AIR GEAR

DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

ANIME ActionAir Gear
OVA ActionAIR GEAR: Kuro no Hane to Nemuri no Mori - Break on the Sky
SPECIAL ActionAIR GEAR Special
ONE SHOT ActionAir Gear - Trick:358

REVIEWS

• 

  biogundam

  66/100
  rollerskating on crack

  Warning: This review contains minor spoilers.

  First impressions: When first hearing about Air Gear, I immediately thought the premise sounds really cool, despite the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of sports series. Fortunately, Air Gear’s one of the few exceptions to the rule, due to how successfully it jumps the shark (pun intended), in taking the idea of competitive roller skating and elevating it with the addition of an increasingly more insane superpowered battle-shounen dimension.

  Story: 6/10
  Air Gear goes from 0 to 100 extremely quickly, with the first chapters, up until around chapter 80 probably being the series’s peak. They not only do a great job of portraying the urban street punk nature of the setting, but they’re also when the series is at its most grounded and creative in how Ikki and his team strategize and employ different tactics in order to prevail in competitive matches against other storm riders. If you like high octane street fights, you may want to take note of this series.

  Now where things start to take a nosedive is after Ikki and crew start making a reputation for themselves, despite not actually having done much by that point, or even being that skilled. It’s then that people in the local storm rider community start to think that Ikki’s destined to eventually become what’s called the sky king, the hero that will become the most powerful storm rider that ever lived and give humanity wings. At this point in the story, we’re also introduced to a rider team known as Genesis. Genesis being a conglomeration of numerous teams that have all united under one banner, resulting in the largest, strongest storm rider team in history. So to make a not so long story even less long, these people decide to go under Ikki and his crew, making Ikki their leader. And just like that, he gains a small army under him, who are committed to helping him in his rise to glory, with the provison that he will help them achieve their goal of defeating the team known as Sleeping Forest. It’s then that we also learn more about the setting and way in which the storm rider community is structured, letting the full premise of the series be revealed. Turns out Sleeping Forest’s mission is to protect the mythicized Trophaeum Tower, the location which practically all other storm riders aim to climb, making them enemies.

  Additionally, Genesis’s second goal is also introduced, which is to collect all the regalias, a series of special ATs that grant their users incredible, but ridiculous powers, the strongest of which is housed in Trophaeum Tower as Sleeping Forest’s true target of protection, known as the sky regalia.

  It then springboards into what can only be described as a clusterfuck. It decides to add, and just keep on adding things to the plot that just don’t fit, including, but not limited to a group of genetically altered at birth air treck master superbeings, a cheaper corresponding group with the formers’ personalities and memories copy-pasted into them, a years long conspiracy of one man's dream of ruling the world, tons of people getting killed, an aircraft carrier containing Obama, a zero-g battle in space, and the list goes on and on. It attempts to make the plot more interesting, but just completely loses focus, adding and compounding layers upon layers of nonsense, spoiling the simple, if not bizarre, but in reason story it had originally.

  It needed not add anymore. It's like having the perfect sandwich made, only for some asshole to come in and add unnecessary shit for the sake of doing so, in the process, ruining what was there in the first place. If Air Gear could be described using the phrase “roller skating on crack”, well then, the amount of crack Oh! Great was on when writing must have been awe inspiring, to say the least. In fact, I’m surprised that the series had at least some level of story consistency to begin with considering. Even still, it manages to be a high octane action series with some nice themes, even without counting friendship as one of them.

  One of the core themes of Air Gear is freedom, and what freedom means to each individual. For one person, freedom could mean doing whatever you want, whenever you want, while to another, it could mean being free of toxic relationships, or situations.
  Maybe even realizing that worrying about things that are out of your control is unhealthy and letting loose.
  Whatever flavor you want. Now as far as this theme’s exploration goes, it's concise and to the point. We should be on the positive side of freedom, that encourages people's lives to change, not only for the betterment of themselves but also for that of those around them, as opposed to the negative side, represented by the main villain, that uses their freedom as an excuse to commit morally deplorable acts in the pursuit of their dream.

