Login to add items to your list, keep track of your progress, and rate series!
Description
Itsuki Minami needs no introduction – everybody’s heard of the “Babyface” of the Eastside. He’s the toughest kid at Higashi Junior High School, easy on the eyes but dangerously tough when he needs to be. Plus, Itsuki lives with the mysterious and sexy Noyamano sisters. Life is never dull, but it becomes dangerous when Itsuki leads his school to victory over some vindictive Westside punks with gangster connections. Now he stands to lose his school, his friends, and everything he cares about. But in his darkest hour, the Noyamano girls come to Itsuki’s aid. They can teach him a powerful skill that will save their school from the gangsters’ siege and introduce Itsuki to a thrilling and terrifying new world.
Note: Won the 2006 Kodansha Manga Award in the shōnen category. A new edition named Air Gear Unlimited was released in 2014. The format is bigger and it contains some coloured pages.
Type
Manga
Related Series
N/A
Associated Names
エア・ギア エア・ギア UNLIMITED 飞轮少年 Air Gear Unlimited AirGear
I really liked the manga, it's 37 volumes long I had to like to read it all. Some people complain that the manga starts with a simple sport and halfway go nuts, but that description can be used to describe half of the shounen manga. I have only one issue with the manga, Oh!Great likes to introduce way too much characters and the development of their motivation or personality gets really weird or they don't evolve at all
I think to some degree manga fans don't really appreciate that every title that exists (especially the ones that didn't get axed early. But even just seeing the light of day is quite an achievement) is work where the mangaka truly exposed lives the world to a brand new place which only exists in it's story. The fact that it is visually story telling makes it so much more appealing.
I would compare this to Cowboy Bebop and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann as one of the best manly romance comedy stories I have seen so far. I also want to praise the mangaka for being brave enough to pick such a simple premise for his overall plot. This is a true craftmanship and so very few authors bother to explore these days.
This manga just turned ridiculous halfway through. It was never smart or complex in the first place, but everything just elevated in stupidity when this (middle schooler?) boy's skating skills somehow changed the world. That in itself is horribly shallow and cliche, not to mention absolutely unrealistic.
The flying skates? I'm cool with that. Flying breast girls? Fine, I'll overlook it. But when you combine those with a plateauing plot, it makes a shallow manga. The humor lacked wit, and the story scattered in multiple directions. This whole thing was a recipe for disaster.
Basically my subject summed up everything about this manga.
What the hell happened? What was the plot in the first place?! It seems to me that somewhere along the way the plot flew straight out of the window and is never to be seen again. And Oh!Great's narrative just plain sucked.
I loved the beggining so much!!! I could feel the freedom, the joy, the motivation, the love straight through my heart. I was really shaken, the phylosopy was so strong, that made me want to experience that ultimate fun and freedom, which the characters are having ....BUT midway I lost the sence of the "freedom and fun aspect" from this story and felt bored and confused, I didn't like the idea, that a middle school kid can have such a huge impact on the world (introducing "Obama" in the plot -_- ..) ...I just liked it simple, 'cuz I think, that's where the freedom lies....But nevertheless I do recommend this manga, because I really thought that everything was so real and made me feel the happiness, even if it was just for a while.
It seems, that most of the people here just simply don't get it. This manga is enjoyable, crazy, surprisingly smart for shounen and of course exciting ride, from beginning to the end, you just have to be prepared, that plot will get you in a totally different direction from where it seems to be going at first. People are scared of unexpected story twists, dialogues, where you have to pay a tiny bit of attention, and overwhelming awesomeness. The whole concept didn't make any sense from the beginning (roller blades with engines, really?), neither did "superpowers" that were introduced a little bit later, but Ito was doing a great job tying it all to his masterfully crafted universe using pseudo-scientific explanations. Don't get humble first parts of the story fool you, this manga is gurren-lagann-level-nuts. But it has its own poetry feel to the narrative, dialogues filled with beautiful metaphors, which are sometimes translated into incredible art, philosophies, which are ,for once, not empty, and characters that feel really alive. It's about awesomness, Dreams, love, FEELS, epic, finding one's way in life, rivalry, and many other great things. It has really funny jokes, as well as most exciting, most well-thought and most unpredictable battles in history of manga. That battle with Sleipnir you'll never forget. Oh yeah and also some ecchi, but i stopped noticing it after a while. You just have to follow carefully, and even use your brain from time to time to comprehend what's going on, otherwise you might get pretty confused. And who the hell cares about what happened to Ikki's crow, whether he got expelled from school and how obama-girl got switched back? Someone here was wondering what happened to Ikki's parents, well it's actually was all explained in the manga, like i said, you just had to pay attention. Anime sucks balls, btw.
Bottom line is, Air Gear is one of the greatest and most beautiful mangas out there , both story-wise and art-wise, but it also a little bit demanding, you have to read it carefully. So fasten your seatbelt, and ready for the craziest ride (or is it better to say flight?) of your life, you won't regret it, trust me.
I hate to write a scathing review on a popular series, but in truth both Air Gear and Cage of Eden sucked. At first, both were interesting enough and I tagged along for a ride... but eventually stories got twisted out of proportions, to the point where the original joy I found while reading just disappeared on me.
Characters' personalities and what not were stereotypical, shallow, and there weren't any characters that resonated with me on an emotional level....They just never became life-like. Just one dimensional people....
The main character did not grow mentally at all, even though his skills "soared" (ha ha i made a pun).
This series was basically a combination of cliches, roller skates, gang fights, crappy villains, boobs, and more boobs. This type of story-telling filled with tritely staged heroic moments may be wonderful for a new reader, but to a veteran shounen reader, this story reeks of the typical shounen jump formula mixed with a tiny brush of freshness--the flying skates.
But that's it. The story was far too cliche for me.
Welll lets do this and some small spoilers below............basically there are so many problems i dont feel like saying them all, all i can really say about this is that it was a great manga in the beginning with amazing art and an interesting story with funny characters. although the art just keeps getting better the story gets way worse (id say mainly after he starts being storm King) the it just gets confusing and eventually all the author does is make several and i mean SEVERAL metaphoric sequences with his characters doing random unexplained Things. Dont get me wrong they do get the story in a good place several times but then they go right back to the confusing random stuff with more and more metaphors. i basically read this to the end because of how i used to like this and how amazing the art was; but i can only recommend this if you dont care too much about the "story/dialog" cause it got lost in this manga. ESPECIALLY the last 100 or so chapters that lose most of it sense and story to Metaphors and randomness again. The only thing i wanted by the end was some answered questions/mysteries and a future ending where you see who ended up with who and what became of every one, it didnt have to be years in the future it could have been just after everything but you didnt get that you just got a few random pics of all the characters saying and doing different stuff. if anything i learn from this and Tenjou Tenge (his other series i was reading that went exactly the same and i mean EXACTLY) is that in both he had a great story in the begining but now a days Oh! Great (author) cant keep up a story to save his life and cant end one to save his family. i really liked these two series and i cant stand the way they turned out and how he butchered them. i only gave this a 7 cause i did have some good time with this in the beginning and the art is still really great
His idea for the manga was excellent. let's make a manga about roller blades. But he lost control of the story (as usual) around chapter 150 or so. After following this since the anime and continuing from the manga, I thought that this might be pretty cool. Both story and art work was great. As I was reading this from the continuation of the anime, there just seems to me the story was just getting dragged on and on and it made it confusing for me at times, but it picks up a bit near the end which I'm kinda glad the story ends at volume 36. I find Air Gear my favorite creation by Oh Great! But, he REALLY needs to get better at his storytelling. =.=
(+48)
(-18)
