Hitomi Kanzaki is a normal 15-year-old student who enjoys tarot cards and fortune telling, but one night, a guy named Van Fanel emerges from the sky, accompanied by a terrible dragon. Van successfully kills the dragon thanks to a prediction from Hitomi, but a pillar of light rises and envelops them both. As a result, Hitomi is sent to the fascinating planet of Gaea, where the Earth hangs in the sky. Hitomi quickly finds in this strange realm that Van is a prince of the Kingdom of Fanelia, which is shortly attacked by the terrible kingdom of Zaibach. Van mounts his family's antique guymelef Escaflowne—a robotic war suit—in an attempt to fend them off, but fails.