Shine On: Oban Star-Racers Flies High with Kickstarter
Animation has come a long way in the past fifteen years. Whether it’s the phenomenal strides in storytelling made by Gravity Falls and Amphibia, or the vast breadth and depth of content anime has provided, there’s certainly something for everyone nowadays. However, it’s important to appreciate the trailblazers, the classics, and the unexpected hits. Oban Star-Racers happens to be all three, and celebrated its 15th anniversary with a very special Kickstarter project – the release of the entire series on Blu-Ray!
Oban Star-Racers premiered back in 2006 on ABC Family’s Jetix block, and took place in the far-off year of 2082. Technology has advanced so far that space travel is common. Humans and aliens have come into contact with one another and waged war, only for a grand being known as The Avatar to intervene and stop it, allowing the two civilizations to fight for their future as part of a grand race host to all the best pilots in the galaxy. The greatest racing coach on Earth, Don Wei, is picked to represent the planet in the great race. At the same time, Don’s estranged daughter Eva escapes from the orphanage she was placed in to find and reconnect with her father. However, Don doesn’t recognize her and is about to send her away, and so Eva lies about who she is, claiming to be a mechanic named Molly, and so she is allowed to stay and help the Earth team. Molly’s technical prowess and excellent piloting skills eventually lead to her being the Earth team’s pilot, and the only hope to stop her home planet’s destruction.
Whenever I describe this series to friends, I always call it “Podracing: The Anime”, which isn’t much of an exaggeration. The series is largely focused on the races between Molly and the other aliens, however it’s not always a simple race to the finish. Varied race types, tracks, arenas and racers all make the races incredibly fun and interesting to watch, and every race is unique. However, as mentioned earlier, there is also a more personal element to Oban: Molly and Don’s relationship. Their broken bond propels a lot of the series’ personal drama, and you are always pulling for them to reconcile, and for Don Wei to recognize just how impressive his daughter has become. Beyond personal drama, there’s also an element of intrigue to Oban Star-Racers, in the mystery surrounding the true nature of this space racing tournament. All three elements of the series are entertaining and engaging in their own right, but put all together Oban Star-Racers makes for a truly memorable one-of-a-kind series.
On the technical side of things, Oban Star-Racers is just as unique. It’s a co-production between France and Japan. The series was written and co-directed by Savin Yeatman-Eiffel, designed and co-directed by Thomas Romain. Savin Yeatman-Eiffel is a true fan of racing and sci-fi, as well as a descendant of the man who designed France’s Eiffel Tower! Yeatman-Eiffel and Romain’s love of anime spurred them on not only to create their own anime with Oban, but to produce it “authentically” by working with Hal Film Maker, Inc. in Japan. Hal is comprised of former staff from Toei, the studio that made Dragonball and other iconic titans of the anime industry. Oban Star-Racers carefully weaves 3D animation in via the races, with all the ships being rendered in 3D via the French studio Pumpkin 3D. Not to mention, the series was dubbed into several dozen different languages across the planet, making this an absolutely global series. This multinational approach came with its own set of challenges, but clearly none were so insurmountable that it prevented Yeatman-Eiffel and his team from delivering anything less than a masterpiece.
OSR Intro from Sav! The World Productions
SAVIN YEATMAN-EIFFEL
However, in recent years, being able to watch Oban Star-Racers has been more difficult. The series was released on DVD across two sets back in 2008, but has since gone out of print. I was lucky enough to have found and bought the series at a Walgreens back in 2012, but if you are looking to buy it now, you may be out of luck. The first half of the series is readily available secondhand, but the second half has become extremely rare and expensive. All the more reason people have come out in droves to support the 15th Anniversary Blu-Ray Set on Kickstarter! Within the first hour it launched, the project was funded, and at the current time of writing this article, the Kickstarter has made almost ten times its initial goal, and has broken a whole host of stretch goals. We here at RGN99 reached out to Savin Yeatman-Eiffel to ask him a few questions about the Kickstarter and the series in general:
JOSHUA BRAFMAN (JB): Where did the idea for Oban Star-Racers come from?
SAVIN YEATMAN-EIFFEL (SY-E): After working for a couple of years for French animation companies, while I was finishing my studies at the FEMIS (the French National Film School), I realized I really liked animation and remembered how much the Japanese anime series I saw on TV as a kid had a strong impact on me (Candy Candy, Grendizer, Captain Harlock, Future Boy Conan etc.). But creatively I wasn't very happy. Youth programming was very restrictive in what creators were able to do or write. So I told myself either I'd create something special in animation I really could care about, or I'd go back to my initial career plan: live action films.
That was the starting point.
Then I started thinking racing (something my former boss had at one point asked me to write about for a potential new show) could be a nice package to reassure investors while I did what I really cared about - i.e. creating a rich sci-fi world, with a gallery of very different characters coming from different planets, and, above all, a touching coming of age story in the middle of all staring a young tomboyish teenage girl. It's a kind of character one never got to see on TV at the time and which I partially based on my girlfriend at the time - who was also very tomboyish, with big issues with her dad (a point we shared in common).