  Characters: 6/10
  So this series has a lot of characters, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just talk about a few of the ones that tie more into the series’s themes. And what better way to start than with the one that expresses said themes the most. Enter the main character Ikki. While at first glance he may come across as this no-good street punk, that just likes to brawl and get into trouble, he’s a lot more than that.
  He’s pretty much the perfect representation of the wind. Freedom, in the purest sense of the world. Ikki’s a very special kind of individual. One that doesn’t change, and doesn’t need to change, but rather just needs to, and succeeded in coming into his own, as his awareness grew and his inhibitions were removed, allowing him to become as he was ultimately destined to be. This is an arc that Air Gear accomplishes really well. He just flows past all the barriers around him, momentarily obstructed, but never stopped. It’s also because of this trait of his, to persevere and live freely that his character’s so great in context. The way that through his actions, he acts as a catalyst for other characters to find their way and develop as people, as any good battle shounen protagonist should.

  Another character of note is Kazuma Mikaru, nicknamed Kazu, Ikki’s second in command. He was originally introduced as an introverted and underconfident character, partially due to his proximity to a character as capable and proactive as Ikki. This in turn causes him to feel inadequate, like he’s slowing the team down and isn’t worthy of the hopes that people place in him. His struggle to become stronger and create a sense of self-worth for himself is very compelling to watch play out, especially considering the length that the series has to develop and resolve it. Not only that, but the progression of his character arc of coming into his own and becoming a more confident person is handled very nicely.

  Generally speaking, most of Air Gear’s characters go through something similar to either Ikki or Kazu, and even if they don’t have a full arc, they at least grow a bit. This holds especially true for most of the members of Ikki’s team, and some supporting characters.
  What development they get is simple and to the point, and considering how off the rails the story ended up going, it’s quite shocking that the series accomplished doing at least that right. Although, in the grand scheme of things, most of the characters in the series range from interesting to rather cookie cutter. Fortunately, most of them still manage to be likable and entertaining, and at the end of the day, that's all that was both expected and needed from a series like this.

  Art: 7/10
  One thing I must give praise to is the art. It’s amazing, or its style is anyway. The quality and detail of the artwork over time dipped from good to average, with some of the fight scenes looking a little blurry at times, not to mention clunky, with little sense of flow from one action to the next.
  This ends up hurting the series a lot, considering what a fundamental aspect of it the action is. Another aspect that shows a rather poor attention to detail is the backgrounds, that often times aren’t given as much detail as they should. While as the series progresses, the art does eventually start to consistently get better, it ends up being too little, too late.
  I mean for crying out loud, many other mangaka can, and have improved by leaps and bounds in far fewer chapters, so why not this one? However, as stated previously, for as many negative things as there are about the art, the amount of style and personality that that art radiates more than makes up for them. It just has this incredibly intense street punk vibe to it. Another thing that deserves a thumbs up as far as art goes is the character designs. All the characters, with few exceptions in the series look so unique and interesting, something which is a true achievement considering the sheer volume of them.
  Although some of the characters are more titillating than others, wink wink, nudge nudge. Not surprising, considering that Oh! Great was originally a hentai artist. And on that note, good to see he’s still got it.

  Enjoyment 6/10
  Air Gear’s a series that I found to be very enjoyable. There’s action, cool characters, fanserive, sex jokes, romance and comedy. The reason I enjoy the series is just so intrinsic, what with it having everything that appeals to me specifically, for better or for worse. What really hit me though was all the crazy shit that happens over its course, and honesty, I just really enjoy it when a series embraces the insanity. I mean it’s a story where roller staking can give you superpowers, to the point where there are scenes in which characters practically summon stands. It’s because of those to say the least, bizarre elements that I enjoy it as much as I do.

  Overall 6/10
  Air Gear is what I’d call a product of its time. The early 2000s were a period full of series that were really out there, and so over the top that they couldn’t possibly be mistaken as being from any other time period. It's very hard to describe why that is in words, but there’s just this feeling. I was to try and put my finger on it, I’d say it’s because from what I’ve seen, a noticeable amount of series from that period were really trying to mix it up by taking a bit from everything, so far as genres are concerned.
  In the end, that resulted in some interesting series, as far as the meta goes, for better or for worse.
  So if I were to recommend Air Gear to someone, I’d do so with the caveat that they’d have to go in with an open mind that’s able to embrace the insanity.
  If you don't, you're going to find it a chore to get through, and I feel that the intent of Air Gear was for the reader to simply enjoy the spectacle anyway. But if you’re not into series that are kinda out there, fucking crazy even, then Air Gear’s sadly not for you.
  Special thanks to my pain in Yu-Gi-Oh cards editor, Lonecrit.

