Air Gear

Information of Anime

After being humiliated by a group of Storm Riders using Air Trecks (AT for short), Minami Itsuki (aka Ikki) of the East Side Gunz decides to get some revenge & takes one of the Noyamano sister's ATs.  Using their emblem "Sleeping Forest", he enters into a Storm Riders battle with little knowledge that he betted on his sister's team's existence & it was one of the legendary Storm Rider teams.  After winning the battle, Ikki is drawn into the AT world & decides to form a team himself with his friends.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I have seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

The story mainly focuses on Ikki's progress on his AT skills.  Being a newbie to the AT world with his quick improvements in the E-Class, he has drawn a lot of attention to the A-Class & is rumoured to reach status of a Road King of the AT world.  As Ikki gets involved in many battles & wars with a number of victories, he believes that ATs shouldn't be used for battles.  To follow his path of flying, he creates a team, Kokarasamaru, with his friends & a couple of his former rivals.  However, Agito causes problems for the F-Class team by angering a top E-Class team control most of Japan's area, Behemoth, into a parts war battle.  Amazingly, Ikki's team wins & takes large chuck of that area.  Impressed, Simca decides to take her team, Genesis, & merge it with Ikki's & make him the leader.  Ikki, in a shocked state, doesn't know he accepted & now has a team with a lot of storm riders in it.  From there, a lot of storm riders have different views of Ikki in terms of accepting him as a leader candidate to Genesis.

My Personal Review

Air Gear is another work from Oh Great! & uses the strange idea of having inline skate battles.  I've never read the manga, but the anime isn't too bad.  It's got some ecchi contents & hentai references.  Although it's censored with Ikki's crow, I'm not sure if there will be an uncensored version in the future when the DVDs come out.  Also, the shows does have some coarse language.  The show is best suitable for teens & older.

Animation

The character designs are pretty close to Oh Great!'s work.  The girls look good, but they seem to be missing the touch that makes Oh Great!'s work so sexy & appealling.  However, the show does have SD or similar style for the characters which was pretty cute & funny.  What's more funny is how the crow used for the censoring flies around to cover those "areas".

The backgrounds are pretty good.  However, they don't have much details as they are pretty plain.  For the colour toning, it's not too bad as the colours don't crash between the background & the characters.  However, it's a bit dull even though it's colourful & almost bright.

The animation movements are pretty good.  Very smooth even at insane fast paces.  However, the positions performed for the actions look weird at times.  One example is the scene where Ringo accidentally pushes Simca into Ikki's face.  I can't imagine how Simca would get into that position when being pushed from behind.

Sound

The sound effects aren't bad.  Pretty clean & clear.  There is a mixture of realistic & silly sounds in the show.

The seiyuus here need some getting use to.  A majority of them are new to voice acting, so some of them may not perform their character role's properly.  One of them for me is Ringo.  She doesn't seem to have a lot of impact & her voice was a bit hard on me.  Took some time for me to get use to it.

The music is pretty good & creates the mood of the show very well.  It's a mixture of rock, techno, & hip hop.  It really fits the show well.

Story

It mainly focuses on Ikki's progress & the world of ATs.  A lot of people have been saying that it follows the manga very closely.  Although Ikki doesn't care much about the battles, wars, or reaching the top, he gets involves in these battles.  It would be interesting to see how his path will reflect in the current AT world as there have been some people following his path as well as how he will lead his team.  Although his sister tries to stop him from forming a protect in order to protect him from the AT world, Ikki's determination to make one is pretty much a strong point to the show.  Also, there are some "trick" terms that I don't know if they are real or not.  But it makes the show pretty interesting this way with the moves.  However, as the show goes deeper, it seems the plot is lost as the show tends to go around the place.  There's basically too many small arcs occurring in the show.

Things pick up a bit after Ikki gets selected to become the leader of Genesis.  It picks up on the story a lot.  Things get interesting at the wrong time though as the show ends openly with Ikki starting to change the minds of some storm riders as accepting him as Genesis' leader.

Aside from Ikki's road, there are some love humour involved.  These include Ringo loving Ikki & Ikki loving Simca.  There is even some yaoi of Akito loving Ikki & it's very direct.  By direct, I mean closed mouth-to-mouth kisses.  It's pretty shocking & funny at the same time.

Overall Conclusion

Air Gear is a nice anime show to watch, even for the laughs.  Although the idea seems lame of having inline skate battles, it's actually pretty intense.  If you like Oh Great!'s work or want to see something uncommon in anime shows, give this one a whirl.

Air Gear gets a 8/10.  The show is pretty interesting even though the idea is pretty weird.  The idea is pretty much the lost point area.  What draws me to the show is the jokes.  Although they are pretty childish & ecchi, they are still pretty funny.  But, the show ends with an open-ended ending.  If you want to continue with the story, read the manga.

Last updated on December 19, 2007