[DreamSword]

Star Driver the Movie

Well, here we are. At the thing that sank Star Driver as a franchise.

See, when the movie was first announced, it was advertised as a follow up to the anime proper. Something many fans really wanted.

And so the movie opens with a five minute scene of Takuto fighting Cybodies in the real world. The animation, atmosphere, and action are all excellent. And it makes for a wonderful way to open the movie and get the audience pumped.

But then what the viewer proceeds to get is a two hour compilation movie that has maybe about ten minutes worth of new footage. With alot of that new footage consisting of both the opening that I just talked about as well as the credits showing the Maidens reuniting. It goes without saying that fans were upset.

The review could easily end right there, because afterall, that is essentially what this is: A compilation movie, with all the good and bad that comes with that. And I won't lie that getting denied a proper epilogue gets under my skin a bit too, but as I've said many times before, I personally try to observe a piece of media for what I believe it's actually trying to do, rather than trying to make it my own.

As such, I'm going to judge it solely by compilation movie standards because, believe it or not, compilation movies do serve a purpose, and they can infact be done well. I've seen many of them. Heck, I still plan to watch some others that are in my backlog. Mecha shows in general are no stranger to them. Most notable in this regard is the Gundam franchise, wherein every other entry of the franchise tends to get a compilation movie or two due to just how popular the original Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy ended up being.

Handling this sort of thing can be a tricky business, however. The aforementioned Trilogy, for example, worked so well because not only was it three whole 2+ hour movies dedicated to covering the entirety of the original anime, the structure of said anime resulted in alot of dry air, dead spots, and just plain unimportant scenes that made for easy cuts or edits. You can honestly watch the movies in place of the actual anime and miss close to nothing.

On the other hand is stuff like the Zeta Gundam: A New Translation trilogy of films, which not only cuts the run time of each movie down by alot compared to the original Gundam's' movies, but also cuts out alot of context from the original anime that will leave the viewer confused on alot of fronts if they haven't seen said anime. And that's not even getting into how the movie outright retcon the ending of Zeta Gundam proper. It makes watching the movies next to useless other than if you're someone who cares solely about key events in and of themselves rather than any sort of character context.

With all that said, I unfortunately must deliver the news that the Star Driver movies is alot closer to the Zeta movies in terms of execution rather than those of the OG Gundam ones. Now, that's not to say there was a complete total lack of effort here or anything like that. Like I said, the opening of the movie is rather well executed. There are some new scenes animated for the film to make the pacing of the plot flow a bit better as a movie, and there are even some brand new or otherwise edited lines of dialogue to help in that department too. But unfortunately, this sort of thing was somewhat doomed to fail from the start. Because summing up Star Driver in one movie just feels not possible.

Now, two movies that are both about two hours long? That I could've seen working. Because there are a small handful of episodes in the show that you could almost entirely cut and not missing much. But Star Driver's' plot, while not its most important aspect, well plotted out rather well throughout its 25 episode run. As-is, so much content and context is cut that despite the effort to make things flow better, alot of stuff just gets lost. The biggest thing being almost the entirety of the second half of the show. For example, Head's' coup to put Vanishing Age on top is entirely gone, which makes him keeping Keito's' identity a secret make to sense. Heck, almost all of Keito's' arc is cut out too, which means she barely qualifies as a character in the context of this movie.

It honestly made sitting through this movie really tough for me, because all it meant was that I was seeing a way lesser version of the anime that I just got done thoroughly enjoying. Analyzing it was a bit interesting I suppose, but just like, watching it? As a viewer? For entertainment? I feel bad for anyone who decided to see this movie first. I feel like it's an example of the exact sort of thing that the people who try to skip "filler" in shows don't realize that they're asking for. Heck, even as a standalone piece, there's so little in the ways of characterization and development that it made it tough to care about anything going on. And that's a major shame because the characters really are where Star Driver shines most other than debatablely its soundtrack. And it's not like alot of the mecha fights are maintained either.

So, yeah. I really can't recommend this movie on any level, unfortunately. Maybe if you're a fan and you're just really that curious about the new footage and what edits were made, but even then I'd say watch the movie at double speed. Such a shame that this was how this potential franchise had to go out.

But hey, atleast its theme song is nice.