A look at No Retreat No Surrender. For (im)mature audiences only. Please note all reviews are very tongue in cheek and not serious, which alot of people seem to overlook.

Thirteen years ago, when I was writing about Vision of Escaflowne for a non-specialist magazine, I claimed, “The best way to describe Escaflowne is as the closest thing to a ten-hour Hayao Miyazaki film.” As crude as that description is – and Escaflowne is no mere Miyazaki imitator – it still holds water today. Like Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, Escaflowne is the story of a Japanese girl, a few years older than Chihiro, who’s whisked to another world – Gaea, a fantasy realm where the Earth and Moon hang together in the sky.

Granted, Gaea has some generic fantasy features, such as dragons and knights, but it also has some really cool anime twists. The knights, for example, commandeer giant robot armour suits and flying vessels. Moreover, Escaflowne has brilliant fantasy ideas which are only revealed in the later episodes. (Some aren’t explicitly revealed at all. If you’ve seen all the series, did you realise who the mysterious main adversary was really meant to be?*)

What keeps you watching, though, are the wonderfully engaging characters. These include Esca’s naïve but brave and passionate heroine, the schoolgirl Hitomi. In the first episode, she’s borne spectacularly from Earth to Gaea on a column of light. In Gaea, Hitomi is caught between two guys – the hot-tempered, dragon-slaying prince Van Fanel, who loses his kingdom moments after his crowning, and the gracefully womanising swordsman Allen Schezar, who happens to be the double of Hitomi’s crush back home. On the enemy side, there’s the bug-eyed demented soldier Dilandu, who’s one of anime’s most enjoyable maniacs.

But don’t be fooled. Several of the characters go through outrageous twists and transformations, so beautifully timed and executed that the viewer is carried along gasping in their wake. There’s no snarky knowingness, of the kind you’d find in Shrek or in recent anime about otaku gamers appearing in otherworlds, measuring them by the algorithmic rules of RPGs. Indeed, there are no games references at all.

Rather, this is a completely earnest fantasy, whose teen passions and scene-chewing villains could be ludicrous on paper, but which work superbly within the heightened emotionalism of anime, with few of its cheesy excesses. There’s next to no super-deformity, for instance, though Hitomi’s eyes can get very big.

Escaflowne deftly weaves together aspects of both girls’ and boys’ anime, to the delight of all. The mechanised “Melef” power suits, designed with bulging muscles and flowing capes by the anime veteran Kimitoshi Yamane, should keep robot fans happy, while there are elegant heroes and a sultry pair of cat-girls for everyone else. But it’s a sign of Escaflowne’s class that even a potentially stock comedy character like the cat-girl Merle (Hitomi’s instant love rival) can become so much more. Her scenes with Hitomi are gems and when she makes a heart-breaking sacrifice late in the story, you realise how much you’ve come to care for her.

The show’s cross-genre elements should fascinate any anime fan – for example, Escaflowne’s blend of girls’ and boys’ anime styles makes it a strong precedent for Code Geass ten years later. At the same time, Escaflowne was an effective gateway title in its day, watchable by newcomers to anime. While it wasn’t a great success in Japan, Escaflowne became one of the landmark anime exports of the mid-1990s, like Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell. It was a video success in America (compensating for a disastrous modified version shown on Fox Kids, mentioned here), and a broadcast hit in South Korea.

Escaflowne had originated with Shoji Kawamori, who famously conceived the space epic Macross in 1982. “In Macross, it was songs, a triangle relationship and war,” he said in the Escaflowne Art Book, portions of which were translated in Animerica magazine. “It’s probably my character, but I decided that a story only about action or only about love might as well be left up to Hollywood movies. I thought it was worthwhile to take on the challenge of incorporating elements that might end up being oil and water in the story.”

While Kawamori is credited as Escaflowne’s chief writer and story supervisor, he wasn’t its director. At first Escaflowne was developed by Yasuhiro Imagawa (Giant Robo), who envisaged it as more a male-orientated series. This version may have influenced the first Escaflowne manga, serialised in Shonen Ace before the TV series was broadcast; it’s a fight-oriented strip with Hitomi as a transforming magic girl.

