History WesternAnimation / ObanStarRacers

* FantasticRacism: Inverted, every alien race seems to hate humans, or just treat them as inferior.

* FiveManBand: The Earth Team [[spoiler: especially after Rick leaves]];
** TheLeader: Don Wei, Type I
** TheHero: Rick at first, later replaced by Molly and becomes her BigBrotherMentor.
** TheLancer / TheBigGuy: Jordan
** TheSmartGuy: Stan and Koji
** TagalongKid: Molly starts off as this, plus RookieRedRanger.

* HideYourLesbians: Ning and Skun are strongly implied to be a couple. Since they come from a OneGenderRace it makes sense. Of course, since this show was playing on ToonDisney and ABC Family, the most romantic thing we see them doing is holding hands.

* XanatosRoulette: Canaletto's plan involves [[spoiler:emotionally scarring a girl with the right background, then ensuring she is the one to represent her planet during the races, and counting on her to win so her scars will cause her to reject the role of Avatar so he can steal it for himself.]]
** He ''does'' have limited prescience. Too bad that doesn't include [[spoiler:what [[SpannerInTheWorks Jordan]] would wind up doing]].

* TheEmpire: The Crog Imperium, which prior to the Great Race had already plundered the resources of Rush's planet, forced Aikka's planet into submission, and attacked Earth simply because they thought humans were getting too powerful.

* OptOut: [[spoiler:Molly and Muir]] before the final race.

* TheAce: Rick Thunderbolt, who is [[spoiler:taken out of the race in the second episode and eventually incapacitated so he'll never race again]]

* ChekhovsGunman: [[spoiler: O]]

* CoolOldGuy: Satis/Super Racer

* DarkIsNotEvil: [[spoiler:Spirit]]

* FiveManBand: The Earth Team [[spoiler: especially after Rick leaves]]

* GoodScarsEvilScars: Kross' scar across his right eye is partially used to differentiate him from Toros, but also makes Kross more intimidating that him.

* MissingMom: Maya

* MusicalAssassin: Ceres
* {{Necromantic}}: Molly and Muir both want to bring back a loved one with the ultimate prize. [[spoiler:When it's revealed that this isn't possible, Muir drops out of the race completely.]]

* NitroBoost: Aikka uses a spell on G'dar to the same effect; the Whizzing Arrow's hyperdrive.

* BoringInvincibleHero: Averted quite nicely; The Earth team is not only a dark horse at best, they've also spent time at the very bottom of the rankings and lose against better racers often.

* {{Novelization}}: There is a novel adaptation that covers the first six episodes of the anime, but it's only available in French and there's no word as to whether the remaining twenty episodes will be novelized.

* JerkassFacade: Don Wei was a very nice man before his wife was killed. He started acting mean to protect himself from the pain, and other people, too.
** JerkWithAHeartOfGold: He's very rarely pleasant, so he's mostly just a jerk.

* BenevolentPrecursors: The Creators [[spoiler: In short, they made everything that exists and set up a system to keep it safe before they died out]]

* RedeemingReplacement: [[spoiler:Jordan isn't a direct replacement, but his grandfather William Wilde is regarded by history as a traitor on the order of Benedict Arnold. At least in part, this motivated him to join the military in the first place]]

* [[WellDoneSonGuy "Well Done Daughter" Gal]]: Eva's motivation for most of the series is to get back the love Don Wei denied her for ten years. The irony is that Don doesn't know she's his daughter at all until well into the latter half of the series.

* [[WellDoneSonGuy Well-Done Daughter Gal]]: Eva's motivation for most of the series is to get back the love Don Wei denied her for ten years. The irony is that Don doesn't know she's his daughter at all until well into the latter half of the series.

* ComesGreatResponsibility: The Avatar. [[spoiler:Being a godlike being with a 10,000 year lifespan and immense magical powers sounds cool at first, but it comes with the price of protecting the galaxy alone until a new Avatar replaces you.]]

