Prequel

OVA, 2000-2001, 6 eps,4.74(837),6.60(839)

Movie, 2002, 1 ep,4.44(560),6.34(560)

bymegafat on2021-04-24 09:59

Surprisingly, eX-Driver managed to get a movie, with the uncreatively titled “eX-Driver: The Movie”. And I use the word ‘movie’ in the loosest sense possible, since it’s more like an hour long direct-to-DVD special that managed to get a bump in animation quality.

The movie follows the three leads from the series as they enter and win a domestic preliminary round and advance to the eX-Driver world race competition held in Los Angeles as a representative team from Japan. Not long after arriving in LA, an AI car goes haywire, setting off a chain of events that leads out main trio into a conspiracy involving the race competition and some of the people involved with it.

If my reaction to the series was lukewarm at best, the movie doesn’t do much to change that. We don’t even get to see that many differences between how Japan and America deal with how they handle their AI cars, which would have made for some good world building and could have been a neat culture shock for the three main characters, and would have made the movie stand out more by giving it some personality.

Like I mentioned earlier, the animation is a step up from the series, but unfortunately it still has some of the early 2000s CGI used for the cars. To be fair, it’s not the worst CGI that I’ve seen from the era, and is a bit better than the series, but it might turn some people off who aren’t use to seeing older CGI.

But that’s not all, because on the same day that the movie was released, a short called “eX-Driver: Nina & Rei – Danger Zone”, which was featured as a bonus on the same DVD as the movie, and is a prequel to the series featuring two minor characters, who are the top eX-Driver team.

I’m going to include this as part of my review for the movie because I still want to talk about it, but I don’t think I can justify a whole review for it, especially since it’s only 24 minutes long, and doing a stand alone review with a minimum character/word limit would be stretching it out to the breaking point.

The plot focuses on a mysterious mini-AI car that terrorizes the city, and it’s up to Nina and Rei to stop it, all while having to deal with something or someone from the eX-Driver's past.

Out of the entire series, this is the most entertaining entry. The whole thing felt like an homage to an 80s or 90s buddy cop action movie, with the angry police chief cliche and everything. The villain for this special was also pretty fun, and I’m not going to spoil it.

This OVA wasn’t anything special, but compared to the rest of the series, it at least feels like there was an attempt made to make something at least fun, even if it ended up being to late into the series for someone to care about it outside of the dedicated fans or people who like to check out everything.

If anything, you could probably watch this without knowing anything about the rest of the series, and you would have to only spend 24 minutes at most to watch it.

bygambit on2006-08-02 19:56

A decent piece of entertainment. If only they'd make the characters actually believable ...

Really, eX-Driver the Movie isn't such a bad anime, although it also doesn't have anything good I can point out either. It's kind of the so-so type of anime which doesn't have anything good going on, but isn't bad enough either. Despite the fact that it has a not-so-interesting plot, pretty uninteresting characters and most of all - pretty badly done evil characters, it is a pretty decent anime. But if you make an anime movie about some random baddy, at least make him somewhat realistic and try to make the anime at least somewhat entertaining.

Animation: Fear the amazing CG!

The animation isn't that bad, but there are positive and negative aspects when it comes to the CG they used for the cars they use. At times it looks like the cars are done marvellous with the CG and the makers ofInitial D should've watched this before they'd started making anything. While at other times you wished that they would have watchedInitial D beforehand. Good CG and bad CG, but it's there alright. It only happens when they have scenes with the cars and the cars alone, so it doesn't happen that often.

The characters are animated normally and although there are no real repeated frames, they sometimes feel a bit cheap, but that's probably because they get a childish behaviour attached to them, like Mr. Wong.

Sound: Eventually, the tires get tiring.

While the car-noises are done well, the sound of the motors and the screaming tires do get on your nerves eventually. Especially since they were much louder than the dialogues, it was annoying for me to keep turning the volume on and off all the time when they stepped into the cars again.

Voices
The voices are done well enough to feel as if the characters really should sound like that. They were realistic and fit their characters very well. While there was no real outstanding voice in this show, they certainly weren't bad either. I would rather praise them for fitting their roles so well.

Characters: Lucky thing the most reasonable and rational character is the 12 year old kid who is driving a car.

Really, the characters are not so great. They might be all nice and such, but they have absolutely no substance. The only ones which get some substance is the 12 year old kid, who can drive cars and all. Somehow that never really made sense in the first place, but at least he got some substance. The rest of the crew was mostly there just for screenfillers and a little comedy.
No, I don't think you'll get much out of the characters here, especially not the silly ‘bad’ characters, who are only there to make funny foreigners of them, like Mr. Wong, who always ends up doing some martial art-move when he gets annoyed.

Story: Wait, we had one?

I have to say that, although there was a story, it wasn't really any interesting at all. Its plot isn't all that thorough and realistic, but that is to be expected from such a movie like this. But when you expect some entertainment, this isn't what you expect. While it is just enough to not make the movie sway in every possible way without a story, it just doesn't cut it. The movie doesn't become interesting, nor does it become in any way enjoyable enough to sit through it without the urge to do something else until it ends.

Value: Nice … but to even watch it a second time?

This movie has barely any rewatch value. It is a typical watch-and-wipe kind of movie, so if you bought it, you'd probably feel ripped off.

Enjoyment

A decent watch, but don't expect too much of it. It has some nice scenes from the cars, but overall the movie just isn't up to par to enjoy you even averagely. Perhaps it worked back in the 90s, but not anymore. And the movie knows that, seeing the CG - but it just doesn't make the movie better.