Air Gear - Reviews

Just looking at an overview of this series and it doesn't really look like it's anything special.  The concept seems like it's been done before and the characters don't seem all that interesting.  But then it happens you start watching the first episode and you're surprised that you find yourself enjoying it and then you watch the second episode and then the third and before you realize it you're already halfway finished.  And that is what makes this series so good.  You start out thinking that it won't be anything special but then when you actually start watching it it draws you in and you start enjoying it.  The concept has been done many times before but the only difference is that Air Gear seems to make more enjoyable.  It's story stays interesting throughout the entire series and also manages to have a good blend of both action and comedy as well as being somewhat emotional every now and then.  The animtion is anything great to start out with and as it progresses it begins to go down in quality and yet strangely enough I didn't really mind it all that much.  Though it was still noticable so that was a problem.  The music wasn't all that great in my personal opinion but at the same time it seemed to fit with the series so prefectly that it did add a certain something to the series.  The characters were like the series not very original but still much like the series I found myself enjoying the characters nonetheless.  Overall I found the series to be extremely enjoyalbe and actually went to read the manga just so I could see what happens next.

It's a nice day to read, dear reader.  Read on as I lose my train of thought and repeat the same thing but in a different wording.  Ah, well, Air Gear is worth reviewing because half the other people don't know what they are talking about.

The story is definetly compelling.  It's all about ATs.  The world opens up once Ikki discovers he can fly when riding these bizarre much cooler forms of roller blades.  Once he has his first flight, the rest is history.  From then on, it's all about creating a team of riders to conquer the trophium tower and become the sky king.  Too much info for you?  Good, then watch the anime and don't worry about reading up on it first.  Ahem, continuing on.  The story gets more intersting when AT Road Kings are introduced and shit goes down.  I'm a power fanatic and i love when the main character gains power and beats more opponents and "levels" up.  The only injustice served with this dish was the sauce.  There was no continuation, there was no sauce added to the main dish.  I mean, why make this anime in the first place.  The anime should have had 2-3 more seasons.  The anime had charm.  Plenty of fun throughout and some boob humor or naked boobs thrown in.  Charm.  If only it did not leave off without answering a single question.  To find out more, one will have to read the manga, which is pretty awesome as well.

Animation is once again, i can't tell the difference from one anime to another. Pretty great i suppose.  Didn't not like the animation if that is what you want to hear.  Good fight scenes and plenty of sparks.

Sound was, to say the least, a perfect fit.  I always thought the AT's where so high tech, they needed something techy feel.  And so, my wish was granted.  There is  plenty of electronic songs introduced at each turning scene.  I mean, they really compliment the AT experience and half the time, you feel like your riding them as well.  Yes, when watching, you grow your own wings and fly with the characters.  Each character has his own badass theme song and the battle music is superb.  Like i said, a perfect fit.  The main theme is awesome and the ending theme, well i watched it everytime.  Like wise with the OP.  It's a high tech sport with high tech music.

The Characters are well developed.  Ikki finds ATs and then the show takes off.  He changes.  His dream of flying soars through the sky.  Nothing can keep Ikki caged up.  As we watch, we see Ikki get better and better, as well as his team.  With a little encouragement, and some ecchi, they manage to blow their enemy out of the sky.  Each character has his own road, so it's exciting to see how they pave their way. Only when the ending nears do you realize that the anime only covers a 10th of what is to come in the manga.

Overall, this anime has my full attention.  I mean, as every other fan will say, we can fly to the moon but we can't create ATs?  Preposterious.  I want to fly as well.  Full of comedy yet never dulled with an extemely faced paced sport, this anime, as short as it is, was a great watch.  The sounds, the characters, the ever moving plot, all synced together like a great mix tape.  Just beware, by the end, you will have to read the manga and you will definitely be wanting a pair of ATs.  I mean, we are all born with wings, society just keeps us caged. Ha.

Once upon a time there was this boy. He dreamt of the day he would fly. His heart is longing for a euphoric feeling of flight. He does this with his "Air Gears". His dream to be free and flying is almost like the pursuit of happiness to him.

Positive

*If I’m perfectly honest than I have to say that I wasn’t really excited to start this anime. It looked like a typical shounen anime and these aren’t really my favorite kind to watch. And at the start I didn’t really enjoy AG, I really thought by myself “Do I really have to watch it?”. I just wasn’t interested in it and I had to force myself to keep on watching. But the more I watched this anime, the more I started to enjoy it. By the time I got to the 9th episode, I “enjoyed” AG. Not as much as my beloved rom-coms or rom-dra’s but it wasn’t a drag anymore to watch AG. It felt like one of those old series from my childhood.

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*And just like in these old series the main storyline of AG is the one of Ikki’s development. It is something that we see a lot in this type of anime but seeing Ikki develop from basically a no-life to a true leader was, together with the action, what you could expect in this anime.

Negative

*Besides me not being a fan of this genre there were some other things with this anime. First of all it felt like there was an episode missing at the start. We were thrown straight into a story without any introduction to for instance the gang of Ikki. The anime starts immediately with the fight between Ikki and the Skull Riders. So an extra episode to introduce us to all the characters and the already existing relationships between them would have been helpful.

*Another issue was the fan service. Now I didn’t really have a big problem with the fan service in AG. It wasn’t at such a level that it annoyed me and made my experience worse. But, in my opinion, it didn’t fit the anime, it wasn’t necessary. And at times it felt really forced how they tried to put the fan service in the anime.

*And my final issues came at the end of the anime. First, again it isn’t finished which was something that I expected based on the proportion of the story. This is a difficult exercise for anime makers: or they give the anime a good pace like they did here with the risk that the story might never be finished in a second season. Or they rush the development and finish it largely in 1 season and than you get something like Tales of Zestria where the large story is crammed into a limited number of episodes. And in this case we will have to continue reading the manga if we want to know how the story ends. And there’s a lot more to read since the manga continued for another 6 years after the anime.

*Something that the creators did gave us a few years later were the OVA’s. But the problem here was that the OVA’s take place way further in the manga than where the anime ended. So if you hadn’t read the manga, these OVA’s felt really random since characters had developed in the period in between. These OVA’s were made just to show off some things that didn’t happen yet in the anime and they just fell too random.

Conclusion

So as a conclusion, AG was an anime old style. It reminded me a lot of some of the series that I watched as a kid like for instance Beyblade. However I am more a fan of the more complex anime’s. Anime’s that have a deeper storyline to them, overall I am more a seinen fan than a shounen fan. So I am going to rate Air Gear at 3 stars but remember that that’s coming from someone who doesn’t have a lot of feeling with shounen anime. I think if your into that genre than AG will definitely up your ally, more than it was up mine.

I love this anime.  Has a great story, good animation, and the characters are easy to get into. The reason why I gave it 5/10 is they stopped making it right in the middle of the series.  I guess it didn't get good enough reviews over in Japan which sucks because everything about it was awesome.  It sure is a waste though.