Ex-Driver

[Layla's Keeper]

Hey. Has anyone picked up on this hysterical bit of anime? Its plot is paper thin (a future where automated cars now are ubiquitous on the highways, except in the rare, but in the series's case frequent, occurence when one goes out of control. Then a government team of specialists who still recall the lost art of driving go out and stop it with an assortment of handheld gizmos and their fast cars) but the driving sequences are topnotch, plus all the cars are accurate. The three stars are hot-headed chick Lorna who starts out in an ex-WRC Impreza (straight down to the paddle-shift sequential gearbox) but she racks it up hard, so she gets a Lancia Stratos as a replacement. Her partner is the soft spoken and very pretty Lisa, who drives a Lotus Europa. They later get a sidekick, a kid whose name escapes me but he drives a Caterham Super Seven.

There're plenty of other cars in the series, too. Most of them just sitting in the garage of the team. It's a lot of fun to watch. If anyone here is familiar with the anime/manga Oh! My Goddess, its creator Kousuke Fujishima was the mastermind behind Ex-Driver, and lead artist to boot. (Although Oh! My Goddess isn't really a racing anime, either. The sidehack racing scenes from the movie, plus the lead characters old BMW motorcycle had to be seen to believe. The detail was just incredible!)

[Monkey-Magic-S15-R]

i'm downloading it sounds mad ..........only got EP2 tho

[HondaChili]

i watched the whole thing recently, i admit the cars were drawn nice, but the animation just sucked!!!!
i mean cmon this is supposed to be an OVA guys.... why are the movements sooo choppy?
and on top of that they actually tried to give the characters some well.... CHARACTER!!!! trying to stuff in a whole story line in 2 half hour episodes isnt what i would call a great anime.
my opinion this anime was just a waste of my time.
next anime i would like to check out is over rev
i heard thats supposed to be good.

[Monkey-Magic-S15-R]

over rev whats that about ?

[Layla's Keeper]

I never said it was great, just funny and full of nice cars.

[Monkey-Magic-S15-R]

EX drive was abismal the drawings where pants and the plot was dumb

the cars where nasty

[DriftAE86]

i have both DVD collections, and the movie. i love ex D and i cant get enough! the sound is top notch, the animation is great on the movie (not sure where you saw those choppy ones, did you DL them from the net? if so that would be why they are so choppy) and there are more than two episodes, there are six.

i know the guy working on translating over rev. thats another good one.

[NSX-R-SSJ20K]

sorry i disagree EX Driver was terrible

Whoop dee doo some old Lotus 7 and a bunch of other ugly cars.

No real relavance to car racing just had cars in the plot.

[Averux]

Ex-Driver had great potential but instead of hiring writers they put roving monkeys with typewriters in charge of the storyline. What was that in the last episode about how great it is to be able to drive gas powered cars? I was laughing my @$$ off at it but not in a good way. And if they could put all that technology into the cars why couldn't they put a kill switch in it? There were serious plot holes. I liked the characters (except the done-to-death-little-brat-who-knows-everything), I liked the cars (except the Super 7), but the story is almost painful to watch. I have the OVAs, I wonder if the movie would be any better.