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• 

  chonnn

  1/100
  Ogure Ito, please go back to writing Hentai, at least bad stories don't matter that much there

  Worst manga I've ever read. Ogure Ito seems unable of keeping his story in one subject and wants to cram as many subjects as poorly as possible. The same thing happened to Tenjo Tenge and kept me from reading it all the way through. Unfortunately I still managed to go pretty far in this one, but as I plan to explore in therapy in the years to come, this might be caused by a deep hatred towards myself. Extremely sexualized female characters (mostly undimensional), what started as a nice extreme sports manga, all of a sudden there's international espionage, conspiracy, sci-fi, whatever you want. It's an all you can eat buffet of very bad food. The last straw for me was when the United States president (which is a parody of Obama) switched bodies with a japanese high school girl, then he joined the protagonists in the invasion of a high tech military base 'cause apparently "there's a secret way only the president can access" and the way to open that door was through > FACIAL RECOGNITION < and then you realize IT WASN'T EVEN THE PRESIDENT'S FACE, IT WAS A HIGH SCHOOL GIRL'S HOW CAN ITO CREATE ALL THIS NONSENSE AND NOt EVEN BE ABLE TO BE COHERENT WITH HIS OWN NONSENSE?????????? seriously, do yourself a favor, go do any other thing other than reading this. Or read it, and then join me in therapy. It sure showed me how much work I have to do with myself to be able to forgive me and not punish me with stuff like this ever again.
  Ito should really go back to writing hentai. Judging by how sexualized his female characters are, by his completely disregard about a coherent story and his ammount of fan service, that's where he feels most at home. Or he could let someone else take the screewriting part of his stories and focus on the art, 'cause that's another sad thing is: his art is great. He draws really, really well and can create very compelling action scenes, too bad this is the only redeeming quality of this junk and this quality is way too little to save a nearly 400 chapter long manga. No ammount of self-hatred should put you through this. Trust me. You will thank me later if you never even open the first chapter of this crap.
  I just wish I could take back all the time I lost while reading through it. It was the only time in my whole life I stopped something half-way through and had to vent to a friend about how bad it was.

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• 

  Kotsaints

  58/100
  A manga with a strong start but really questionable storytelling decisions.

  Warning: There may be spoilers ahead. I'll try to keep it to a minimum though.

  The way I came across this isn't as most people would have. Reading it in 2020, it seems like this was very much a product of its time and any popularity this series might have had was a bandwagon that I seem to have missed, or otherwise is embodied by the nostalgia of a lot of readers from that time that think back on it fondly.

  I took an interest in reading this because I remember watching one or two episodes of the anime during my youth, right around the time when the teenage mind is most easily captured by the trappings of the shounen genre, and then not following through for some reason or other. I wanted to see where the premise of this manga really led to, and came with very little in terms of expectations. That all being said, for my current sensitivities, I can't say this story really works.

  It starts off very strongly. Ikki is introduced as a very strong but ordinary guy who gets humbled pretty early on. Air Trecks are special rollerskaters that work with bullshit science, are ultra-light, have in-built motors and allows one to do all sorts of amazing tricks, even enhancing fights by allowing the combatants to use the speed and height afforded to them to be more deadly, but nothing too crazy yet.

  This is gradually supplanted by introducing characters who are just naturally strong enough to punch through concrete, people who move so fast that their image might not be caught on camera, people with magical tattoos on their bodies that paralyze whoever watches them, and people who can kick so fast and with such power as to create blades of air.

  While I had very few expectations coming in, knowing that his is a shounen, I had expected to be met with cool abilities, cool feats, cool applications for the concept of Air Treks and interesting, high-octane, awe-inspiring races and battles. This, however, wasn't executed in a way that I particularly found satisfying. It's very hit or miss.