However, Imagawa moved on from Escaflowne. A hiatus of nearly two years followed, before another director came on board. This was Kazuki Akane, whose early credits had included “Production Advancement” on Zeta Gundam and “Production Runner” on Char’s Counterattack. Akane’s Escaflowne drew much more on girl’s manga, resulting in the hybrid we have today.

At a panel at Otakon, Akane recalled, “Since we wanted girls to enjoy (Escaflowne) too, I decided I wanted to develop the female characters emotionally, and to see the girl characters from a girl’s perspective… I ended up with almost more girl fans than boy fans. So there was a period where I thought, “Oh, what did I do, what do I do?”

Akane consulted with the famed character designer Nobuteru Yuki, who had a track record in anime fantasy. He’d been character designer on the 1990 video series, Record of Lodoss War. For Escaflowne, Yuki created elegant, elongated characters in line with the shojo aesthetic. For example, Allen had been conceived by Kawamori as a “buff,” hunky character, but Yuki made him long-haired and willowy. The designer also gave the characters their markedly pointy noses, which became somewhat infamous in fandom.

At Otakon, Akane stressed the noses were not his fault. “It was what Yuki came up with and he came back to me with, “Akane-san, I thought you liked shoujo manga. So I tried to make it look like shoujo manga characters.” And when I first got his designs, I said “No, I’m not stamping my approval on these. The noses are too long and too pointy.” But he said, “No, I think this is good, I think we should go with this.”

Yuki’s designs were recently seen in the anime series Orange (with more moderate noses but a very wide-eyed heroine). Akane went on from Escaflowne to create the 2005 series Noein, already available from Anime Limited. Noein and Escaflowne have similarities, including a vulnerable but strong lead girl, a reality-crossing story, and a memorable lunatic – the time-travelling warrior Atori, who might be the brother to Escaflowne’s Dilandu.

Beyond its elegant look, Escaflowne would be iconic just for its superb, classically-styled music. Much of it was supplied by the legendary maestro Yoko Kanno, who we’ve profiled here. While many anime fans met Kanno through her work on Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (which yielded such iconic Kanno tracks as Bebop’s “Green Bird” and SAC’s “Inner Universe”), her Escaflowne music is quite arguably her best. From the Escaflowne score, try her sublime “Arcadia” track, the thunderous “Chain,” or the calamitous crescendo of “Epistle.”

Kanno created Escaflowne’s score with her then-husband Hajime Mizoguchi, with whom she’d worked on Macross Plus and Please Save My Earth. Mizoguchi’s own Esca tracks include the scintillating “Hitomi’s Theme” (heard when the girl consults her tarot cards in part one); the cello-based “Shadow of Doubt”; and the glorious “Gloria.” Mizoguchi and Kanno later collaborated on the film Jin-Roh, before divorcing in 2007.

Escaflowne’s score brought many fans to Kanno and Mizoguchi’s work (though Kanno’s fame in anime fandom would eclipse her husband’s). The series also introduced a new singing talent. Maaya Sakamoto had acted in a minor anime video, 1992’s Little Twins, but Escaflowne was the breakout for the sixteen year-old. Not only did she sing Esca’s title theme (“Yakusoku wa Iranai” or “Promises not Needed,” by Kanno), but Sakamoto also voiced the lead character, the plucky Hitomi.

Akane chose Sakamoto as Hitomi because she was untrained. “We never wanted an actor who was previously popular among anime fans and did the anime-character talk. We wanted someone who women could find convincing and sympathetic in her acting, including unattractive aspects of being a girl. For example, in a scene where Van says, ‘The dragon is coming,’ normally an actor might say ‘Dragon?’ in a cute voice. But Sakamoto’s reaction was ‘Dragon?’ as if she’s picking a fight. I was, in fact, taught what more realistic acting could be like.”

