Escaflowne was originally planned to be a 39 episode series, but after cuts to its budget and an extensive reworking of the plot, the show was reduced to a 26 episode run. Due to time constraints, certain footage in earlier episodes were cut during its broadcast and later restored on the Japanese home video releases, referred to as the Director's Cut. The North American Bandai Entertainment releas

Escaflowne was originally planned to be a 39 episode series, but after cuts to its budget and an extensive reworking of the plot, the show was reduced to a 26 episode run. Due to time constraints, certain footage in earlier episodes were cut during its broadcast and later restored on the Japanese home video releases, referred to as the Director's Cut. The North American Bandai Entertainment releases used the TV masters, so their English dub does not sync properly with the Japanese home video masters on those specific episodes. FUNimation later licensed the series and, in 2016, launched a successful Kickstarter to redub the entirety of the Director's Cut edition.