It all begins when Ikki is beat senseless by a gang called the Skull Saders. Soon after he sees Simca, a talented A-T artist. Simca is the main source for this anime’s fanservice. She spends a lot of time naked or provocatively dressed. She pushes Ikki to strive for kinghood in the AT world. That pretty much is the plot. There really isn’t much there.
Ikki is an orphan taken in by a group of sisters. He’s a smart guy – he even builds his own set of ATs. However, he is impulsive, a bit perverse, and short sighted. When he puts his mind to it, he won’t give up till he achieves his goal.
Air Gear stuck me as a bit silly. It is shonen, but the premise I found difficult to enjoy. The skates give people almost the ability to defy gravity, but mostly it was the attitude that turned me off to the anime. The story encouraged reckless impulsive behavior and “punk” attitudes. Ikki is a smart guy, but he doesn’t use that intelligence to curb his behavior or to even perform his tricks well. I don’t care for characters with attitudes and lack of thinking. Ikki struck me as flat.
Some episodes were action packed with good characterization. Other episodes were stale and dull. Air Gear yoyoed between them; unfortunately it spent more time on the stale episodes.
Air Gear has pretty good animation at times. Although it breaks down into action lines and inconsistent styles. It does encourage friendship and striving toward a goal. The urban feel is interesting.
Air Gear just didn’t appeal to me. I got halfway through before I lost all interest and couldn’t ignore my annoyance with the attitude. I think perhaps it’s because I never cared for sports of any type, and this anime is focused on a different audience than mine. It is probably pretty cool for those who like skates, rollerblades, and the like. For me it was boring, annoying, and uninteresting.
I whole heartily agree, the anime for Air Gear is TERRIBLE. Even with being a major fan of the series, and loving the whole premise of it (using tools like ATs to “fly” and escape from the world), I think the anime did not do the series justice. I prefer the manga to the anime, because after where the anime leaves off, Ikki starts becoming more of a character, so to speak, he gets torn in a war between 2 factions, he gets torn between multiple girls who love him, etc. He goes through so much, and ends up really developing in my opinion, all while remaining a little punk teenager (remember he is SUPPOSED to be 14 years old).
The lack of character progression was annoying in Air Gear. At least the manga has a nice amount of it. Ikki certainly doesn’t look or act like a 14 year old. He felt closer to 18.
Yeah, Oh!Great really made a mistake in making the characters only junior high- early high school age. Most of them look and act 17+ years old.