éX-Driver (éXD) - エクスドライバー

 

TL;DR the Anti-Knight Rider

Not all heroes wear capes.

This one is a kid that sometimes wear goggles and happens to drive a freakin' yellow Caterham.

In a world where robotaxi "AI" electric cars are the norm, select teams of licensed "gasoline" drivers are in charge of saving passengers victims of rogue or othewise runaway self-driving vehicles. 

You would expect high-tech remote systems, but very little of that here : they stop cars by chasing and circling them, most of the time taking care of blocking sensors by projecting some kind of gloop.

That future is sadly now. I hope Teslas would stop too if their cameras were blocked by a gloop-gun. Fool around and find out... I guess.

Our boy Sōichi works with teammates Lorna who drives a Lotus Europa, and Lisa who drives a Lancia Stratos after crashing a Subary Impreza WRC in the first episode.

Car details are excellent, and production went as far as recording actual engine sound for each of them. 

Harmless entertainment from 2000, consisting of only 6 anime episodes of 24 minutes and 2 films from 2002, of which a short 34 minutes prequel. 

It took me a night to remember how I sumbled upon the series last year. At some point in August I was looking for Seven cutaways when I found superb manga-style art on Pixiv.net. I also decided to re-watch the last episode of The Prisoner, and went to learn all about the Sevens used in the series. 

That in turn led me to IMCDb.org that features an image from Dragon Ball where Krillin and Bulma drive a Lotus Seven. From there, I looked for a higher resolution of that drawing and found the éXD Caterham JPE, finally landing on the éX-Driver series. 
As I got a superb upscale of that Dragon Ball Seven from ChatGPT this morning, I will post it here below.

When we visited the Caterham factory, we discussed how the future of automobile would probably look like what is depicted in éXD : driving a car would become a leisure similar to riding a horse today. Irony is not lost on me that they just released the |HORSE| powered Academy prototype, and that I jokingly teased them with the prospect of finding a new engine in South America, thinking it couldn't be anything other than a japanese manufacturer.

I'm writing this blog post now as this new Youtube video from MKBHD "Investigating the Tesla Robotaxi!" made me realize I never took the time talk about éXD.

In September I got myself a nice éXD poster for my home office, and also found a pair of original animation "cels" for a good price. I'm glad to see that 10 months later the $300 ones aren't selling. I should probably snag the few available 'cheap' ones.

If you're still reading this, you'll enjoy watching it all. We're talking 4 hours total. 
Spoiler alert : not only heroes drive Caterhams