Sep 15, 2011
Star Driver: Kagayaki no Takuto is one of those animes that you watch not for story content, but for fun. What Star Driver lacks in story and characters, it makes up for in music and enjoyment.
Story (7/10):
The story revolves around your stereotypical shonen character Takuto and his relationship with the surrounding characters, mainly Sugata and Wako. Star Driver follows the main shonen theme of "I will protect you" and the story does a good job sticking to this theme. Thrown in there are the other classic themes of love, troubled childhoods, and save the world, to name a few. These other
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themes are not fully exploited, probably due to the fact that there's so many and not enough episodes, but I think if this became a 50 episode anime, they'd be able to exploit these themes in the way that they wanted to.
Art (8/10):
The art is controversial. It follows the same lines of Lelouch of the Rebellion and CLAMP to some extent, with the bodies all being vertically stretched and big eyes, but somehow this manages to fit the anime. If you can get over that, the rest of the animation is pretty good, my only complaint is the amount of reused clips, sure it saves on budget, but it should have done what other transforming animes do, like Sailor Moon, Pretear, etc by showing you the full transformation a couple of times, then just do a fast forward. We don't need to see Tauburn stepping through Zero time every episode, it has no significance to the anime, and actually, you never really find out why that mecha does that and not the others but you can put clues together.
Sound (9/10):
Ok, the first OP was horrible, I could never sit through it, but the second OP was much better and fit the shonen type anime a lot better. I never watched the ED so I can't critique those. The reason why I rated the sound so high is due to the Maidens' songs, sure, the first time you hear some of them (West Maiden's Innocent Blue) it might be a little high pitched, but it grows on you, just like all of them. The best has to be Northern Maiden's Monochrome, I highly recommend that to be added to anyone's playlist.
Character (7/10):
The characters in Star Driver are very cliche, with Takuto representing your "I can find happiness anywhere" (I hate to say this, but another Naruto), Sugata representing your darker character with a lot of unwanted responsibility (almost like Sasuke, but definitely not as moody), and Wako representing your stereotypical shojo character, with multiple love interests and a hungry stomach. These are the main characters, but you can definitely draw connections from the characters in this anime, to others (Mrs. Watanabe= Rangikou from Bleach for example). So, the characters don't really stick out, and as you can see, I can't even remember their full names. There really is no character development so to speak of, the only one being Mizuno and she's not even around for the full series. Everyone else stays in their stereotyped roles and never budge from them, no resolutions are made.
Enjoyment (9/10):
I had been trying to find a good anime for a while and Star Driver didn't fail me. I was skeptical at first due to the character designs and other recommendations, but the first episode got me hooked. You just have to laugh at everything, I mean, having your superhero type being called "Galactic Pretty Boy"? You know that's thrown in there just to make fun of bishies, and they do play around with that, especially with all the silly, stereotypical poses. Warning, this anime's main focus is not on the fight scenes, so don't expect much from them because they'll always be a let down (except for the last episode, that wasn't that bad). I guess the thing to keep in mind are all the quirks throughout the anime, some of them are pretty good and I know you'll enjoy it as much as I did.
Overall (8/10):
I just averaged all my other scores and came out with an 8, but I think I would give this anime a 9. It really wasn't bad if you're not expecting a deep story, but something light and funny. The animation was consistent and actually pretty good, if you can get over the stretched style (which is good for making fun of bishie characters). Overall, just sit back and relax and enjoy the comedy.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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