Lots of intelligent impressions re Star Driver, but I do notice that all the intelligent discourse I’ve read about it are skeptical at best.
It would seem that those who are genuinely fired up for this show did not use much of their critical faculties, or perhaps they’re/we’re the ones who aren’t particularly discerning.
Well, I loved it. I think it evokes some of the wild spirit of the creators’ past works (Ouran Host Club, Revolutionary Girl Utena) and I want to see a lot more of this. I want to hear more singing, I want to see more flamboyant fighting. I want to see a male version of the idol in a robot show.
The thing is, I don’t consume shows on the database level alone (I have SRW OG: The Inspector for that). Part of what attracts me to Star Driver is the ambition that I expect from it, given the pedigree of its creators. I want something transcendent!
Maybe it won’t be RahXephon, or Eureka SeveN, but I want it to be at least more enjoyable than Xam’d, and definitely better than Heroman and Wolf’s Rain among the shows I’ve seen in the Studio Bones filmography.
Yeah, George Honda did remind me of Saionji Kyouchi.
Emphasis mine.
Allow me the honor of refuting your initial impression, Ghostlightnyan.
Sold. Sold. Sooooold.
There’s a lot of Pontifus-service here, most of which I’d call trivial (glorious foppishness, mecha having to do with weird island magic, those female character designs oh Jesus). Were I doing critical mode, though, at this early stage, I guess I’d talk about the layered narrative.
We’re given two plot setups, essentially. One is the story of normal (within anime bounds) high school life, the transfer student story full of crazy acquaintances and romantic loose ends. The other involves a nefarious plot to take over the world (of course) via mecha, and gives rise to all manner of colorful conflicts, these taking place mostly in a parallel dimension/non-space-time. The catch is that the same central characters populate each plot.
Now I know that Star Driver isn’t the first show in the “school life + [whatever]” tradition. But it seems significant that so many characters move between two plot-strands otherwise established as separate — again, the giant robot stuff doesn’t happen in the “real” world, and, though obviously quite a few characters are aware of both plots, genuine moments of overlap seem exceptional. The suddenness of the fight in the second episode seems to emphasize this.
It’s as if we’re meant to take one plot as a literal metaphor (if you’ll allow me the oxymoron) for the other. I guess the “adolescence is a battlefield,” et al., route is the obvious way to go. And again, Star Driver didn’t invent that, but to me it doesn’t seem too terribly conventional in its execution.
Maybe there’s an exploration of otherness going on, too. I’ll keep an eye on that, though it isn’t usually my sort of thing to expound upon.
