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Nightmare Fuel / The Vision of Escaflowne

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WARNING: Unmarked Spoilers for Escaflowne ahead! Proceed at your own risk!


  • Van being captured by the Zaibach Empire, what's worse he's unconscious and you fear what will happen next.
  • Van's 11th-Hour Superpower moment against Dilandau's Dragonslayers starts off like a typical awesome moment...until it cuts to how Dilandau is seeing it - one by one, his unit is brutally cut down, despite having every advantage going for them. Eventually, only Dilandau is left, tentatively and uselessly calling out to his dead comrades for support, facing down a now-godlike soldier who can and will kill him without batting an eye, with an expression of abject shit-your-pants terror on his face, even as he's escaping. It's a particularly chilling moment.
    • Later, Van has a Near-Death Experience after seeing the ghosts of the dragon slayers he just killed, and Hitomi has to mentally dive in to save him.
      • And just before all that, viewers are treated to a Body Horror scene with Van bleeding to death as a price for becoming one with Escaflowne; so if the latter gets damaged, well, just take a guess...
  • Dornkirk's naked body could also fall under Fan Disservice or Body Horror.
  • Naria and Eriya's Rapid Aging due to the side-effects of the fortune/luck intensifier is a very unpleasant sight. Its also tragic when they die in Folken's arms.
  • When Hitomi is placed under hypnosis by the fake-Plactu aka Zongi, her psychic abilities begin overwhelming the both of them and Hitomi gets caught in a horrible vision of witnessing fake-Plactu/Zongi's horrible murder, as he is crushed to death by a very angry Dilandau since he killed one of his soldiers. The trauma is so intense for Hitomi that she goes into catatonic shock and her heart stops. Adding to the Nightmare Fuel of the scene is Millerna's frantic attempts to perform CPR and her resulting hysteria when she realizes she's not strong enough to keep it up. Though Van is more successful with the CPR, the lack of music and everyone's desperate pleas for Hitomi to snap out of it add to the tension of the scene.
    • And later... Hitomi's vision does come true. Exactly as she predicted, Zongi gets caught and crushed by Dilandau's Guymelef, in punishment for killing and replacing his subordinate Miguel. It's as unpleasant as it seems.
  • The idea of a single person finding him/herself face to face with an actual Dragon, and without mechas or effective weapons handy, is fucking horrifying. It happens to Van and the recently Heel–Face Turn-ed!Folken towards the end of the series, when neither was armed and Van wasn't riding Escaflowne. Understandably, Van (who had fought and defeated Dragons but had never been indefense against one) was about to have an Heroic BSoD, and Folken (who had been mutilated by another Dragon and barely survived thanks to Zaibach) had to gather all of his wits to get himself and Van away to safety, managing to both net himself his biggest Moment of Awesome and recover Van's trust and affection.
  • Dilandau in Celena mode almost eating a snail. Good thing Jajuka stops them otherwise the audience would certainly have puked...

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