eX-Driver the Movie

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Alternative Titles

Japanese: エクスドライバー the Movie

Information

Type: Movie

Episodes: 1

Status: Finished Airing

Aired: Apr 20, 2002

Producers: Bandai Visual, Dentsu, Genco

Licensors: Geneon Entertainment USA

Studios: Actas

Source: Original

Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Theme: Racing

Duration: 1 hr. 2 min.

Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older

Statistics

Score: 6.59¹ (scored by 2,534 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #6363²

² based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #8208

Members: 5,410

Favorites: 5

Resources

AniDB

ANN

Synopsis

After winning domestic preliminary round, Lisa, Lorna, and Soichi advance to ex-Driver world race competition held in Los Angeles as representative team from Japan. Like a bad omen, they encountered a reckless AI car the first night they arrived at Los Angeles. Although they successfully stopped the car, the local police department is not very happy about that and insists to examine their car overnight.

However, the problem did not stop just there. The daughter of the United States team`s sponsor, Angela, has gone missing. Lorna realized that Angela was on the reckless AI car before. Soichi who guessed that Angel could be in danger then start looking for her. But Soichi got captured by a mysterious man, and he shocked to find Angela is also there.

During the confinement inside a warehouse, Soichi finds out that apparently there is a connection between the series of incident and illegal gambling on the ex-Driver world race competition. Now Soichi must escape from the warehouse with Angela...

(Source: AniDB)

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Background

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Related Anime

Prequel:	eX-Driver
Side story:	eX-Driver the Movie Specials

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Sugano, Souichi

Main

Kobayashi, Yumiko
Japanese

Sakakino, Lisa

Main

Nagasawa, Miki
Japanese

Endou, Lorna

Main

Asada, Youko
Japanese

Tokioka, Keyne

Supporting

Okiayu, Ryoutarou
Japanese

Kelly

Supporting

Mitsuishi, Kotono
Japanese

Ralph

Supporting

Miki, Shinichiro
Japanese

Ganbino, Rico

Supporting

Tsukayama, Masane
Japanese

Joe

Supporting

Shimada, Bin
Japanese

Fitz

Supporting

Nomura, Kenji
Japanese

Soumin, Wang

Supporting

Shioya, Kouzou
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Tanaka, Wataru

Producer

Nishimori, Akira

Director

Kameyama, Toshiki

Sound Director

Itou, Masumi

Music

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Opening Theme

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Ending Theme

"Crucial Spirits" by Milk

Reviews

Jun 27, 2020

stmwg01

Recommended

Quick Take: Storyline to the movie is actually much more enjoyable compared to the series it is based off of. If you like cars, you'll get enjoyment out of this series and movie, possibly even if you don't. While the series suffers from it's six episode short run, the movie faired much better in almost every aspect. Character development is still a bit short, but with the team now a known quantity, it is a bit easier to overlook.

I found the art style a bit lackluster and a little outdated i n the series, but the movie seems to be a bit more on par ...

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Sep 5, 2022

megafat

Mixed Feelings

Surprisingly, eX-Driver managed to get a movie, with the uncreatively titled “eX-Driver: The Movie”. And it's using the word 'movie' in it's title in the loosest sense popssible, since it's closer to 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 since the team behind it probably either had a bigger budget or had less to work on so what they ended up making ended up looking better, but unfortunately, much like the series was stuck with early digital animation, the movie is stuck with the early 2000s CGI used for it's cars. To be fair, it’s not the worst CGI that I’ve seen from the era, but that's such a backhanded compliment that there was no point in even bring it up.

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 it's breaking point.

The plot of "Nina & Rei - Danger Zone" 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 purely because it has no filler. Instead of 6 drawn out episodes or an hour long movie, this special gets straight to the point. 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.

While the OVA wasn't anything special, compared to the rest of the series it feels like a breath of fresh air, where something fun is happening instead of having to watch three under developed characters repeat the same thing over and over again. If anything, it feels like an episode of "You're Under Arrest!", which just makes me want to go watch that series again.

If anything, you could probably watch this without knowing anything about the rest of the series, even if you know nothing about the characters, and you would have to only spend 24 minutes at most to watch it, no more than a lunch break.