Air Gear (2006)

I watched through the whole series yesterday night, and this morning, and now I'm here to give you my twentynine cents on it.

In general it was both surprisingly good and disappointing, the idea in itself was/is unique, the storyline filled with suspense and tidbits of comedy; still the animation wasn't always the most thoroughly made. Quality shifted, and I don't mean the different facial expressions and moods that rapidly shifted like machine-gun fire, but the overall quality of drawing. Sometimes there just wasn't enough, with all these great jumps and kicks and punches and fighting techniques they could have put so much more energy and motion into the drawings than they did.

If you've seen Air Master you know the kind of motion energy I mean, in this series it didn't seem like any attacks really connected, you'd see someone flying in the sky, then landing, you'd never catch the whole sequence. It's a cheap production trick, floating in the sky is easy, you have a background and you have a person floating across it, the frame by frame action just isn't there. Some scenes were great, don't get me wrong, and they did manage to keep it exiting even when they saved in on drawing costs, but they could have made it so much more amazing if they poured their soul (and some talent) into it. I really liked this series, that's why I really hate that they didn't bring out its full potential.

One thing I'll applaud is the music. When the suspense kicked in, so did the music. It always fit in with the current mood, and that means a lot to the series, and it was good music. Opening, ending, and everything inbetween.

The anime consists of 25 episodes, and ends abruptly, like they planned another season but didn't get enough commercial value out of it. For those of you not familiar with the plot already, it's basically about roller-blades, battles & a cultural society and ranking system based upon the technology known as Air Trek (highly advanced futuristic semi-motorized roller blades, pretty cool). There's a guy (you'll get to know him eventually as 'The Crow', or primarily as 'Ikki'), living together with three girls, who one night borrows a pair of ATs and suddenly gets kicked into a world he knew nothing about but has no intention of leaving. Expect some echi, some comedy, some fighting, some strange characters & a steadily advancing storyline. It's a good series, I appreciated it, but it could have been so much more than it was.

 rated 4/5: fo shizzle