Vision of Escaflowne - Anime TV Series Analysis - Gender Roles
My Parents Vacationed on Gaea and All They Brought Me was this Lame Bride
(Major Spoilers Ahead!)
It is hard to think of anything more foreign and barbaric to westerners than arranged marriages. It seems like the ultimate suppression of one of life’s most important choices. Under this suppression adultery is an acceptable evil just like in prison sodomy is an acceptable evil. A friend’s coworker is living under the former condition. She is conveniently married to her “old man” while she goes out every night with her “friend.” Her old man keeps her rolling in material possessions while her friend keeps her rolling through nightclubs. It is unclear whether the two men know of each other. What is clear is that this woman needs the two men to fill the half-void of the other to keep her happy. The whole situation is very alien to monogamous mainstream America.
On the alien world Gaea, we bare witness to a disturbingly life defeating arranged marriage between Millerna (who truly has the hots for Allen) and Dryden, high prince of free enterprising corporate power. Millerna has had a mad crush on Allen ever since he had an affair with her late, elder sister. She had never met Dryden before the Crusade band of adventurers sought out his help in repairing Van and Escaflowne (linked by a blood pact, pilot and armor are wounded as one). The arranged union was for the benefit of uniting the two kingdoms in stature and finances. Feeling that the couple needs to do the right thing for their families, they rush the marriage with disastrous results. During their distant engagement, Dryden finds Millerna on the bridge keeping a look out for her lost love, Allen. Under the shadow of Allen’s Guymelef, Dryden leaves Millerna to her distractions from her future husband with, “I believe my feelings will get you one day.” After their ceremony’s destructive end they both unite in a valiant bond of leadership and dignified responsibility, knowing that as the new royal family they must rebuild the kingdom from ruin that fate has wrought.
Is it possible to learn to love? Escaflowne’s answer is yes, but only through great loss and hardship is this special peace found. Allen hates his father who left his family to follow his dream of discovering the secret of Atlantis’ emotions. Through his long journey (which is fueled by a side-search for Hitomi’s planet hopping grandmother, the original Girl from the Mystic Moon), and death at the hands of Zaibach soldiers his finds that his true love is his arranged wife, who he did not learn to love until he felt her absence.
Arranged marriages may seem foreign and wrong to us Americanics, but in Escaflowne’s world of Gaea they sure can be damn romantic. Relationships do not have to be the one-dimensional, chemistry driven sex fests that are presented on so many Aaron Spelling productions. When put under pressure from higher powers to get along in wedded bliss there is a chance that, “My feelings will get you one day.”
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