Alright Star Driver, what’s your plan here? It seems clear that we’re setting up our thematic conflicts along lines of sexual agency, but the details are a little less certain. Southern Cross Isle’s fated shrine maidens feel like a very near reincarnation of Utena’s Rose Bride: icons of the feminine, passive figures that are acted upon in the fulfillment of some ancient, patriarchal ritual. By “breaking the shrine maiden’s seal” (ie taking her virginity through the imposition of masculine power), Star Driver’s equivalents of Utena’s student council hope to extend the theoretical power of the Cybodies into the physical world.

All of that is well and good, and pretty much maps to a neo-Utena interpretation of the action so far. But calling out this show’s parallels with Utena is easy; at the moment, I’m more interested in pinning down the ways Star Driver differs from Utena, and thus might be proposing a different argument. I’d initially figured the two sides of this conflict mapped cleanly to traditional versus progressive gender presentation and sexual agency, but if anything, the nefarious student council seem more uninhibited than our fairly chaste lead pair. Of course, everyone involved here is a teenager, and thus none of them really know what they’re doing; the stark contrast of their self-presentation and stated goals might itself be part of the point, reflecting their attempts to aesthetically embody a sexual maturity that they can’t emotionally reach yet. And of course, this complex stew of thematic variables is pure candy for me, so I’ll be happy as long as the show stays weird, layered, and ambitious. Let’s get right to it!

Episode 3

That bright pink school is quite the landmark, even from out on the water. Putting a pin in that; it seems like Star Driver might explicitly value flamboyant self-expression or ambiguous gender presentation, given the whole “galactic pretty boy” thing

Kanako teases Takuto about her married status, with the soundtrack laying on those quintessential “seduction horns” and the soft focus presenting the classroom as literally filling up with steam. It’s interesting that her being married is the axis of her seduction – like with the shrine maidens, it seems like the old guard explicitly connect sexuality with “the forbidden,” and thus the thought of trespassing in another man’s marriage is the height of sexiness

Her husband is named Leon Watanabe, quite the title

“The head of the famous Grand Tonerre Foundation.” So is her husband their financier, then?

“He’ll be turning 65 this year. His lifestyle demands he never leave Paris.” Well, that might be for the best

And Class Rep tells her to shut up. Lots of fault lines among the enemies

Takuto has no money for lunch, and so Ruri lends him her croquettes

Meanwhile, Kanako is literally receiving a haircut from another student. The way aristocratic class relationships are directly woven into their high school dynamics is interesting, and represents another way this show echoes Utena. The “bubble world” of adolescence and high school is somewhat punctured by these reminders of real world class relations – and given their familiarity with these hierarchies, it wouldn’t surprise me if these students thought they were equally mature for their age in other ways

When the class president asks her to stop, she responds with “you’re as conservative as ever.” It’s not a particularly fitting line, more intended to once again underline the philosophical conflict dividing these two. Interesting that the Order has both conservative and progressive elements – you’d think that would be the dividing line of our protagonists and antagonists, but it’s apparently not

Kanako offers Takuto a part-time job after school, and the whole main gang decide to tag along

Her “house” is actually a luxury cruise ship parked in the harbor

Her husband wants her to return to Paris, but she blows him off. She’s quite frank about their relationship – he’s old and horny, she’s young and ambitious, and they can each provide what the other wants. An entirely transactional marriage – her command of her sexuality might be audacious, but her marriage falls into a traditional model

The pool houses an alligator named “Baroness Juanita.” Happy to be here, Enokido

Apparently Kanako engages in a lot of stock trading. So she’s not just a trophy wife, she actually makes great money in her own right

A mishap with their rat/fox thing leads Takuto towards a fencing duel with one of Kanako’s attendants, named Takashi

Kanako offers to kiss him “through the glass… without the glass” if he wins. I like this “through the glass” device as a symbol of the mediated sexuality of adolescence

Takuto’s opponent is aggressive. Terrific choreography and animation for their battle, really putting these slender character designs to work

Kanako is bored by their match, because “neither of them are playing to win.” She seems to see herself as beyond the play-acting world of high school, but her very preoccupation with her own “adultness” emphasizes her actual youth

Her title in the order is “President of the Otona Bank”

As expected, she’s financially backing their operations

Star Driver also carries on Utena’s preposterous framing devices for the council meetings, with all the members here engaging in some kind of leg-crossing war as they discuss current events

Simone, Kanako’s other attendant, urges Takashi to challenge Tauburn directly

Ah, I see. She wants Takashi to seize the glory of leadership for himself, and surpass Kanako in the process. So even her servants are scheming against her

Of course, Kanako’s got cameras everywhere, and confronts Takashi in the very next scene. She’s not particularly offended by his disloyalty; defeating Tauburn is more important. I suppose Kanako of all people would have to be understanding of purely transactional relationships

Meanwhile, the Order’s leader and his caged lady are continuing their story about Sam the fisherman. “There was only one ship on the fish planet that could travel to the galaxy, and it was owned by the king.” The promise of escape from a provincial prison, echoing the show proper’s cage of adolescence and the island. This feels more like Utena all the time

The king declared that whoever killed the Squid Emperor would be granted a wish

Takuto stares at a photo where he’s hugging two unknown kids, and asks “did I come to this island so I could protect her?” We still know almost nothing about Takuto, and it’s clear he’s hiding some key connection between himself and the organizations at work here

Ooh, great shot drawing a direct parallel between Takuto and his father’s painting. Takuto stands outside and stares at the sky, making for a direct mirror of the woman in the picture

Once again, I really love these robot battles’ unique style of shading, with lots of ostentatious full black fills used as accents for the shifting metal. It really makes the designs pop, and when you combine it with these battles’ aggressive pose-to-pose style of movement, the overall effect is something like the last couple episodes of Gurren Lagann

Apparently Tauburn wields both the eleventh and twelfth “star swords,” in a duel wielding combat style. Utena made significant hay over the phallic significance of the sword, but we’ll have to see how much Star Driver cares about that

Takashi’s robot is clearly modeled after a samurai in full robes, and it dies appropriately, collapsing after a climactic trade of slices with Takuto

Iiinteresting. The leader asks Takashi “how did it feel to use the electric bier even though you have an emblem?” So it seems Takashi might be on the level of Takuto himself, and also that there’s a secret sub-alliance beneath the surface of the Order

And Done

And so our gallant hero falls under the eye of the salacious Kanako! As a woman who’s clearly in full, gleeful control of her own sexual agency, Kanako inherently dispels any theory that the divide between Tatsuko and the Order will fall on a purely conservative/progressive boundary line. What the Order seeks is more complicated than that, and like Utena’s own student council, the individual actors here all clearly have their own secondary objectives. At this point, what I’m most hoping for is more information on Takuto himself – he clearly has a history with this island, and until we know exactly what he’s doing here, it’s hard to invest in his journey on more than a superficial level. Either way, Star Driver has constructed a fascinating world over its first three episodes, and I’m already impatient for more!

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