Star Driver Episode 1 Impressions

Five words: This show is fucking FABULOUS!

So the episode starts off to a quick note.

...With the main heroine giving our protagonist a life-saving mouth to mouth CPR. Apparently, Takuto (the protagonist) swam all the way to the island when he missed his ferry, thus his unconscious state.

Within the first few minutes of the episode though, I did notice some glaring QUALITY animation.

There are many more examples of such glaringly bad animations early on, and almost prompted me to stop watching the show.

The first episode goes through with quite a fast pace as it progresses, introducing characters left and right.

This show is full of fabulously handsome bastards.

Nothing felt too slow, and although you may notice the pacing to be really fast, everything actually connects and flows really smoothly, giving the show an excited, rushed feeling. This is especially evident in the latter part of the episode, but I'll get to that.

As I clocked in about 9 minutes, the opening starts to play. Boy, was I impressed. I have never seen such a colorful display of colors in an opening before, and it really captured my attention.

They even threw in a Sengoku Basara advertisement!

Put ya guns on!

As the story progresses, I found out that there's this whole weird secret cult thing with people wearing yellow bird masks all over the place. A lot of confusing terms and sudden plot development left me wondering if I really was watching the first episode. Many things are talked about and discussed between the characters, but nothing really gets explained.

As I remained confused, Takuto decides to break into the goldmine he was specifically told not to trespass. Well, guess what.

He ends up lying off the wires off the fence. However, he's soon caught by more people wearing strange bird masks, and he ends up fighting one of them. Sadly, I have no pictures to show since I was so immersed with the sudden huge jump in animation production. The short fight scene was very nicely animated, and by the time it was over I was left wanting for more.

Anyways, the main girl (the one who's shown giving CPR to Takuto in the first picture), Wako, is kidnapped and is going to be used for...something. She seems to know what's up, but I sure don't. Like I said, the plot just advanced by itself without explaining anything at all. I suppose this whole thing will be explained eventually, but I felt really left out as I continued watching.

Things happen, a really amazing transformation scene takes place (no, it's not a girl) and we're introduced to our very first mecha in the show.

And suddenly, out comes Takuto and his own mecha.

Begin the FABULOUS transformation scene.

 

This is when the animation really kicks it up a notch. I was mesmerized, I'll be honest; I almost forgot to take screenies because I was so immersed with the animation itself. The fight scene itself was FABULOUS as well, being very heavily reminiscent of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan.

Even the enemy mech looks like something out of TTGL.

Takuto is the Galactic Pretty Boy, apparently. I don't know.

I don't have any screens of the actual fight scene itself, because it was so goddamn amazing that I completely forgot to take some pictures. As the fight ends, everything is nicely wrapped up, and we go on to the ED.

All in all, this show is not without its glaring animation faults at times. Though, I'm glad their actually important scenes seem to have a really high budget, and are animated beautifully. The animation style throughout (especially during the fight scene) heavily reminded me of when I watched TTGL, which is awesome.

All in all, definitely give this FABULOUS show a watch. It'll be well worth your time.

Star Driver Episode 2 Impressions coming up tomorrow.

FABULOUS!