JB: What was it like collaborating with multiple countries to bring Oban to life?
SY-E: We had German investors, English Investors, US investors, French investors and Japanese Investors. And getting them all on the same page wasn't easy. But what we did was develop the show in great details beforehand so we could avoid any misconceptions. Either people liked the world we created and we'd be happy to work with them, or they didn't, and in that case, it was better not to carry on any further with them. I'd seen too often before good potential shows being ruined because each investors had its own different understanding of what the series should be like.
But maybe your question was aimed more especially at the creative teams?
We only had two countries involved there: France (main creative team and 3D animation) and Japan (main animation studios (2D) and postproduction). The language difference, the different work habits could really have spelled the doom of Oban, no matter how much I was passionate about working with Japanese animators and artists. But it worked because we were all working together in the same space. The main creative staff from Sav! The World left everything behind and moved to Japan to work hand in hand with their Japanese counterparts for more than 2 years. We made the effort to adapt our ways to theirs. And as we got to know each other better, understanding and mutual respect grew. The two teams were gradually able to merge. After a while, there was no longer a French team and a Japanese team but just the "Oban Team".
JB: Who is your favorite racer from the original series?
SY-E: I like all the characters I created. But if I really need to make a choice, outside of the obvious choice of Molly herself, I'd say Spirit, Lord Furter and Rick Thunderbolt.
Episode 11 is one of my favorites. Very dark, moody, with this super weird and unusual alien racer - Spirit, who looks like an obvious villain but is much more complex and surprising than that.
OSR Episode 11 from “K”
Lord Furter is just plain fun, and Rick Thunderbolt so "uber cool".
JB: What was the process of bringing Oban to Blu-Ray like? How long was this project in the works before it was made public via Kickstarter?
SY-E: Very long, tedious and costly.
It started about five years ago with the digitization of the original video master tapes, and their restoration as we realized they were damaged in places (luckily, we had two different sets - on with breaks in English and one without breaks in French). Then began the long quest to recover as many available dubs as possible, starting by Japanese. I could have released the Blu-ray with only two or three languages but I told myself there probably wouldn't be another opportunity like this one and I owed it to all the fans who'd be happy to watch the series in their native tongue again.
And it’s a good thing that I did because in view of the terrible state I found a lot of these dubs to be in, when they had not been lost for good, a few years more and there probably wouldn't have been any bubs left to worry about.
I only decided to go forward with the Kickstarter when all the rights for these elements had been secured and we had fully restored and re-synchronized all the dubs we had. It was a much bigger financial risk, but I didn't want to lie to the fans or promise them things I wasn't sure I could deliver in the end.
JB: The Kickstarter has been wildly successful - Is there anything you can tell us about the future of Oban Star-Racers?
SY-E: Well, we've been thinking about doing a sequel very early on. But the market wasn't ready in 2006-2007. If Oban did quite well in terms of ratings, and had very good reviews, the broadcasters were a little worried, I think, about financing more episodes of show that, behind its action/sci-fi facade, dealt with a number of deeper and more emotional issues, and was aimed at a large audience than just kids. There's this idea that you know shows primarily aimed at kids should not bother with anything emotional. On the contrary I believe it's very important to be honest with kids, to get them to feel things, and enlighten the on the complex world around them. But especially then, that was a little too much to ask of all these pin stripe suited executives.
After Oban's 10th anniversary we started playing around with ideas and designs more actively again. But we lacked both funding and time as all the original creative team, myself included was also busy with other projects and commitments. The success of this campaign really makes us want to do more now, especially as we're going to be able to put some money aside for more development.
Two other encouraging factors are, on the one hand, that the market has changed and is (little) more open to shows that chose to go off the beaten track, and, on the other, that Sav! The World has now recovered all Oban Star-Racers distribution rights worldwide, which wasn't the case until very recently. This enables me to begin to thinking strategically about the way I want to develop the world of the Oban for the future, which I couldn't really do until now.
I am truly thankful to have gotten to ask one of my favorite creators about the series I grew up on watching. Thank you, Mr. Yeatman-Eiffel, for taking the time to talk with me. I myself am a huge proponent of the preservation of physical media, so anything that keeps this or any excellent series in print absolutely has my support. If you’ve ever been a fan of Star Wars, racing anime, or great interpersonal drama, I urge you to support the Kickstarter for Oban Star-Racers, to ensure that you have this animated series now and forever. Kickstarter releases tend to be difficult to get a hold of after the campaign has ended, like the Wakfu series Blu-Rays (even if it past its goal). So don’t wait – show your love for this passion project years in the making!
More to the point, this Kickstarter is said to be encouraging future productions set in the Oban Star-Racers universe, such as the project that was teased at the 15th Anniversary event in France not too long ago, showing the main cast of Oban Star-Racers as young adults. The art is extremely well done, and makes me excited for the future of this franchise. However, I suppose only time will tell what’s written in the stars for this racing animated series.
