wait remember obon star racers you know what's better than the eiffel tower obon star
racers and let me tell you why it was created written and directed by savin yeetman eiffel
and he's literally the great great great grandson of gustav eiffel the architect
of the eiffel tower eatman eiffel created obon star racers premiering it in 2006.
it was a french japanese and english anime that follows the action-packed hero's journey of a
young speed demon ava in an intergalactic race for a very substantial and highly sought-after reward
with a tragic backstory resulting in her mother's untimely death ava is left to the hands of a cruel
boarding school after her dad decides to abandon her in his shared grief for the loss of his wife
the first episode starts off with ava escaping the boarding school and searching for her father
eventually she ends up working for him under the alias of molly as she is too nervous to
tell him who she actually is under the watchful eye of her father famous racing manager don way
ava must fight for both her father's respect as well as the fate of planet earth
including all of its population quite a lot of weight on her shoulders i love sci-fi and
i haven't been shy about that here on the channel at all so this show has always left a nice little
wait remember on my heart ever since it came out so drivers welcome to 2082 start your engines
and enjoy as we deep dive into this memorable series here's our big moment shake a leg molly
yeah it was good to see you too obon star racers was initially created as a short animated film
with a run time of about two or so minutes titled molly star racer it's really more of a music video
or anime opening more so than a short but it gives off that amv vibes of the early days of youtube
just you know before youtube was ever a thing yet it showcases the characters technology and worlds
that they explore in this futuristic concept created in 2001 the short was very successful
like we're talking view numbers in the six digits again before youtube and it even won the london
animation and effects festival award as well as a nomination for best editing at the 2002
imagina awards which kickstarted its production in success as a standalone television series
by itself obon star racers won many awards as well being fairly highly rated across all boards
for an animated series the time in between the 2001 short film and the release of the series is
attributed to the difficulty eatman eiffel had while financing the project with different
corporate companies and their very strict artistic differences it took him nine years from the series
concept in 1997 to its last episode in 2006. eventually he had to give in to corporations
like disney and bondi but managed to keep a lot of the artistic control of the series as a whole the
partnership between a french production studio and a japanese animation studio was seemingly unlikely
and uncommon at the time and initially the idea yeah eiffel had pitched was not fully understood
but after the success of the short film in 2001 as well as the recent worldwide obsession that the
japanese franchise pokemon was receiving at the time adding to that the growing spread of anime
across the world the show was much more heavily marketable and desirable to an executive audience
yeah eiffel's love for classic anime and the push he gave to fight for having this to be as close
to his original vision as possible is admirable beyond belief sticking to a traditional 2d
animation style instead of going with the 3d look was not an easy concept to convince for a project
like this especially as 3d animation was starting to take over more and more on top of that fighting
to keep ava as a girl rather than the studios pushing back against that to have her character
change to be a boy to fit the perception of their network's audience it was truly a splendid race
we'll be right back to obama's star racers on gen x now back to home on star racers on
gen x eva is our main protagonist voiced by kiarazani she is a young 15 year old girl with
face tattoos piercings and has a head of red and black dip dyed hair as we established earlier she
breaks out of her boarding school and escapes with her father to an off-world interplanetary
inner species race for the biggest award in all of the galaxies ava or molly if you will is a
headstrong and naturally gifted star racer but she initially didn't join the team under that title
in fact as a stowaway in their space travel to the initial pre-selections don way was satisfied
with giving her the job of backup mechanic as she seemed to have superior knowledge of star racers
that is until their star racer rick thunderball yeah that's his real name wipes out in the first
race and with sustained injuries is unable to represent earth in the future races with literally
no other option and i mean no other option molly takes the place as their pilot and don
way was really alphaed by his daughter because he didn't really end up getting much of a say in the
matter he's just you know forced to accept that after learning of the ultimate prize as well as
earth's fate should such power fall into the wrong hands he is forced to let molly have her way with
the race in the competition don way played by ron halder is an abrasive old man who in the beginning
of the series can't seem to make a good decision to save his life initially he doesn't want molly
to pilot because well as he put it you know perfectly well how i feel about female pilots
which initially i was like all right hold up but as we learn later on that his wife eva's mother
was one of the best star racers but she died tragically in a racing incident so it's probably
residual trauma from that so it's hard to get mad at him for any of this i guess still though come
on molly acts as a typical rebellious daughter figure and the two enter a very archetypal groove
of a father-daughter relationship despite molly's hatred toward don and don's frustration with her
not knowing who she truly is they both seem to act like they have never spent a day apart the two of
them have enough angst for the entire series as a whole just between the both of them and their
negative feelings on both sides actually ascent their bond and lightness as father and daughter
they are too similar in so many ways and on top of that molly also shows the same attitudes that
maya her mother did this sets off many alarm bells in donway's head throughout the show
as he reflects on his relationship with his family onto her often leading to him having difficulty
acknowledging when she's right or when she has done a good job the words i'm proud of you don't
seem to exist in his lexicon nor my parents i talk about cartoons on the internet people
other characters include rick thunderbolt the original star racer sent to represent earth
voiced by michael dobson in the first half of the series he becomes a mentor and the only
positive older male figure in molly's life that we know of he is super cool and mysterious with
various tattoos and sunglasses got long hair and not to mention his cool way of speaking so
i heard you kept my seat warm jordan no not me is molly's co-pilot but instead of the steering
wheel he has the big blasters because in the great race of obon you're allowed to
fight dirty and he's voiced by sam vincent the host of the race the avatar mentions that as as
long as you don't show intent to kill another racer that violence is allowed molly and jordan
