Air Gear

How I came across this is a little bizarre, and I think is how most people will run into this anime now.

So I love Hideki Naganuma's music. Jet Set Radio/Bomb Rush Cyberfunk are both amazingly creative and Naganuma is a core part of those series' identity. One day I was just checking around and wondering what else he's worked on. He's done stuff for Super Monkey Ball, Daytona, and I think a bit of Yakuza. One I didn't see was Air Gear.

Well, it's under a pseudonym. Skankfunk is his pen-name for this, and the soundtrack kicks ass. Easily one of the best anime soundtracks I've listened to, next to Cowboy Bebop and JJBA 2012.

Ironically, the manga for this was inspired by JSR, too. It would definitely explain the whole turf war stuff and Hideki Naganuma composing for it, except it's blown out to be way, way cooler. For one, the tech is a lot more interesting and the stuff you can do with it is... well, at least in the anime, is super neat.

I cannot understate this enough but Air Gear was directed at young teens. The humor is incredibly childish, a lot of plot points are never seemingly answered, and there's just random nudity abound for no reason. It can be a bit of a turn-off for the anime, but it's egregious in the manga. The manga also after a certain part gets less about the skating, and more about DBZ shonen antics which just ruin any of the fun charm the series had.

So the real elephant in the room is that the anime ends on a cliffhanger. I don't exactly know the reason why it does that, but it does and they build up something but it doesn't go anywhere, so it says to me it probably got cancelled, not renewed, whatever. I don't think it's a reason to disregard the anime, since the style is still so early 2000s that it's amazing. And I'll admit, a lot of the cover art for the manga is great, too, so that's worth a look as well. There's a few OVAs or one-shots that cover specific parts of the manga, but they aren't worth looking at unless you've actually READ the manga up to that point.

As stated before, the anime is when the manga wasn't all about crazy shonen magic powers, and the times it shows up are somewhat hype. The kinds of antics in here focus more on outmaneuvering or outsmarting their opponent rather than just using their mystic protag powers to blow stuff up or straight up fly.

This anime is a guilty pleasure and it pains me that the anime ends on such an abrupt note and that the manga following doesn't get much better trying to imitate other popular shonen series. The music, like I said, is great, and it's a real blast to the past of the early 2000s if you're into that kind of stuff like me. It's junk food anime at best, but it's pretty damn good junk food.