  While it does make for great action sequences, It takes a lot of good will from the reader to believe that these supposedly ordinary 15 year old high school children can really perform these incredible feats without the aid of magic or other supernatural elements. Here and there there are attempts to explain these away with what I can only assume are misremembered explanations to scientific phenomena. However, these explanations range in effectiveness as to how far they can maintain your suspension of disbelief untarnished.

  This manga does a great job at portraying this punk gang-warfare style and feel to it, which is part of why it's so compelling. The art and aesthetics all give you this suburban feel that's so unique and great. Reminds me a lot of Jet Set Radio, which I think is a game that this manga has drawn a lot of inspiration from. I wish it had stuck more to this gang warfare style of narrative and aesthetic and maintained things on a more grounded scale.

  Speaking of aesthetics though, the characters in this manga are gorgeous. The art is probably the strongest part in this. I just love the way characters look. Buccha, Akito/Agito, Simca and Itsuki's "sisters" are all such great designs that it really pains me that they aren't part of a better manga. They are all coupled with great personalities and competently-done character arcs that really makes it enjoyable to read just for this reason. There are so many frames of Akito's cute face and demeanor, so many frames of Agito's budding "bromance" with Itsuki, and so many frames of Simca's everything that are so gorgeous it really warms my heart.

  Still in the topic of art, this manga has a lot of fanservice. Like a lot of it. It even starts to detract from the story a little bit. I could understand it when it was reserved to a character like Simca who is very sexually forward and portrayed as this freedom-loving, liberal girl, as it fit her characterization, but then it starts to get weirder and cheaper. This mangaka knows sex sells and by god will he try to shove as much of it on the pages as possible. Ringo has been the literal and proverbial butt of these "accidental nudity" tropes so many times it honestly makes me feel bad for her. Twice were female characters introduced whose strategy in battle was to basically get naked and use their "female charms" to entrance the members of Ikki's team. Which of course works because all male characters in these are raging perverts.

  Sex and sexuality in this manga is pretty prevalent (which I dont really mind, but you might). And it's prevalent in sometimes very weird ways (which I definitely mind). On volume 1, it's implied that the villain for that arc had raped one, if not a few, of Itsuki's school girl friends and admirers. Later on this same character is shown actually raping a waitress. One mentor character to Itsuki, in keeping with the theme of bullshit incredible feats using bullshit physics, uses the wheels on his wheelchair to blow Ringo's skirt up, and is a bit later implied to have touched her in innappropriate places. Given the age differences between these charcters, I can't help but feel a bit nauseated.

  Also nauseating is the comedy, sometimes, which also suffers from the same forced insertions as the sexual themes in this. There is one particular frame of naked Itsuki publicly defecating while watching an Air-Treck battle that shall never be wiped from my mind so long as I live. This is all just brushed off later and never spoken again. These moments just all make me scratch my head and think to myself just "Why?! Why would anyone have thought this is a good idea?!".

  Epic moments do abound though. The Behemoth arc, if you can shrug off all of the negative aspects I just talked about and just let yourself be immersed in the story, is pretty well-written. There is a degree of strategy that gets introduced into these fights that makes them stand appart of so many other shounen that just handwaves fights away as just "one was stronger than the other and had a bigger power level". There is also a sense of urgency, as you feel very scared for these characters who are taking on a team that's way above and beyond their level of competency, and somehow fighting back in epic style.

  The concept of "Roads" was a pretty appealing way to weave in the rollerskating with all of this nonsense and elevate this element of the story to epic proportions, and it does make me curious to see where it will lead.

  And of course, every frame where Simca is in is also a moment that makes this worth a read (yes, I'm a big fanboy). That is, until her character completely changes in Volume 8 to the point where she becomes basically unrecognizeable.

  I don't think I'll be reading any more of this. From what I hear from friends and from discussions around the internet, this manga gets weirder and weirder past this point. I've read some spoilers ahead that just makes me think the negative bits I've just talked about will compound more and more, as I feared, until the story just becomes a clusterfuck. If that's the case, then I think up until the end of the Behemoth arc there's a pretty good story here with a satisfying end. Up until here I can safely recommend this manga. The rest is up to you. Caveat emptor.

  I give this a middling score. It's a story that is in some ways really strong and appealing and in some other ways very weak and repulsive. The highs are really high and the lows are pretty low. I hope you'll find this review useful.

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