PopSyndicate.com

If you want to watch a cartoon where people zoom around in a blatantly ripped off pod racer, then boy, have I got the cartoon for you! Oban Star-Racers tells the tale of an Earth in jeopardy. Locked into the losing side of an intergalactic battle with a race called the Crog, Earth is desperately looking for anything that can give us an edge. But lucky us – twenty-five years ago an ancient and mysterious being named the Avatar invited us to compete in a competition called The Great Oban Star-Race. Sure, no one took his invitation seriously and we slacked for the entire quarter century, but Star Racing just happens to be the planet-wide pastime on par with NASCAR .

In preparation for this great event, Earth has sent its finest: Don Wei, a champion coach with a estranged daughter; Rick Thunderbolt, the megalomaniac of a pilot; geeky mechanics Koji and Stan; Jordan Wilde, the gunner, and last but most definitely not least, Eva Wei, Don Wei’s estranged daughter.

Episode one opens with birthday girl Eva breaking out of a bleak boarding school to find her dad. Unfortunately, when she does find her dad he doesn’t even recognize her. Eva takes the name Molly and stows away on the ship leaving for a planet called Alwas. The entirety of the first season takes place on Alwas, home to the qualifying rounds of the Great Star-Race. Rick is seriously injured in the first race, and – you guessed it! – Molly takes his place as pilot. Through the first season the team destroys two ships and encounters a wide array of alien species. The alien designs are well done and varied (the stands at a race resemble the Senate chambers in Episode I but as the concept and even sound effects for the racer are taken straight out of Episode I, it wasn’t too surprising). Among the aliens are a shadow creature, a steam engine construct, a humanoid cat girl (whose weapon system is, inexplicably, Dance Dance Revolution), and what appears to be a Mystic from The Dark Crystal.

My main problem with the show (aside from the fact that the characters had no noses) was the morality surrounding the grand prize, which is no less than the granting of any wish. Molly, thinking as a fifteen year old would, wants to bring her mother back to life. And why wouldn’t she?

But the real worry is in the governments involved. The Earth government keeps the true nature of its wish a secret, although it is bound to have something to do with the Crog. We are led to believe their plan is dark, almost sinister.  The Crog seem to have something nasty up their sleeve where the wish is concerned. Then there’s a third party who doesn’t want the humans to succeed – could it be the great Avatar himself? All these questions are left to the second season, as are the race’s final rounds. I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how far someone could take something so general as ‘a wish’. With governments trying to destroy each other and the very basis of life and death at hand, I probably took the issue further in my own mind than the creators of a Jetix cartoon intended.

The extras are a few, but minimally interesting. A making of featurette, racer profiles, concept art (which are stills from the show still in pencil) and a sneak look at season two, it’s definitely the 13 episode show itself that makes the DVD set.

3