bond as teammates and become close and did they just throw romantic feelings in here too
anyway the two of them have to learn to work together being the team out on the field
bringing home the bacon and all then we have the love interest that molly seems to be more involved
with prince aika of norasia voiced by kirby moro is a young dashing and charismatic prince from
another planet who sweeps molly off of her feet and has a bit of a rocky time finding his standing
with molly from friend to rival to enemy to rival to enemy back to friend then to arrival again and
this is this is exhausting but i guess that's what chemistry just looks like the final two characters
in the series are the two mechanics stan and koji two polar opposite yet essential members
of the team no literally molly totaled their ship called the arrow and the two of them had it up and
running like brand new and only like what two days later it takes four men to change a tire in nascar
give these two a raise they are voiced by dexter bell and alessandro giuliani the show captures
a real sense of character not shying away from deeper and darker undertones emotional
relationships and more the designs of the ships characters and the world play a major part of what
makes this show so special eatman eiffel wasn't the only director here in fact the other person
who would jump in those shoes is also the one responsible for the overall look of the characters
thomas romain if that name sounds familiar to you it's because he's responsible for creating code
lyoko a show i am covering very soon i know i get asked about it a lot i'm working on something very
special for it so don't worry it's coming soon but back to what i was saying you can clearly see his
work between the shows have a bit of similarity i think that's a cool little fact that adds some
more fun to the production of the show what are you waiting for we have a race hov on star racers
weekends on shitx let's see what she's got
the show premiered on the jedex block of toon disney and abc on monday june 5th 2006 and aired
for a complete series of 26 total episodes in one whole season and boy oh boy is it a beefy
season all in all the story focuses on them roughing out the emotional bumps and forming
a team with trust between each member the most taxing relationship obviously being between molly
and don each episode holds something new a new lesson that each character needs to learn or a new
understanding that is made between characters it flows fairly well and doesn't seem to become
too repetitive or uneven in pace obon star racers seems to have a great narrative flow and balance
between racing content and content off the tracks it follows an overarching theme and progresses
to its suspenseful reveal nicely the emphasis on character backgrounds and relationships is always
something anime tries to accomplish and this show did it right allowing each character to have
depth and room to grow this in turn made me more invested in the series and raised the stakes for
the final few episodes not to mention the world building is incredible and reminded me a lot of
the environments that avatar the last airbender was able to create and that's a huge compliment
i really appreciated that we were given the time to look at the different planets and locations the
earth team was able to travel to the art style is also incredibly beautiful the characters are drawn
heavily stylized with no pupils or evident noses which came about after having drawn so many alien
style concepts over time the artistic team wanted to create a unique style that was heavily anime
but also something individual to their production eatman eiffel actually wasn't particularly looking
to create anime in his work initially early in his career he attended a film school in london
and interned with an animation studio in paris where he found himself frustrated in
the process of editing scripts he found that they were all lacking a certain emotional or
thoughtfulness to them having been put through the corporate ringer he was really craving that
certain style that japanese anime offered in terms of storytelling specifically he was inspired by
the shows that slapped his generation in the face in the mid-1970s they contained emotional stakes
and heavy drama that made animation impactful and memorable he decided to lean into that emotional
side of production and embrace the storytelling aspect that so many anime are able to achieve
the series in my opinion told the story it set out to tell and told it to completion but that
only means that a potential sequel would benefit from focusing on another story in the beautiful
universe of planets that obon star racers has established although there is no confirmed sequel
or spin-off it definitely would have a market to do so in fact it has been teased in 2017
yeetman eiffel announced on twitter that they were working on a potential spin-off series along with
some pretty beautiful and enticing art and i'm not gonna lie it looks great but it's obviously
been a few years since then so it may have been placed on the back burner for right now but the
original creators and yetman eiffel were on board for workshopping ideas in creating concept art so
who knows we may get more of this in the future along with the announcement of a potential sequel
eatman eiffel has also been promoting a kickstarter for a 15-year anniversary blu-ray
release of the series with bonus background music tracks different dubs basically all the content
you could want packaged together it seemed to be pretty successful racking in just over 370
000 euros as it was just recently completed in february of 2022 we can probably expect the 15th
anniversary blu-ray to be in production soon in addition there was a multiplayer flash game
created by little loud in 2006 and then later a mobile game was created by de valley entertainment
and produced by eatman eiffel's company saab the world there was also whispers of a nintendo ds
game in production but that was also rumored to have been cancelled for artistic differences so
let's just chalk that one up to a rumor and lastly there was a game titled obon dream created for the
ps4 and available for access within the dreams game creation system by sky isle studios along
with games there was a bit of merchandise released surrounding the series including a molly mutt pop
collectible figurine and an art book that was released in march of 2009 it goes over
a lot of the concept design pre-production and world building that a viewer may have missed in
watching the series the show today is remembered very fondly and sports quite high ratings on sites
like imdb and rotten tomatoes which is impressive considering cartoons tend to get harsher ratings
but i'm not surprised in the least the show itself is easily one of the classics that i
can find myself re-watching every two to three years like i do with avatar the last airbender it
has something special in it and i think it's the passion put into each layer of it ending on a true
note of self-discovery knowing who you are and not regretting the journey that got you there what do
you think of the series what would you like to see in a potential sequel go ahead and let me know in
the comments below thanks so much for watching make sure to hit the like button and subscribe
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