HIGHSPEED Étoile, a different kind of anime in many aspects that I don't even know from where to begin hehe. (I'll try to keep it as simple as possible, it's also mostly a personal review).
First of all, I'd like to express what I felt while watching the races; as a fan of speed those races made me want to drive, even for once, a racing car, but that's unfortunately impossible where I live. That feeling of hype, thrill, a bit of adrenaline rising inside was really nice! I wonder if the cars in the future will be actually like in the anime, they looked so awesome! If I had to choose a car as a favorite that would be probably Rindou Rin's car because they changed it to manual and I would 100% change the color to dark purple!!! ~~I hate pink, I really do...~~ She looked so confident and danced while racing; feeling the rhythm of a music track in her head, harmonizing that rhythm on every difficult turn while controlling the speed and changing gears; I mean dude that's f@cking crazy! On the last episode, her race with Lorenzo (aka 'The King') had a bit of suspense before last laps and the "fight" for the 1st place made me a bit anxious, but I kind of already knew who would won.
Other than that, as an anime the animation was good, I liked the 3D because we don't see that too often, it suited well with the main purpose of the genre, but story wise...it was meh. I think it lacked something, like we don't know anything about Rin's grandmother, who now runs a restaurant, and we saw on one episode a picture she has in a frame on the wall her with Mr. Genjirou, one more gentleman and an old manual car. Also, we didn't learn many things about the past of other characters either; like how was their life before the career they decided to follow etc.
Either way, each character is really unique, I'm glad that Nana Mizuki gave her voice for Alice (aka 'The Queen') and sing the opening (you can check her video clip right here: link ). The music and OST in the series were pretty okay, I would listen to them again while chilling. The bond between the characters is friendly rivals, it has its comedy, a bit of slice of life, food (some were looking really delicious too).
To continue on, my personal score for the anime is 7.5/10 (75/100), the reason I give it that score is because I like driving/speed and the anime gave me a good taste of that, the story lacked something as I said above, I liked the animation, the characters and the music!
All in all, HIGHSPEED Étoile is not that bad and it needs a chance watching it! It doesn't matter if you're a fan of sports, cars or anything; if you find the description/trailer interesting, give it a try! I would rewatch it, at least once more, just to feel again that thrill of speed thanks to Rindou Rin!
Thank you for reading my personal review about HIGHSPEED Étoile, I hope you have a nice day/night!~
