Air Gear

Air Gear is one of those shows that you look at and tell yourself "here's another one". Just looking at the box art, the show looks very much like many of the other mainstream anime series that are released on North American television. The story is premised around around motorized roller blades called ATs. There is a whole underground society known as storm riders that battle using their ATs. As riders progress through the ranking system, the types of battles that they participate in change. The whole premise of these battles is for bragging rights and to disband other storm rider teams.

The main character of the show is a teenage boy name Itsuki (Ikki in the English dub). Ikki wants nothing more than to become a storm rider, but his sisters forbid it. Eventually Ikki gets his hands on a pair of ATs and that's when his quest to become the best storm rider begins.

While this was an entertaining series to watch, there was a lot happening in the story that was difficult to connect. For example, Ikki starts out as an inexperienced kid, and by the end of the series he is challenging some of the best storm riders in Japan. The progression of the story was all over the map. This is primarily due to the large framework set out at the beginning of the series. In 25 episodes there was no way to capture all of the nuances. Also the character development had very awkward growth pattern as well. It started out slow, then all of a sudden at the end too many elements were introduced. The story never did receive proper closure, and the last episode concluded much like any other.

Overall, Air Gear was entertaining to watch, however, I was disappointed with the lack of closure at the end. I suppose that watching the OVA will help to answer the questions left by the series. To get a better sense of the type of demeanor this show presents, it is very much like Eureka 7 or BeyBlades.