This just finished up, so it’s time to write about it! In the 1st episode, we got introduced to a lot of things about the series, but now the championship starts. So, how does this year’s NEX-Race series play out? Can Rin find success in this series? How will the two rookies do? Can Alice overhaul Lorenzo to win the big prize?
Let’s find out.
So to start off, the story is actually surprisingly simple when comes down to too it, but that’s what you get when you have a series completely focused on racing. It pretty much focused solely on Rin trying to get her 1st win, which doesn’t start out well. After taking a picture with fellow rookies Kanata and Towa, Rin starts her in 1st race… and spins almost instantly. To add to that, her pace is not very good, as she basically lasts the entire race, and she gets DQ’d for not following race protocol regarding blue flags.
From there Rin ends up meeting Alice in an episode, and it kinda highlights a problem in the early going; Rin is TOO much of a dork. I expected her to be somewhat of a dork because Alice is kinda a badass. at least when it comes to a series like this, but good Lord, her not recognizing Alice at all was frustrating, to say the least.
Anyway, after that episode and meeting Lorenzo in an episode that was similar to the Alice episode, but better because he disguised himself, so Rin’s dorkyness was at least excusable, we end up racing in Monaco. Rin begins to prove herself a bit, though she did get a lot of help from a tuned-up Ami, her tuned-up A.I assistant thanks to Chitose wanting to impress the Owner of the team. However, she did seem a lot better here all things considered, and almost got a podium, but had to settle for 5th in the end.
Actually, that’s one thing I’ll fully defend this series for, the animation is amazing and makes better use of it being fully CGI than most other anime I’ve seen. There are some really good camera shots with the cars here that had me very excited to watch each racing-based episode. And there are some cool moments with the characters, like Rin’s head bouncing when she doesn’t want to finish last and the summer break episode where the characters all get put in the spinning G-Force machine of death.
I do hope that Studio A-Cat, and King’s Creative make a slice-of-life anime with these animations, it would be a delight to see.
Speaking of the summer break episode, Rin uses it as a chance to hang out with Kanata and Towa, who I haven’t mentioned much outside of the picture because sadly get no development in the show which is a shame because character-wise and design-wise I love them, they are basically polar opposites, Kanata the one with overflowing passion and Towa the one with the more methodical touch. And yes, I am aware there they have a spinoff manga that talks about their time in racing school, no I have not be able to find translations. It sucks for me, because the summer break episode talks about them needing to find their driving style, and Kanata felt like the closest to it. She’s the definition of “checkers or wreckers”. She always goes for the gap if it increases her chances of winning, and of course, it ends up going badly for her quite a lot of the time. She’s the most fun driver to watch in this show for me. Towa doesn’t talk much, but she consistently finishes races in the top half of the field, which ends up netting her some top 5 finishes which is good to see.
Anyways, after an episode where Sophia takes centerstage, we get a nice episode where they pay tribute to the Toyota 2000GT where it’s shown that Rin’s driving style is more akin to manual style, as she gets to grips with the 2000GT, while while ami and Gen make some adjustments to the setup. Sadly, Rin doesn’t get to try it out as the setup suggested by ami is quite extreme, and her car shuts down as the next starts in Shanghai. This gives us time to focus on Youran who’s a bit more interesting than Sophia, whose episode is nice, but it amounts to the idea she’s blessed by luck and that’s the beginning and end of it. Youran’s episode actually goes a bit into how she was one of the best prospects from China but has been unable to live up to that for the time being, at the end she manages to take a win from Alice, but Lorenzo did retire from the race, as he is not really good at night racing. Every king has their weakness I guess.
In any case, the last 3 episodes focus on an original track in Osaka, where N.E.X Race was born. After some bonding between ami and Rin due to ami setting a time for her in qualifying, the final race begins with Rin towards the back, but she works her way upwards towards the front and even passes Alice for the lead, who is 3 points off the championship. However, Lorenzo after an awful start begins to work his way up the field, and ends up battling Rin… only for a lightning strike to happen, taking out the AI in the cars… including ami.
The race eventually restarts and after a pitstop goes wrong for Lorenzo, he has to catch up to Rin, but Alice refuses to give up, until her tyre blows up, putting her out of the race. What doesn’t make sense is that she pulls over instead of just going back to the pits despite there being only 3 points in it. Though that kinda sums up the 2nd storyline of this show being the whole Alice VS Lorenzo thing, which I kinda wish was the main story, given how nice the friendly rivalry is, but it’s a case of Alice is trying to get to where Lorenzo’s skill level is… but isn’t still quite there, and honestly, it’s just one of those things that needs more time than these shows have to develop that sort of arc.
Speaking of which Alice and Lorenzo are fine character-wise. Alice’s character is that she’s very American… and that’s the beginning and end of her, but she’s at least a fun presence, and Nana Mizuki’s voice acting really helps in this regard. Lorenzo has bit more going for him the fact that he’s the best driver in the series, but he also kinda is tired of not being challenged. I do wonder how much of him wants to be beaten by the rest of the field on a consistent basis, as he does really want to spend more time with his son by the sounds of things.
Back to the episode, Rin is trying to fight Lorenzo with everything she’s got but it seems to be not enough… until ami is finally successfully rebooted, and the 2 of them work together in the last corner, and Rin is able to just beat Lorenzo for her 1st win, and keep herself in the series, though the owner of the team wants them to go for the drivers’ championship next.
The ending theme for the show is Fanfare by SCANDAL, which is ok, but visuals really help here, as they change things up depending on the episode. For example in the episode where they do the 2000GT tribute, they have Rin chase that car instead of her race car, it’s neat details like that I can appreciate.
After the credits of the last episode, Rin discusses with Hikari what her nickname should be… settling on HighSpeed Etoile, due to her past as a ballerina. Also yea, despite being a Primastella, Hikari is still part of the team Rin is on, it’s never explained, but she does give some… interesting motivation to Rin in the last episode.
As for Rin herself, while her dorkyness is a bit annoying, as it got toned down more and more, I found her pretty likeable. She’s clearly a bit insecure due to her past, which sadly isn’t brought up much outside of the 2nd episode, but I at least enjoyed every time she was on screen, she’s pretty fun to be around.
In fact, that’s how I would describe HighSpeed Etoile in general. An anime is just very fun to watch. It’s not perfect for sure, there are a lot of characters that are just there because they needed someone to fill that role, the commentators don’t sound excited at all, and some things are just left unexplained. And I do admit, I have a love of racing which probably helps me in liking this anime more, but there’s a lot of good racing animation, the voice acting is really good, particularly for Alice like I mentioned before, but Izumi Fuuka does a great job in her 1st lead role as Rin, you can tell when she happy and sad easily, and the character dynamics are fun to watch on screen. It’s a fun show that I’m sure will leave you smiling.
And that’s that! Good time watching a seasonal, but that’s not the only seasonal we have to talk about, because next time here, I’ll be talking about Rinkai! Should be a good one.
But for now, thanks for reading and I will see you next time.
NMarfoBlogs 