Soon before Escaflowne’s broadcast, Sakamoto was heard in Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell, voicing the ‘child’ Kusanagi at the end of the film. Since then she’s been prominent in anime, in roles ranging from the boy Ciel in Black Butler to Mari Illustrious Makinami in the twenty-first century Evangelion. The latter role is somewhat ironic. Escaflowne started in Japan a week after Evangelion ended; the Anime Encyclopedia describes it as filling Eva’s “morbid vacuum,” as Mari would do a decade later! Sakamoto also sang the opening themes on Arjuna and RahXephon, both by Kanno. Recently, she brought her career full circle by voicing a young Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell: Arise, including last year’s “new” movie.

Other Japanese voice-actors to catch in Escaflowne include Tomokazu Seki as Van Fanel; he’d played Touji in Evangelion and went on to voice Kogami in Psycho-Pass. Dilandu is voiced by actress Minami Takayama, who’d played Kiki and Ursula in Kiki’s Delivery Service and later became the pint-sized Detective Conan in the never-ending franchise of that name (aka Case Closed). But the real support voice to listen out for is Ikue Ohtani, who voices the feline Merle. Two years after Escaflowne, she featured in the first TV Pokemon, voicing a stripy rodent… and two decades later, she’s still playing Pikachu. She also voices another furry anime star, Chopper in One Piece.

The Anime Limited release of Escaflowne will contain the Japanese voice track but also the newly-minted English dub of the series. Produced by Funimation, this reunites several veterans of the dubbed Fullmetal Alchemist. Caitlin Glass, who was Winry in Alchemist, plays Hitomi; Aaron Dismuke, Alchemist’s Al, is Van Fanel; Sonny Strait, Maes Hughes in Alchemist, voices Allen; and Colleen Clinkenbeard, who was Riza in Alchemist, plays Princess Millerna, another love rival for Hitomi. If there’s any justice, the new Escaflowne will bring fresh audiences to this outstanding anime.

Burrard Street is a major thoroughfare in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is the central street of Downtown Vancouver and the Financial District. The street is named for Burrard Inlet, located at its northern terminus, which in turn is named for Sir Harry Burrard-Neale.

The street starts at Canada Place near the Burrard Inlet, then runs southwest through downtown Vancouver. It crosses False Creek via the Burrard Bridge. South of False Creek, on what used to be called Cedar Street before the completion of the bridge in 1932, the street runs due south until the intersection with West 16th Avenue.

The intersection of Burrard Street and Georgia Street is considered to be the centrepoint of Downtown Vancouver, along with the more tourist-oriented and upscale shopping-spirited intersection of Burrard Street and Robson Street to the south. At and due northeast of the centre is the heart of the Financial District. Further down closer to Vancouver Harbour stands the historic Marine Building, an Art Deco masterpiece, opened in 1930, two years before the Art Deco pylons of the Burrard Bridge at the opposite end of the street. Finally at the Harbour lies Canada Place and the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Nearer to Burrard Bridge is located St. Paul’s Hospital, established on Burrard Street in 1894.

Burrard Street served as the dividing line between the two district lots laid out on the downtown peninsula in the second half of the 19th century: District Lot 185 (now West End) and District Lot 541 (granted to the Canadian Pacific Railway). The two grids were oriented differently, with the result that only every third northwest-southeast street in DL185 actually continuing southeast beyond Burrard into DL541. Burrard currently serves as the boundary between West End and Downtown, as defined by the City of Vancouver.

Burrard Street is served by SkyTrain’s Burrard Station, located underground between the intersections with Melville and Dunsmuir Streets in the heart of the Financial District. Along the downtown portion, there is a bike lane on the southwest-bound direction towards the Burrard Bridge.

Creative ideas often seem to come out of thin air, but bringing them to life involves a sequence of conscious and controlled steps. Even Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most famous scientists, painters, and inventors of all time, produced more than 500 drawings and 35,000 words on the topic of flight, yet it is doubtful that his ideas for human-powered flying machines would have succeeded, given what we now know about the limitations of human muscle force.

