Recap episodes are historically quite common in anime, all the stranger by the general dislike of them and the collective sense of disinterest the moment someone tweets “Next week is a recap.” Equally, perplexing are compilation films, which dilute entire seasons into feature films, andStar Driver: The Moviemight be the most egregious - not for what it recapped, but what wonders it briefly teased audiences with.
Star Driverwas a super robot show that aired in 2010,directed bySoul Eater’s Takuya Igarashiand animated by Studio Bones (Soul Eater,Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood). About two years after the series concluded, Bones releasedStar Driver: The Movie, which recounts the events of the show’s 25 episodes, but with a little, something added to it for good measure.
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A Brief Recount of Star Driver
To understand a bit better why this recap movie is so infuriating to fans ofStar Driver, perhaps a recap of our own is in order. It’s a series about a young man named Takuto Tsunashi, who ventures to Southern Cross Isle, where the Glittering Crux Brigade is attempting to unleash a power that could change the balance of the world forever.An army of giant robotscalled Cybodies, all trapped in a pocket dimension.
To free them, the Brigade plans to capture the four maidens on the island and break the seals they possess, each broken seal getting them closer to unleashing the Cybodies. The series follows Takuto as he faces the members of the Brigade - many of whom are his classmates - with a Cybody of his own named Tauburn. Along the way, he befriends one of the maidens, Wako, and her bodyguard Sugata, as well as all the other maidens.
For the sake of talking about the movie, we need to talk about the ending, so feel free to skip this paragraph and just be confused, but I will be vague to avoid specifics. At the end of the series, a number of events result in the seals being broken anyway and the Cybodies being freed, but thanks to our hero, all ends well anyhow.That’s all there is to say without spoiling itcompletely (watch the show, it’s good).
Now For Our Feature Presentation
The first sequence ofStar Driver’s movie looks andfeels like something out of Patlabor, at least for a fleeting moment, as the military has evacuated Tokyo on a cold winter’s night. A pair of jets are on approach, the beautifully detailed artwork grounding the scene in some semblance of reality. In a control room somewhere, the military is watching closely.
It’s uncertain how much time has passed since the end of the TV series, but the world seems to know about the Cybodies now and the threat they face. But we aren’t given the time to think about the implications before a familiar face comes flying in alongside the jet, and the pilot shouts “It’s the Galactic Pretty Boy.” At this moment,Star Driveris officially back.
This opening scene is a relentless battlebetween Takuto and many familiar Cybodies that he has faced throughout the TV series, now reconstructed and piloted by persons unknown. And while this happens, Takuto’s friends watch on from a distance, but even they have more to do now than just spectate. Wako displays magical capabilities unlike anything displayed in the anime and even has a transformation of her own.
Sugata, Takuto’s closest friend, gets his own true transformation and costume, but with his Cybody, Samekh, looming over him like a devil on his shoulder. This isn’t merely a cool fight but an honest-to-god look at what the lives of these characters are like after the first season. And beyond catching up, it introduces new concepts that imply entirely new possibilities for where the story could go.
The Rest of the Movie
As the sun rises in Tokyo the trio looks out onto the horizon and reminisces about how their journey began andthe rest of the film works back to that point. And at two hours and thirty minutes, it is a fairly thorough look at the story, though obviously with omissions throughout. But this is effectively just Season 1 re-edited for a hefty theatrical run-time.
TV and film are fundamentally different in the ways that they are written for a number of reasons, one crucial one being the time audiences spend with these stories. But that knife cuts both ways. A show could be turned effectively into a film, but what works on televisiondoesn’t always work on the big screen. ForStar Driver, however, it could honestly be argued either way.
On one hand,Star Driveris very formulaic, with each episode culminating in a battle with a new antagonist, making for a lot of fights and stories that need to be cut out. On the other hand, many of those stories could be argued to be unimportant to the main story, and a film can choose only the most crucial moments. It can even cut out some of the reused animations that took up the runtime.
It isn’t as if there aren’t positives. Condensing and refocusing a story could be argued to be worthwhile. In an ongoing series, a compilation movie can be valuable to help an audience catch up rather than rewatching a full series, but that makes it sound less like a valuable piece of art and more like a time-saver. And more importantly, that defense doesn’t even apply becauseStar Drivernever got a continuation.
The End of Star Driver
In the end is it the worst anime recap movie? A passive observer might very well argue “no” because if it told its story effectively and even offered something new then it can’t just be disregarded as lazy. But to those who watched the series and fell in love with its characters, the story, and the animation, that “new content” certainly feels like a false promise.
Either because of low sales or the creators genuinely feeling that the story was at a conclusion, the series ends with this film. There is only a post-credit scene that promises that the characters’ lives will continue. In a way, it offers closure, but it also distinctly feels like the pilot towhat could have been the sickest sequelever, and for that reason,Star Driver: The Moviecan be a bit maddening.
