Skate Stay Night: Unlimited Board Works isn’t a terrible series, and if anything it’s an enjoyable sports up until the 7th episode where it delves into painful, trite melodrama and loses the focus and energy that made the first half of the show so popular in the first place. What started as a fun skating-based show with a passionate, vigorous production ended up being derailed by agonizingly forced queerbaiting, melodrama and nonsensical character motivations, where the main leads devolve into obnoxiously unlikeable, overdramatic manchildren. This tragic descent into mediocrity propelled SK8 off the path to greatness and directly into the ever-overflowing pit of mediocre seasonals. It’s telling when a series that developed such a rabid fanbase within a day of the first episode’s premiere fell almost entirely back into obscurity mere months after it finished its run. In any case it’s a genuine shame that such a promising show declined so badly when it was just beginning to play to its strengths.

The story and characters of SK8 are archetypal, but what makes them stand out is a combination of their striking, vibrant designs and the chemistry they have with each other. Each skateboard death-match is energetic and Bones put the work in to make the animation as flashy and spectacular as possible. During pivotal moments you could easily confuse it with an Ufotable production. The series distinguishes itself by utilizing color; from the characters designs to the races, they all have pronounced and attractive visual styles. The characters are hardly ever off-model either which is rare for Bones in this day & age, and they deserve commendation for this. Hiroko Utsumi is a wonderful director and her talent extends beyond the racing scenes, where even the average scenes of down time between the next race never look bland. It’s easy to see why so many people were drawn to this series, excluding the unsubtle gay undertones. The best part of this show are the catchy the opening and ending themes. The soundtrack is competent, and composer Ryou Takahashi put together some great songs for the racing scenes.

MC Reki is energetic and upbeat and he contrasts with Langa’s reserved personality: this makes the scenes where Langa loses that façade and gets caught off guard way funnier. Reki and Langa are good main characters up until that certain point where the series quality takes a nosedive; their friendship is endearing and cute until they’re forced apart by terrible writing that holds the emotional weight of the average TV soap opera shitfest. Reki’s obnoxious angst at not being good enough the very first time he gets knocked down a peg is an arc that put me in a position of me doing everything in my power not to skip through all his scenes. He inescapably comes off as whiny and irritating, a sudden contrast to the personality I was starting to enjoy in previous episodes. It was like watching the life drain from a friend you only just became acquainted with. The resolution to this character arc is even more boring and uninstructive and turns the endeavor of watching all of into an unfulfilling timesink after the fact. There’s scarcely a payoff for this couple of episodes and I would consider it a waste of time if not for the other far more interesting plot elements involving Langa. Ichiro Okouchi usually excels as a writer and seeing him put together something like this makes me feel like he either wasn’t given enough creative reign or was borrowing too many notes from the Code Geass playbook.

The side characters (Shadow, Miya, Joe, Cherry, etc.) aren’t well-written enough to be more than surface-level; all of their motivations revolve around the main antagonist, but their interactions are at the very least funny as fuck at their peak, although Miya’s gamer shtick gets tiring within his introductory episode. The relationships are poor attempts at gay representation; replace one character in an implied couple with a woman and nothing would significantly change. The main issue is that they lack build-up. Nothing about the main duo really demonstrates that they belong together. Reki spends a good four or five episodes resenting Langa over stupid shit and he barely even gets over it.

And why is Adam a thing? Why the fuck does Adam exist? His entire motivation is being romantically attracted to underage boys and wanting to fuck them/beat them in skateboard duels. They had the perfect villain for this kind of series; a rich, corrupt and insanely stylish politician who spends his free time hosting violent illegal skateboarding competitions where he can humiliate his rivals and dress like a Type-Moon character. His rich family is a bunch of pretentious jackasses hanging over his head and constantly projecting their expectations onto him. He jumps out of helicopters and bashes people’s faces in with his sick skateboard. He’s the Aizen of skateboarding. By the 12th episode he’s a complete joke, a deranged groomer who fails miserably to seduce a literal teenager and laughable attempt at writing a nuanced antagonist who loses to a bunch of kids and gets redeemed by the power of having fun while still coming off as a gay predator stereotype. He’s stuck in this utterly worthless arc about government corruption that gets tacked on to make the decomposing remains of his character feel like they have a place in this failed narrative. The detective character who tails him literally gets written off in a joke scene at the end of the final episode, because the writers realized how completely fucking pointless this entire plot point was at the last second since they neglected to make any use of it., or that the audience didn't actually care.

The subplot about Adam's family produces nothing to drive the plot forwards aside from Adam’s weirdly sexual relationship with his manservant, who shows up at random points in the story to keep the wheels turning. An elementary schooler could write with more depth. On the topic of “fun”, this series beats you over the head with “skateboarding is fun!” at the most unearned moments, especially during the climax. The show makes skateboarding look like a physical and emotional deathmatch. Maybe the theme would be more applicable if more time was spent showing the characters training and bonding instead of teenage whining and background characters pointing out every single important thing that happens onscreen five to ten times per race in the most annoying way possible.

Sk8 is a true tragedy, cherished by many and immediately forgotten by the time it was over. It isn’t atrocious but it underutilizes the concepts that helped it capture an audience in the beginning. The story gets more disjointed as it progresses in order to create tension when there doesn’t need to be any and the characters barely grow or deal with the consequences of their actions. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table aside from being a mainstream big-budget skateboarding anime. The underground deathmatch setting is underutilized because the show overexerts itself spending too much time on pointless histrionics and yaoi tropes. I would recommend you go read Air Gear instead because it’s also technically about skateboarding but I barely remember anything about the series.