However, da Vinci’s extensive documentation of his ideas paved the way for the invention of airplanes and helicopters some 400 years later. Moreover, those notes and drawings could still spark and nurture a great many new creative theories to come. In fact, according to an article recently published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, da Vinci’s creative process made use of general psychological processes common not only to geniuses like himself, but to every human being.

“Creativity has long been attributed to genius or great talent—characteristics one is believed simply to be born with,” wrote C. Dominik Güss and Sarah Ahmed (University of North Florida) and Dietrich Dörner (Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg, Germany). “Although we acknowledge that people differ in the extent of their talent, our assumption is that every human being is capable of creativity and already using some aspects of creative thinking one way or another and that the creative process follows steps similar to those of ordinary motivational and cognitive processes.”

“How did Leonardo da Vinci come up with these two ideas of flying machines?” Güss and colleagues asked, referring to two prototypes from da Vinci’s notes: the “ornithopter,” meant to mimic the flight of birds or bats, and the helicopter, also called the aerial screw or screw air. On the basis of those notes, they identified nine iterative stages of the creative process according to their interpretation of da Vinci’s own creative process.

The nine nonlinear stages all relate to motivation and cognition, the researchers explained, and provide “clarification and more detailed descriptions of the creative subprocesses” absent from previous models of the creative process, including Wallas’s four-stage model (1926), which comprises preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.

• Vision and curiosity as motivation to discover. “All great inventions have been preceded by great vision or even a consideration of achieving the impossible,” Güss and colleagues wrote. Da Vinci’s intense curiosity and desire to think about “unthinkable” phenomena, they said, are motivational processes inherent in Dörner’s own “PSI-theory” of basic human needs: the need for certainty and the need for competence. “It was most likely curiosity or the high need for certainty, paired with a stable level of competence from preexisting stores of knowledge and the anticipation of enormous success as an imagined source of competence, that allowed da Vinci to continue pursuing the study of flight and of flying machines over a period of several years.”
• Social recognition as motivation. In his Codex on the Flight of Birds, da Vinci described wanting to test his flying machines on the hillsides of Mount Cecero, north of Florence, “filling all writings with his fame and bringing eternal glory to his birthplace.” Although he was already acclaimed for his genius at the time, these notes suggest that he—like most people—was motivated at least in part by social recognition, according to Güss and colleagues.
• Asking questions. Curiosity triggers an important part of the creative thought process, and specific “what,” “why,” and “how” questions can identify gaps in knowledge and provide direction for further thought. The researchers demonstrated da Vinci’s quest for “how” in particular in his notes describing how the movements of birds’ shoulders and wings work together to compress air and sustain motion.
• Analogical thinking. The “if-then” analogies that guide everyday decisions also motivated da Vinci, according to Güss and colleagues. His “search for an answer to the question of what else can fly was guided by this analogy: If birds can fly, then a human being imitating a bird can fly as well,” they wrote. Likewise, they posited that he may have used either a screw or a child’s “whirligig” toy as an analogy for his helicopter design.
• Trial and error. Even experts use this simple strategy of trying one approach and, if it doesn’t succeed, trying another. In da Vinci’s case, his writings revealed an evolution in his understanding of the dynamics of wind, wings, and flight through his intensive studies—“most likely through mental trial and error,” the researchers wrote.
• Abductive thinking. This form of reasoning relies on observing phenomena and introducing new knowledge that might reflect possible explanations. Da Vinci himself wrote, “First I shall do some experiments before I proceed farther, because my intention is to cite experience first and then with reasoning show why experience is bound to operate in such a way. And this is the true rule by which those who speculate about the effects of nature must proceed.”

The other stages identified by Güss and colleagues are incubation and forgetting; overinclusive thinking, latent inhibition, and illumination/insight; and testing and working out details (schema elaboration). These involve setting problems aside and allowing the mind to rest, indulging seemingly unrelated distractions that may lead to “aha!” moments of discovery, and working out the messy details of the idea in question—in da Vinci’s case, for instance, the mechanical details of the ornithopter.

