Anime Review: Air Gear, Volume One

Comedy isn’t one of my favorite genres in anime, although I do like comedy. I usually have a hard time finding one that isn’t fan service driven or tedious and mindless. I don’t know if Air Gear is supposed to be a comedy, but it made me laugh more often than not. Air Gear isn’t a straight up comedy in any way, I don’t think, but the style and delivery of many of the lines are damn funny at times.

Air Gear Volume One DVD: The Uncensored Version

Ikki is a down on his luck high schooler who lives with the Noyamano sisters in the Tokyo suburbs. He has a rough time living with the three sisters and an even rougher time getting banged around at school by rival gang members. He narrowly escapes being body slammed to his doom by the leader of the Air Trek gang (shortened to AT to those in the know) known as the Skull Saders.

Air Trek is the latest craze with the youth in Tokyo. Resembling nothing more than glorified roller skates, AT is in fact a technological wonder. AT makes roller blading seem like riding a tricycle in comparison. This new craze let’s its users achieve fantastic heights and perform aerobatic tricks. Inside each of the AT are bits of technology which let the riders kiss the sky.

After his degrading humiliation at the hands of the Skull Saders, Ikki discovers that his “family” has been hiding a very tasty secret from him: the three sisters are in fact members of the legendary AT team Sleeping Forest. Sneaking away into the night with a pair of the sisters’ AT, he stumbles upon a group meeting of Tokyo’s AT users, aka Storm Riders.

Unbeknown to him, Ikki proceeds to commit a fatal error by slapping Sleeping Forest’s emblem over another Storm Rider’s team emblem. The emblem in question just happened to be located on the booty of the toothsome Storm Rider, Samica. Sadly, the rival team’s emblem belonged to, you guessed it, the Skull Saders The result is a head on confrontation with the Skull Saders in an AT battle.

After trouncing the Skull Saders’ leader with his exquiste beginners luck, Ikki becomes addicted to the rush AT gives him and vows to start his own team of Storm Riders. Ikki still has a lot to learn about AT but he’s not alone on that journey and what he lacks in experience he more than makes up for in passion and sheer stubbornness.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a particular fan of sports anime. I’ve always detested sports in real life and have never seen the appeal of doing that one worse by sitting on my butt and watching it. Sports anime seems anathema to me. Yet, Air Gear was actually really, really good in the sense that it transcended its genre and seemed to be more of an action/ battle oriented anime rather than a sports oriented one. But then again, roller skating/blading or skateboarding looks like too much fun to me to ever really be a sport. Air Gear made me want to rush out, buy some roller blades, and dash madly around Forest Park in an attempt to get the same high Ikki captures his first time using AT. That, to me, pardons Air Gear of any association with sports anime.

Aside from the rush and the adrenaline AG gives its viewers, Air Gear also offers up some really funny gags in the deliveries of the lines and in the scenes. I had a good laugh when Ikki was challenged by the head canine of the Rez-Boa-Dogs team. I laughed some more when Ikki was being terrorized by the tank-like leader of the Yaohs and I about wet myself when Ikki’s slutty looking homeroom teacher says out loud what she deserves to have done to her for being so stupid.

The animation for Air Gear is 100% shonen. The overall designs hail back to the original manga which was run in Weekly Shounen Magazine, starting from 2003 to the present. Actual characters in AG can be very stylized at times and almost brutish and violent in appearance. Then, when you start to think the anime has taken a decidedly mature turn, expressions soften and melt back to their original boyish charm. It’s enough to make a person think that AG has multiple personalities.

I really liked the soundtrack for Air Gear, not so much because I like hip hop (I’m no fan, really) but because it goes so frick’n well with the fast paced action. The music, like the story, keeps coming at you like the inevitability of death and taxes. I like that. I don’t think I would ever listen to the soundtrack by itself for itself but whoever produced the soundtrack knows what they’re doing.

Watch Air Gear with the subs. Do not press dub, do not stop at go or collect $200. Do it in subs and you’ll appreciate this anime all the more because of it.

Air Gear, so far, is another anime that’s surprised me with how well done it is. Anything that makes me sit up and pay attention in the first five minutes deserves the additional devotion to finishing the series. I’m praying to the god of Good Endings and Sound Plot Lines that all goes well in the next 22 episodes, because lord knows that a lot can happen in 22 episodes!

Volume One gets outta a possible four gummies.

We’d like to give a shout out to ADV for letting us screen Air Gear! Thanks guys!