eX-Driver

eX-Driver is a futuristic anime that focuses on a team of three teenagers (Lisa, Lorna, and Souichi) under the supervision of Kei Munatata that are tasked with protecting the city from vehicles that have artificial intelligence computer systems that have broke down and gone rogue therefore being a danger to the people that are inside these vehicles as well as the residents of the city itself. This team resolves the danger by using their own gas powered vehicles and their sharpshooting skills in order to stop these rogue vehicles. Each of the three main characters of this anime has their own individual vehicle that they ... use in order to resolve the conflicts that they are often put in and each of the vehicles are different enough and really cater to the each of the characters personality. You have Lisa who is brash, stubborn and hard headed, Lorna who is soft spoken, shy and reasonable, and Souichi who is selfish, idealistic, and goal-oriented. Despite the fact that the main characters are all different, and their personalities often conflict with each other it leads to a believable and heartfelt bond that all the characters have with each other. Lorna often has to be the mediator because Souichi and Lisa are often at each other's throats on who is the better driver.

This anime has a very short length with only 6 episodes but if you ask me I think it's the perfect length when dealing with such an obscure subject matter. The setting in the anime takes place in a futuristic society where people don't personally drive anymore - every vehicle in the city is controlled with artificial intelligence but building a society where all transportation is controlled by computers is literally a recipe for disaster because eventually technology will break down and not work anymore so there needs to be protocols put in place in order to protect the people inside these vehicles in case the artificial intelligence system fails. The majority of the episodes focus on some kind of rescue and after awhile the rescues literally feel all the same in every episode until some proper enemies/antagonists are established but it doesn't happen until episode 5 and 6. It's okay to recycle the same type of final conflict for a few episodes but it can often be aggravating if you feel like your watching the same resolution in each and every episode especially if the anime lasts as long as 12 or 24 episodes but with 6 episodes it never reaches that point where it does feel aggravating. However, the way that the eX-Driver team stop the rogue vehicles is pretty much the same for the most part. They freeze passenger compartment of the vehicle while either smashing or blocking the two sensors in the back of the vehicle and the two sensors in the front of the vehicle minus the odd exception in order to stop it while the rogue vehicle tries to do everything in its power to stop the eX-drivers and their cars from stopping their chaotic nonsense.

For an early 2000's anime the animation is incredibly beautiful, every car is animated beautifully and some of the chase scenes are really enthralling to watch. The opening and ending themes are relatively solid, but the strongest musical aspect of this anime is definitely a lot of the background music. There are beautiful ambient tracks throughout a lot of the cityscape scenes especially in a lot of the background scenes that involve water but when the driving happens the music gets really intense and wild especially when the action scenes start to take over.

I really have to give a lot of respect to the english dub for this anime because there is a lot of great anime voice talent in this obscure anime such as staples of the 90's anime scene such as Lia Sargent, Richard Epcar, and Steve Blum while mixing in some voice talent from Digimon. To be honest all the voices really suit all of the characters in this anime regardless if it's a main character or a side character.

I think deep down this anime knows exactly what it wants to be. It never feels heavy handed and every episode finds a way to be enjoyable. When villains are finally established in this anime, it adds a little extra depth to this anime beyond the standard rescue mission even though the motivations of the villains aren't up to the level of supervillain standards but that is a-ok in my eyes because for the most part it's a simple anime with a simple premise and knows exactly what it needs to be do to be enjoyable. Each of the heroes cars suffer damage in many of the rescue missions and conflicts and nobody ever feels truly invincible in this anime but it lends to the strength of keeping the characters and the vehicles they drive in grounded despite being set in a futuristic setting.

Even though the anime caters to some of the typical anime tropes (the female characters being sexualized), the tropes are so minor it actually doesn't detract you from enjoying the anime from what it really is. The anime in itself doesn't really have a lot of humour per se but it's worth watching for the race scenes and the character development between the main characters. The anime is not violent, raunchy, or bloody but it doesn't need to be because it's focused on being entertaining and as far as I'm concerned it certainly succeeds in that.

I was very surprised with how much I enjoyed it and in my eyes it's a very fun and easy watch. If you like your cars fast with some really beautiful animation I highly recommend giving it a try.

Quick Take: Good but dry storyline, good characters and dated artwork. If you like cars, you'll get enjoyment out of this series, possibly even if you don't. This series suffers from it's six episode short run that doesn't allow story arcs to be fully completed.

As I complete this easy to watch anime, a few things stick with me. I found the art style a bit lackluster and a little outdated. For an early 2000's anime, it seemed okay but was also rather inconsistent. In the scenes with less movement, the art was great but once there was action, the art seemed to suffer a bit.

The ... sound is truly stellar. The cars sound proper, that is to say a Europa sounds like a Europa and different from the Stratos. When the car shifts, the sounds changes properly and the voice acting (English dub) is better than many, only missing the mark once or twice.

