So this show was pitched to me as basically fusing Utena with Gurren Lagann. Which is certainly true, it wears both of those influences on its sleeves. Of course, those are both all-time classics that redefined their genres and one of them is probably my favorite show full stop, so I mean… I don’t want to pretend Star Driver lives up to those.
Now they take inspiration from a lot more places, those are just the most obvious ones; Gurren Lagann for visual style, Utena for overall plot flow. And really it makes sense, magical girl and mecha anime actually work well as a fusion. They share a tendency to use ritual to excuse to recycle animation, and tend to use similar episode-to-episode construction (ie monster of the week), so the main differences are in background plot and presentation. So Star Driver says “Why not both?” Magical girl transformation sequences, mecha attack recycling. Hotblood, relationships.
They try their hand a bit at the Evangelion “do cool stuff with ancient mysteries using some obscure mythology” thing, but it doesn’t really matter too much one way or the other. Around the time not!Haruka and not!Michiru showed up reinforced something I sorta wondered early but almost forgot: a lot of the plotting with the Kiraboshi is actually filler, because Star Driver is a lot more concerned about properly pacing the high school drama. Which actually kinda works for me? But it’s a funny thing to notice. “Oh hey we really need some time to flesh out the secondary cast and make sure Wako’s dilemma doesn’t seem too sudden, let’s introduce some fresh antagonist to fill out four or five episodes”.
Weakest Episode- Adult Bank. The character drama is the main draw, so this being our main introduction the Bank cast is a big letdown in hindsight. Like on the whole they’re probably actually the most interesting faction, but in this one they seem so shallow and petty and don’t really have any hints of the aspects that make them work as the show goes on. Or at least that’s how it feels just skimming some episode summaries to do the writeup.
Although really when I say the high school drama works, I should really be saying that they succeed in getting me to care about Wako, and so the goings on of her friends are interesting because she is interested in them. And really there’s not a major trick here, Wako manages to walk a fine line in a way that just worked for me. She’s extremely quirky, but without any one quirk being overwhelming- somehow to me it balances out to someone who just seems… human. To paraphrase, she’s often a cowardly, selfish crybaby who wants to live more honestly with herself.
Best Episode- The Trio’s Sunday. Following from that, here’s Wako just getting to run the show more or less. The magical supervillain shenanigans exist only to let Wako threaten them, several scenes are designed as a string of heart melting lines, and on the whole it’s the calm before the series enters into finale buildup mode.
One thing some folks that had seen the show mentioned when I was starting is that while it stayed pretty decent, it never really improved much from where it started, which… yeah. Some of it is what I was talking about before with the overarching plot being there to pace the character drama, some of it is the finale proper being kinda weak, using predictable parts less than optimally. I could really have used just one more scene after where they stop as well. Like… ending on Takuto and Sugata just saying “hey being alive is fun” is nice and all, but lacks any sense of catharsis. It didn’t have to be anything spectacular even. Like just end on them and Wako in a hug even? Something else.
I’d be negligent if I didn’t close out talking about music though. By about episode 3 I’d added Monochrome to my daily listening, and all four shrine maiden pieces are quite strong. Indeed, this goes back to the weakness of the finale, they bring back Monochrome but don’t really time it very well to the action. Ditto Komorebi no Contact. It’s great to bring those songs in, but never really to the same effectiveness as Monochrome was in the first few episodes.
Granted I’m spoiled by the comparison to Gurren Lagann there. That show’s finale clearly animated two scenes to some key music, then redid those scenes for the movie when they used different music for them.
Rating- 7/10. So very close to the 8, but just never delivers enough of an emotional climax to cinch it.
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