* AwesomeMcCoolname: Rick Thunderbolt. Jordan C. Wilde qualifies, too.

* BlessedWithSuck: The Avatar. [[spoiler: Being a godlike being with a 10,000 year lifespan and immense magical powers sounds cool at first, but it comes with the price of protecting the galaxy alone until a new Avatar replaces you]]

* DeathCourse: The race track in episode 4 is this. The first trap is a series of huge spinning turbines, the second is a [[IndyEscape giant, rolling boulder]] that can only be bypassed via flying through a whole in its center. This is followed by tunnels with swinging blades, a guillotine door, collapsing buildings and then a whole freakin' ''labyrinth'' of guillotine doors.

* TheArcher: Aikka's magic arrows are his greatest weapon during races.

** JerkassWithAHeartOfGold: hes very rarely pleasant so hes mostly just a jerk

** Well in a series of races where magic arrows, lasers and machine guns are allowed it helps more than you would think

* NeverSayDie: Played straight most of the time, with one notable edit in the US broadcast; in episode 14, all lines about Toros comitting suicide were cut out.
** Ironically this just leads to the implication his superiors pulled a YouHaveFailedMe

** And before him there was Flint, whose victories were only due to the judges fixing the races in his favor.

* TournamentArc: Two: the Alwas cycle and the Oban cycle.

* WholesomeCrossdresser: Eva was this while at boarding school by wearing a boy's uniform. This caused Don Wei, who hadn't seen in her in ten years and did not recognize her, to mistake her for a boy.

* YouKilledMyFather: Molly's attitude towards Spirit, the racer who she thinks is responsible for her mother's death. She wrecks the Whizzing Arrow when she faces him, only to learn the truth when he shows her the events of that day through his eyes. Later, however, it turns out that [[spoiler: Canaletto was responsible for Maya's death.]]

* HilariousInHindsight: At the beginning, when Satisse welcomes the Earth Team, Don Wei says he didn't expect the Avatar. The real Avatar? [[spoiler: It's not like it's hard to guess or anything.]]

* FemmeFatalons: Skun has these.

* SingleBiomePlanet: Played straight with Alwas, but strongly averted with Oban.

** Eva, for her part, [[spoiler:failed to bring her mother back from the dead, but she did finally come to accept her loss and reconcile with her father.]]
*** [[spoiler: Also a {{Government Conspiracy}} covers up what happened which means that humanity might be even less prepared for the race in 10,000 years along with the fact that the conspiracy wanted to use "their" new Avatar for human supremacy]]

* FakeUltimateHero: The flamboyant Flint is the track favourite on his homeworld of Alwas, and, along with his gunner, Marcel, is believed by everyone there to be unbeatable. However, when Molly actually races him, she quickly learns his true secret to success: the judges fix races for him by deploying traps that only affect the challenger. When trying to play fair fails, Molly decides to goad Flint into proving his "skills" by flying into the traps; he promptly crashes.

* FrothyMugsOfWater: Several instances of this occur throughout the series. In the first episode, Rick is holding a champagne bottle that had its color changed to blue in the US broadcast but was left unchanged on the DVD release. Likewise, the tavern on Alwas is a popular hang out for the heroes, but none of their beverages are ever referred to as alcohol (Molly's drink is "grenadine milk," Rick's drink is "o-fish soda.")

* GenkiGirl: Para-Dice, an energetic gaming CatGirl whose star racer is controlled by a ''DanceDanceRevolution''-style gamepad.

* HeterosexualLifePartners: [[ThoseTwoGuys Stan and Koji]].

** {{Jerkass with a heart of gold}}: hes very rarely pleasant so hes mostly just a jerk

** Ironically this just leads to the implication his superiors pulled a {{you have failed me}}

* SmallNameBigEgo: Lord Furter proves to have a severely inflated opinion of his own racing ability, even though he knows he cheated his way into the finals.

* MacrossMissileMassacre: Para-dice's racer fires swarms of missiles, tipped with ''[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotAwesome cat emoticons]]''.