Aside from the art, I think the characters and the storyline are what suffers most. Ironically, it's not because the concept or characters are bad, but because there wasn't enough time to fully develop them out. In regards to the story, each run away car is similar and although the exact details in how they are stopped are different, the main concept doesn't change and becomes old by the third time around. When the story does start to pick up and you think there might be some good plot lines or twists coming, we're treated to a premature end.

The same thing happens with the characters. I could see that the relationship between Lorna, Lisa and Sōichi was supposed to be the main focus, but unfortunately, just as the characters were getting warmed up to each other, the series ends. It is especially frustrating as it's clear Sōichi and Lisa are attracted to each other, so I know there could have been plenty of jokes between the two had the series continued.

The most frustrating part of this series is its premature end. Just as the plot and characters were starting to shape up into something, you're on episode six. Worth a watch, especially if you like cars, but if you're like me and become a bit frustrated at potential that is not fully realized, you'll find it here.

When I saw that this series was written by Kosuke Fujishima, creator of the "Oh My Goddess!" and "You're Under Arrest" anime series, and with me being a fan of "You're Under Arrest" and hearing good things about "Oh My Goddess!" before I watched series, I became interested in checking it out. After seeing that it wasn't as popular as his other works and getting some less than good, I went into eX-Driver with moderately set expectations that I would get at least some entertainment out of the six episodes knowing what the creator was capable of. And after watching it, I can easily see ... why this wasn't as well remembered or well reviewed as his other works.

Set at some point in the 22nd century, people no longer drive cars themselves, instead relying on cars with an artificial intelligence to drive for them. But when the AI systems in these cars started malfunctioning, causing the cars to lose control, a team called eX-Drivers (or eX-D for short) were formed, driven by actual drivers, to chase down the cars that have gone crazy. I don't know why the group of people who actually drive cars are the ones called eX-Drivers, but whatever.

The series follows three such eX-Drivers, Lorna, Lisa, and new addition to the group, Soichi. Soichi is the youngest of the group at 12 years old, and the other two are in their teens. I imagine that making them younger was to appeal to a younger audience, and I don't really mind having three kids as the main characters since this is more geared to a younger audience, but it just raises questions to me, like how does a 12 year get a license, especially for such a dangerous job. But I'm guessing this is going off of Pokemon rules, with how children are often put into dangerous situations but somehow never get hurt, with this series relying on the same set of convenient rules.

eX-Driver does bring up some neat concepts to explore, such as an underground community of drivers mentioned in the first episode where characters have a boost button in their car and have modified the cars programming, and later in the series, there are characters with gasoline cars that can't be tracked by the same system as the AI cars and are off the grid. It would have been neat if the series explored this stuff, but unfortunately due to it being only 6 episodes, it never really gets to do that.

And that's not taking into account other stuff that it could have brought up. Is there no one would doesn't trust the automated systems of the cars, and even cites statistics of AI failures, or at least talks about all of the news stories of failing AI as a reason to not have an AI car? Or even just dislikes the idea in general, based purely on personal preference. What about people who simply can't afford the AI cars, or simply don't care about what car they drive, and just want a way of getting to where they're going? And I'm pretty sure there are car enthusiasts out there who would want to drive, tune, and build their own cars, or just want to buy and deal with classic cars. You could have even had an episode where a mentor once shows his skills of to the kids, who hope to be as good of a driver as him one day.

There could have even been an episode where the characters didn't have access to cars, like being stranded somewhere where they didn't have access to the system, or being forced to take a break since the job is clearly stressing them out, and it ends up being a bonding experience. There was enough here for it to expand out to a 12-episode series at least, but unfortunately we got stuck with what we have.

All of these could have been good ideas for episodes, and could have easily broken up the repetitive monotony of the series and at least taken the series from a completely forgotten for good reason series to a beloved cult classic with a few neat ideas.

The series also came out at that time when anime was transitioning from traditionally done animation cels to digital animation, and it obviously shows. Characters look flat and overly bright at times and the whole thing just looks mediocre at the best of times.

Which is unfortunate, because the series clearly shows off Kosuke Fujishima's love of cars, and by extension, motorcycles, and seeing it either be done a few years earlier with cel animation or a few years later when studios were more experienced with digital animation and the detail of the cars would have really popped out more, it would have at least made it worth watching for the eye candy.

And it seems like such a waste to not let Kosuke to show off his love of said vehicles and let him stretch his creativity a bit for a sci-fi series with cars we haven't seen before. If this couldn't have been continued as an anime, it would have been nice to see Kosuke continue it as a manga at least.

The only interesting thing about this series is just how predictive of self-driving cars it was. But since it never goes that in-depth with the concept either, so there's no real reason to watch the series based on that alone.

While eX-Driver is nowhere near the worst thing that I've watched, I doubt that anyone is clamoring for a re-release. But considering some of the stuff that Discotek have picked up, I wonder how long it would be before they get their hands on a release for this. Unless this get some sort of new series that actually expands on the concepts of the series, I can't really recommend it.