzroy, was formerly a servant of Comstock until she was framed by him for the murder of his wife. This lead to her starting a resistance movement called the Vox Populi to fight the power which eventually leads to a very bloody revolution and the tormented becoming the tormentors. At one point, Booker enters a reality where he was a martyr to the Vox Populi cause but Daisy still orders Booker's death because the Booker of her reality died a hero and his being there alive, in her own words, 'complicates the script'.

  Also, there are two mysterious figures, a man and a woman who repeatedly appear and disappear out of nowhere during the course of the game to speak cryptically about you and your mission. They end up becoming very important to the overall story and thankfully aren't too smug or annoying, as interdimensional beings tend to be. ;P

  Their relationship is also a bit creepy as she lovingly refers to him as 'brother' and is content simply to be in his presence for the rest of eternity, which becomes even more disturbing when you realize that he is an alternate version of her. I know it's important to love yourself but YIKES. ^_^;

  Another plot has a former soldier named Cornelius Slate whom you once fought beside, demanding that Booker give him and the men under his command a soldier's death because Comstock, whom Slade previously supported, lied about fighting in the battles where Slate's men gave their lives, took credit for his accomplishments, and stripped Slade of his position when he dared to confront Comstock about it.

  This leads to a rather bizarre sequence where you're forced to fight the soldiers among two horribly racist exhibits of battles fought at Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion, highlighted with ugly stereotypes of both Indians and Chinese.

  While I assume these exhibits are supposed to demonstrate the depth of Comstock's deep rooted racism and hatred, it came off as more than a little ridiculous, and personally, I just found it embarrassing. Whatever the writers were trying to convey, I think they missed the mark and I'm not surprised some people are upset about it.

  Finally, I want to talk about the ending, which seems to be the main focus of discussion with this game. Whether you like Bioshock Infinite or not, the fact that its ending has provoked so much discussion is a good thing and I give due credit to the writers for accomplishing this.

  Booker DeWitt claims to be a man who deeply regrets his bloody past, he can barely speak about it to Elizabeth when she asks and it seems to greatly pain him. And yet... he's Comstock. To be specific, Comstock is revealed to be an alternate version of Booker DeWitt.

  Booker wanted to be reborn and wash away the sins of the atrocities he committed at Wounded Knee, and as Comstock, he falls back into becoming a murderous racist with delusions of Godhood. He shows no signs of realizing this hypocrisy. At all. Yes, you could say he became insane with all the dimensional travelling and reverted back to type but that just seems too easy an answer.

  If Booker's racism ran that deep, then what exactly was he repenting? The loss of innocent lives? Killing women and children? Taking joy in the act of killing? It's never made clear and while being open to interpretation can be a good thing, I was more confused about his motivations than anything.

  Just to be clear, I don't mind when an evil man simply is, I've complained in the past about villains who were needlessly complex when I was more interested in seeing them get what they deserve than listen to them endlessly drone on about their motivations and philosophies. I encountered this problem mostly in Japanese RPGs, I admit. ;P

  But consider the masterful job they did with Andrew Ryan in the first Bioshock game, making him a villain and yet a compelling person whom you could actually sympathize and possibly even agree with at times despite his flaws. By making Comstock merely insane, he basically becomes a shallow criminal, thoroughly uncompelling and implausibly having an army of followers, without whom he'd be nothing. Even if Andrew Ryan had nothing, he'd still be an interesting character. Comstock's just a hypocritical nutjob.

  Anyway, Booker DeWitt learns that in his reality, he rejected the baptism that created Comstock but still committed his own sins by working as a goon for Pinkerton and incurred gambling debts so severe that he chose to sell his own daughter, Anna, to settle them. Elizabeth, who we learn is Anna, tells him that to save her and prevent the atrocities of Columbia and the birth of Comstock in all realities, he has to die. Booker accepts this sacrifice and is drowned by several versions of his daughter, eliminating all realities with Comstock and causing Anna to fade away.

  This would probably be one of the most depressing endings to a game I'd ever seen except for an epilogue after the credits where Booker DeWitt is still alive and will seemingly gets a second chance with his daughter, whom is now once again a baby. But I couldn't help wondering why Booker would be returned to this specific moment in time, where he's still guilty of war crimes at Wounded Knee, whatever he did as a Pinkerton Agent and possibly still loaded with gambling debts to dangerous people.

  Even if we believe Booker wouldn't try to sell his daughter again, it's still a rather grim ending if Booker still has sin on his conscience and has no immediate way to pay off his gambling debts, assuming the interdimensional twins didn't take of it. Granted, a slim second chance is better than no chance at all and perhaps future DLC will continue the story, we'll just have to see.

