Oban Star-Racers

Theatrical-quality animation, beautiful design and fun, engaging characters make this a must-watch for anyone interested in this art form. The story, an unexceptionable coming-of-age adventure framed around a series of contests, is consistently enlightened by great dialog and well-rounded characters who grow and change. A myriad of small details--of dress, speech, professions, weather--make for an imagined science fiction world of great richness and charm. The violence is of the cartoon action type, with a fair amount of gunplay but no excessive gore. The animation, by a co-partnership of French and Japanese studios, is simply excellent. This show is too good to be compared with the normal run of United States cartoons.

As a fan of anime and sports car enthusiast I loved watching this on TV when it first came out. Unfortunately I never had the chance to watch the second half, so a few days back I decided to watch it after all.

The story was unique, the races and sceneries beautifully animated, definitely worth around the eight. But (don't think this is really a spoiler, but if it is, this reaction will probably be deleted) the final episodes were so great that I gave this show a 9. The last few years I have seen some great series, like "Elfen lied" and "Code Geass". I can't say "Oban Star-Racers" in its entirety is as good but the final might be from the same league.

Great series like "Code Geass" already have a lot of great reviews on the internet, "Oban Star-Racers" hasn't as much as it deserves. It was good enough to make me write my first review (I hate writing reviews).

The story is about Eva who wanted to find her father. After a serie of events and a fake identity she became a space race pilot. The serie is only one season but its breathtaking. A lot of emotions, cool graphics and memorable characters.

This is a really great series with an engaging story line,a really good mix of 2d and 3d animation and fully developed characters that are neither all good or all bad but each has motivations that regulate how they act. The story takes place on a future earth where there have been many technological advances and contact with other intelligent species has been made. It focuses on a 15 year old girl, Eva, who goes to meet with her father after he missed her birthday. He turns out to be such a jerk and doesn't recognize her that she pretends to be Molly, a kid with a good skill at repairing racers. Her father, Don Wei, manages racing teams and is known as the best race manager on the planet. Before long, the president (of the world?), has recruited Don Wei to lead a team to race in an interplanetary competition on which the earth depends on winning. Molly stows away to the race planet to be with her father and to prove to him that she is something to be proud of.

The premise of Oban Star-Racers is a simple one: Racing to save the world. The appeal of this show is not in it's premise, but in the execution.

The execution is by no means perfect. The editing is rather weird and the story is quite predictable at times, but the way the story is told is what keeps you there.

A lot of anime, even fan-favorites like Code Geass have the problem of an excessive need to have characters explain things. It ignores an important rule in any visual medium: show don't tell. It's rare to see this rule applied in an anime, even rarer to see it applied in an anime presumably intended for kids.

11 episodes in, Oban Star-Racers shows without telling. There is no music to tell you how to feel(if there is any I didn't notice it), and the explanation in it is very minimal sans the opening. The characters evolve through interacting with each other and through the progression of the plot, not by another character noticing the changes and explaining them through monologue. The dialog is natural for the most part, and the English voice acting is extremely well done.

The characters themselves are rather interesting, with a good back-stories and good development for the main characters. The side characters get a decent amount of development as well. They're not developed much, but enough so that they don't feel like cardboard cutouts. The animation is wonderful, with creative races that are rather unique hence not boring, The reason I don't want to give this show a full ten is because of the story is quite predictable and the editing is botched in some scenes, though it certainly has earned it's 9 stars for the excellent interactions between the characters and overall execution.

This is a must watch, especially for anime writers who could learn a thing or two about storytelling from this show.