“None of us is Leonardo da Vinci, but all of us are a little like him,” the researchers concluded. The creative process “is at the heart of human intelligence, of the ability to invent, solve problems, and adapt to new situations.”

Kremlin-controlled television dedicated less than a minute of its news coverage to what has been described as the largest single-day destruction of Russian military aircraft since World War II, it has been reported.

Two state channels in Russia only mentioned Ukraine’s daring drone raid in 40-second segments, according to an assessment of coverage by independent outlet Agentstvo.

However, pro-Russian Telegram channels blamed the authorities for not adequately protecting military facilities from what was described as “Russia’s Pearl Harbor,” referring to Japan’s attack on Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

The World War II comparisons did not end there.

John Spencer from the Modern War Institute said on Substack that Sunday marked the largest single-day destruction of Russian military aircraft since Operation Barbarossa in 1941 when Germany launched its surprise invasion of the USSR.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.

The Kremlin strictly controls state media messaging over the war it started in Ukraine, but Russian bloggers on Telegram present a far more unvarnished view of hostilities.

The extent of Ukraine’s operation, which targeted four airfields as far from the border as Irkutsk in Siberia, and comparisons with what Moscow faced in World War II, will deal a setback to Vladimir Putin.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said its operation, dubbed “Spiderweb,” hit 41 Russian aircraft across four air bases on Sunday, according to Ukrainian media.

The operation involved 117 drones launched from trucks hidden across Russian territory and allegedly destroyed or damaged A-50, Tu-95, and Tu-22 M3 planes parked at the Belaya, Diaghilev, Olenya, and Ivanovo air bases.

Ukraine said that it had disabled one-third (34 percent) of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, although this has not been independently confirmed.

On his urban warfare Substack, Spencer described the attack as the largest single-day destruction of Russian military aircraft since Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941.

The German Luftwaffe destroyed between 1,200 and 2,000 Soviet aircraft on the ground in just hours, but since then, no single strike has inflicted such concentrated losses on Russian or Soviet aviation, Spencer wrote.

The reported destruction of at least 40 strategic bombers was unmatched in the post–World War II era, made all the more notable that it came not from an air force but by a drone-enabled ambush launched by a nation under siege, he added.

Agentsvo said that Channel One and Russia 1 devoted just 40 seconds each to one of the most daring operations during the full-scale war.

Presenters read out defense ministry statements that drones attacked airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions—the latter not mentioned by Ukrainian sources.

In the first two regions, the Russian TV anchors reported that “several units of aviation equipment” had caught fire, but no other details were provided, it said.

The relative silence continued Monday morning, according to Agentstvo, which said neither channel reported on their broadcasts at 9 a.m., although state agencies TASS and RIA Novosti began covering the attacks after the Defense Ministry issued its statement.

Russian military bloggers were more candid and critical. War correspondent Alexander Kots posted on Telegram that there is an ongoing problem with the protection of Russia’s strategic facilities.

Another Telegram channel, “Military Informant”, said Ukraine’s drone attack on Russian bases “was only a matter of time.”

The channel “Novorossiya Militia” said it was unclear why authorities protecting Russia’s strategic aviation were unprepared for such an attack. Meanwhile, Alexey Zhivov wrote, “A ‘Russian Pearl Harbor’ has happened, and the future of our country and civilization depends on how we respond to it.”

Yuriy Boyechko, CEO and Founder of Hope for Ukraine, told Newsweek on Monday that the success of Ukraine’s drone attack showed that Kyiv “has some trump cards up its sleeve.”

No diplomatic breakthrough on peace was expected as Russia held talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on Monday, and eyes will turn to what Putin will do in response.

Aurélien Colson, academic co-director at the ESSEC Institute for Geopolitics & Business, told Newsweek Russia will likely step up missile and drone attacks, but resorting to nuclear weapons “is excluded” given the opposition of China, whose support Putin depends on.