  When the game was finally over, I wasn't entirely sure what to feel, I needed time to process the whole thing. I'm still not sure I've reached a definitive conclusion either since there's future DLC to come that may expand the story further or offer nothing of true substance. Still, I don't think I'm going to return it as it may well be one of the last interesting games of this console's generation to be released.

  If you have the chance to rent it, I would definitely do so but I wouldn't buy it unless you were really into the combat aspect or you wait to see if they add a multiplayer aspect and if it's any good, get it for that, I guess.

#2LR Too Late Reviews - Escaflowne, Episodes 6-12

  Watching Escaflowne, episodes six through twelve, and there's a few more themes that are coming up in the show.  I'll break directly into Spoiler Space going on from here...

  Taking up from episode six, Vaan and the Vaanettes are still in Asturia.  The ruler of Asturia completely doesn't believe them, he's solidly on the side of Zaibach.  As Asturia's king talks, Vaan's older brother shows up.  This is the guy that was unable to take Fanelia's throne for some odd reason that we will hopefully find out about.  Vaan gets targeted by Dilandau, sitting in her mecha, but Hitomi saves him at the last minute.  In the next episode, Hitomi gets sad 'cause Allen has a lovelife and gets herself captured.  After she is rescued, Vaan, Hitomi, and Merle the Cat Gerle escape off to the forest.

  Vaan targets Gaia's version of an oil field and manages to save the girls again.  Hitomi gives back the favor in the following evening, alerting Vaan to the invisible mechas attacking them in the forest.  In around here, we find out that Vaan has always been a two-winged angel, that he's Folken's stepbrother, and that Folken for some reason wasn't able to live up to his birthright.  Also, we get to meet The Old Dude, the leader of Zaibach who seems to be a cross between Emperor Palpatine and Quincy from Bubblegum Crisis 2040, who goes on about his fortune-telling probability machine and how Hitomi is messing everything up.

  Vaan, the girls, and Allen and his troopship all meet up in the next kingdom over, Freid.  They also manage to bring along a Zaibach prisoner from the aforementioned battle.  The itty-bitty prince of Freid doesn't know what's happening, and Vaan/Allen try to tell him that Zaibach's trying to <Brain> Take over the worrrld! </Brain>.  There's a speedbump though, in that the are bringing in an interrogator.

  The interrogator gets waylaid by another "new concept" kind of thing... there's shapeshifters in this universe and they work for Zaibach too.  The shapeshifter "interrogates" the Zaibach prisoner, who gives an exceedingly poor excuse and even more tortured reasoning, but is accepted by the seven-year-old prince.  This results in jail time for Vaan, Merle, Allen, and Hitomi.  Next, the shapeshifter interrogates Hitomi.  He hypnotises her, and then asks to have her magic medallion.  Once the two of them make contact, they go into a together trance where Hitomi predicts his death.

  The shapeshifter disappears and Vaan volunteers to go after him.  The shapeshifter manages to report to Dilandau, but Dilandau decides to kill him 'cause she's not crazy about him.  Vaan manages to fight off another group of Zaibach mechas, and now he's got Hitomi's detection powers too.

  That's about it for the Spoiler Space.

  There's two things that conspired against me on this review.  The first one is that my late-90's vintage Escaflowne tapes ran out on episode 8.  We waited for quite a bit to have Netflix fill in the gap, and then caught up on a couple of other things before circling back.  So, some of this review was reconstructed from rememberies generated through Wikipedia's episode list, though we watched the last four episodes through the previous week.

  The other thing that worked against me is that it seems a lot of spinning of the wheels.  At one point, Zaibach arrayed their forces against Freid.  From what they showed, Zaibach had more than enough to wipe out pretty much every city that Vaan and Allen weren't in.  So, why don't they?  I... really don't know, there's not a satisfactory explanation there.  After all, Fanelia was little more than a gnat to them.

  I understand that they have to "get the Dragon" (speaking of the mecha Escaflowne)... but, well, they've got Dilandau, who's willing to burn the rest of the world.  Why don't they turn Dilandau loose to give Vaan no port to stash the big ol' mecha?  As it is, Dilandau is more than happy to kill allies, and I'm sure that Dilandau would barely even need three additional mechas to burn the world down.

  There's not really an overarching message to gather from this middle portion, because the show is still trying to set up the stakes and position the characters... but we're quickly getting to the end of the setup, I think... I hope... and then I may have a better idea of theme to write about for the next portion.