Oban Star Racers

TMIA rating: b

The show is just insanely good.   Crossing genres with ease while avoiding annoying tropes, Oban Star Racers was by far one of the best shows I watched last year.  (A quote from it even made its way into my graduate thesis.)

It starts with a girl waiting for a phone call from her father on her 16th birthday. It never comes, and she tells herself it's just because he's a famous race manager, and he must've just been really busy, but she doesn't believe herself. She runs away from her boarding school and heads to a showdown with her father, who doesn't even recognize her. She ends up working for him under an assumed name (Molly), and then things get weird.

Her father (Don Wei) is called on by the President of Earth to put together the best racing team in the history of Earth and take it to an intergalactic race where the winner gets an ultimate prize and maybe gets to not be annihilated by the Krog empire (bad news aliens who really hate everyone).

And it rocks so hard!  

It's actually a French/Japanese hybrid with the best of both worlds.   Complex plot and characters, intense action, beautiful and crazy animation, great music, very few training scenes, and an utterly enthralling English dub.   I have listened to the opening and closing songs, like 60 times, and I still love them.  (Yoko Kanno rules.)   I want to watch it again right now . . .  

And for those who like behind the scenes sneak peeks, the semi-documentaries about the Japanese and French collaboration are outstanding.   The extras are worth more than the price of the DVDs.