A striking passionate pilot helps lay the ground work for one of my favorite anime, but is still important on its own.

I've watched this pilot numerous times throughout my life, thinking back it was one of the earliest videos I saw on YouTube as a child once I was getting more used to the website. While the pilot obviously predates YouTube's creation, I think it living its second life on the site helped it be seen by an entirely new audience, especially with the knowledge that this later became Oban Star Racers.

Maybe it's evidence of this being a different climate for animation at the time (in spite of the 3D animation looking goofy for today's standards it still looks impressive considering the time and the stylized art style helps it hold up), but to get across the basic premise of your story with no vocals in under 5 minutes? It's a huge achievement. This makes me think about the indie animation scene these days, and how we get equally elaborate and impressive works that often have to be a fully polished product in order to get attention. I feel like these standards rising can make budding creators more paranoid about putting their works out there, but the standards raising isn't anyone's fault of course. I can respect works being done now as well as Molly Star Racer, it just exists now as an interesting point in time where standards were different for pilots.

It's honestly just impressive how much was crammed into this short, everything syncs to the fast paced eurobeat music which fits the vibe of Oban like a glove. I'm a fan of a lot of Molly's expressions as well, with the way she moves and acts while racing you get so much information as to what her character is even if she doesn't have a voice. Not to mention some of the stills we see for what, only 2 seconds that show Molly's mother, snapping her out of her daydreaming and getting her back into the race? It shows you Molly's character and her motivation to win this race immediately.

A comment I remember seeing long ago was lamenting how the tone of the pilot wasn't kept for Oban Star Racers, and how it delved too much into melodrama. There will always be a difference in opinion regarding how pilots are able to evolve their vision to a full series, but knowing what I know now about animation, I never expected that Molly Star Racer's vision would have worked if it wasn't changed before getting a full TV run. It's not even to say change is a bad thing, and there will always be sacrifices when working with a major network and tons of resources, but I respect Oban so much because it never gives the feeling that it was affected by having to overly compromise on their initial vision.

Savin Yeatman-Eiffel and Thomas Romain are two a-list creatives in my book and if I still feel this highly about a short, consider this an open invitation to watch Oban Star Racers to see what this evolved into. I'm keeping this review focused on the short though, but it's difficult due to the character limit. Oban Star Racers in of itself turned out to be a great product on its own, and I think it wouldn't have got this way if not for the fact that so much of the initial concept was nailed in this pilot. To talk about Molly without talking about Oban is near impossible, so I figured, why avoid it? Both works are important and worth your time.