IGPX WTF?

IGPX was Toonami's first, and, to date, only original series. It was an original animated series on Toonami made by a top Japanese animation studio Production I.G. This should have been a hit, but it wasn't. I didn't watch it the first time around, so maybe it was my fault, but I did watch it last year on the new Toonami because IGPX had achieved my dream and I needed to know because the future of 7th Moon depends on how IGPX fared. After watching the full series with the dedication only a true Toonami Faithful can muster, I figured out what went wrong, it didn't have enough action. I mean, the racing scenes themselves are spectacular, the best animation of it's time, but the majority of the show was exposition and the characters fell flat. I don't want to blame the voice actors, it's not their fault, they have all proven themselves on other projects, but the only one who really seems to bring his A-game is Tom "Spongebob" Kenny as the announcer. I blame the writers and directors who lowered the intensity in non-racing scenes. For starters, the entire series is simply about a sport and what good sportsmen all of the competitors are off the track. I have seen other anime series and they generally up the ante every time, Prince of Tennis treated a simple backhand like it was Kamehameha, even Yu-Gi-Oh turned a card game into a life or death battle to save the world, the first episode where grampa trains Joey had more intensity than any episode of IGPX. Toonami says it's more about action than anime, but they went and got an anime company to work with them on this and kind of failed on both counts. At the time, IGPX aired during the afternoon and was aimed at kids, so the message of good sportsmanship was probably important, but compared to what Toonami fans were expecting, this was weak, no war, no end of the world, no maniacal evil villains, just plain old sports, even the athletes don't always seem to care. There were some interesting story seeds that popped up, but ultimately nothing grew.

Cat vs Dog - Quite possibly the most interesting sub plot that never amounts to anything is the fact that pilots can use an animal co-pilot who connects cybernetically to form an artificial telepathic connection with their human. The reason this doesn't amount to anything is only two pilots in the entire scope of the series ever take advantage of this ability and the only reason we actually care at all is that one of these pairings is Amy and her cat Luca on Team Satomi, the team of the main characters. The other is Bjorn and Sola the dog of Team Edgeraid, who aren't on very often and are only memorable because the network that allows Luca nad Sola to communicate with their humans also allows them to communicate with eachother and they have more inensity than any other rivalry shown in the entire series. If there had been another season, I would have liked to focus on them, and most importantly, explain exactly how the hell anyone ever came up with this technology in the first place and most importantly, who was the genius who decided it was a good idea to use this technology specifically for pets to co-pilot racing mechs.

Takeshi and Fantine - Main character Takeshi dates Fantine from rival Team Skylark. It seems an interseting Romeo and Juliet on paper, but plays out pretty boring. Fantine is too focused on being a racer and tries not to let her relationship with Takeshi get in the way, and eventually dumps Takeshi because she needs to focus on racing. The whole thing is especially lame because neither of them even seems to care, they just get back to racing. What is interesting is how Takeshi's other female team mate Liz gets jealous and finally steps up for her man Takeshi, but it takes them the rest of the series to finally address it. Still, as half-assed as it is, the last-minute romance of Takeshi and Liz is probably the most believable thing that happens in the entire series.

Takeshi vs Cunningham - from the very beginning this is the rivalry to watch, the reigning champ from Team Velshtein vs our main hero for the title. They know it, we know it, and after they say it in the first episode, nothing really happens. Takeshi pulls out his victory over Cunningham, but it's pretty anticlimactic. Cunningham vows to get his title back, but he gets overshadowed by Team White Snow and they are such good sportsmen, Takeshi and Cunningham just do not have the heat of true rivals.

Satomi vs Sledgemama - Sledgemama are the de facto bad guys,the team you want to see lose because they are jerks. The best moment for them is when River leaves Satomi and joins Sledgemama. River is a second string pilot, the only one ever mentioned in the entire series. River is better than Takeshi on paper, but for some reason he doesn't get to race and that pisses him off so he quits and joins Sledgemama so he can race against Takeshi. This is probably the most intense rivalry among human characters in the entire series, but again, sportsmanship and underuse of the characters involved takes the wind out of it. Then Sledgemama blows their badass reputation by defending Takeshi and his team from rabid fans claiming that they save their dirty ticks for the race and the fans should respect all racers. With that, Team Sledgemama are nobodies again.

Max Erlich of Team White Snow - This character is the definitive supervillain of the series, but only shows up halfway through. White Snow replaces Team Black Egg, who are not particularly noteworthy and deserved to be replaced. White Snow turns out to really be just Max. She has two other team mates who race for official reasons, but Max does everything, and does it well, until Team Satomi figures her out and Luca the cat hacks her back and sets up Team Satomi for a nail-biting finish. Sadly, despite Max's technical potential, there's no real malice, just a simple selfish childish desire to win.

Okay, so towards the end, things pick up, but it's too little too late, the story of good sportsmanship works in the real world, but in Toonami, wedged between Dragon Ball Z and Gundam, IGPX just wasn't up to snuff. Now, tell me the nation that backs the IGPX winner rules the world or that the losers die and their nations suffer in slavery, that would have gotten me interested. I promise 7th Moon will bring what IGPX did not, and become the series that it should have been.

Note to Jason DeMarco and the rest of the people at Toonami who made IGPX, I know you guys know a lot more about what you are doing than I do, and I don't pretend to know better, this is just a viewer's opinion.