I didn't really have too many complaints about the manga and was really enjoying it. The story was imaginative and a bit absurd, but going well for the most part: the the plot gets complicated and it turns out the main character "Ikki" finds out his crush/childhood friend Ringo is involved in an unexpected way that makes her a goal in the plot rather than someone who can be a friend to him in any capacity.

During this time, Ikki had been forming a relationship with another girl, Simca, and as much of a red-flag raising girl she was initially, she was starting to warm up to both Ikki and myself. And then Ringo, Ikki's supposed childhood friend and original love interest puts Simca

I'm sorry, did Ringo just do what even the worst villain had yet to do in this story? Apparently.

Oh, and it gets worse. Later on, there's a weird relationship that really good air trek riders get that involve a lot of skinship with a special person who devotes themselves to that air trek rider. Ikki gets a new girl who is fantastic and genuinely cares about him.

But then then Ringo shows up, with her own special person (a male) and some indication is made that they've been sexually intimate and will do so again. Ringo does not do anything to clarify what their relationship actually is, and just runs away with the guy.

And yet somehow, after attacking Ikki's closest friends and even budding love interests, basically cheating on him when she supposedly likes him (and oh, those scenes where she's agonizing over her feelings while basically cheating on him angered me!), and more, Ikki still goes for her and ends up with her in the end. Did I tell you she made fun of Ikki being small "down there" at one point?

So Ringo commits evil acts, cheats on the person she supposedly loves while never communicating anything to make sure he feels cheated on, and then she gets to keep

Bull f******* S***!

Talk about throwing away the entire story and all the goodwill built up with me as a reader right at the end. All that time, love, anxiousness and anticipation and you give me that unrealistic, cop-out ending where the guy just... what on earth went through your head, author?

Please, if you ever see this review, send me an explanation as to why you literally developed her and then tried to sell me on Ikki being okay with the girl he thought he knew doing so much to destroy the people he loved and mess up his own heart.

Yes, there was a greater plot, I remember that. I also remember it not being a good enough justification for her to do what she did.

It just makes no sense whatsoever. An entire story broken by an unrealistic end. It's frustrating. Because, quite frankly, I expect Ringo to cheat on Ikki in the future—you can't make me think otherwise with her history and actions.

I'm only giving this more than a 3 because the art is so good.

... Last updated on February 8th, 2024, 2:22am

Air Gear is the story about a boy who wants to be the very best Roller blade master thing. I think that was the story. It becomes super fucking werid later. But the main character says some shit at the end about roller blades or air treks or whatever so i guess The main plot is consistent. It's not but lets pretend it is. The story constantly changes and evolves. I originally thought this was a racing series but thats not it. The series is by all means a battle shounen series.

The main difference that there is no magic (There is a lot of bullshit but i'll get to that). Instead of magic like black clover, Ki like Dragon ball, Chakara like Naruto, It's air treks. More importantly some air treks have this thing called plot convenience i mean Regalia. These are basically what gives each character super powers to become a god or whatever the fuck the plot feels necessary at the time.

I had heard that the series gets batshit crazy but after reading through the entire manga, I don't think it was as batshit crazy as I was expecting it to be. Maybe like 85% of it. That is until i reached the ending. That's where this shit goes to 115%. For real the entire final fight segment is stupid as fuck. It is so goddamn insane with no motive or understanding of whatever the fuck thats going on.

Honestly though the craziness is not really the main problem with this series. Comedy, Pornography, Flow of the story. These 3 things stood out in a very bad way.

First of all the comedy was not funny. Not really, not ever. The reason for that is how poorly timed the series was. It does have good momentum when the moments get tough and the characters act serious but they always throw in these really shitty jokes. Im not talking about 1 liners while not looking at the explosion behind while pointing a finger up in the sky. It's this over the top seriousness that makes the series so fun and enjoyable. It's these shitty jokes thrown in between the series that ruins the flow of these cool moments. Also the jokes were just not funny at times. They were like 15 poop jokes, that is 15 too many. None of them were really funny and quite a few of them wasted way too much fucking time on it.

It's not just improper comedic timings. There are also such a large amount of random ass nudity that i cannot enjoy. It's the same problem with the comedy. I don't want to see tits in between of an epic fight scene. If you are female character in this series by law you have to be naked. YOU WILL BE NAKED. It is the law in this manga. Wearing clothes isn't optional, It's a crime. There is literally a plot point introduced to have women naked all the time. That is how bullshit this series is. I did enjoy some of the nudity when it wasn't been thrown in, in the middle of the action. But these were far too less.

The flow of the story was also quite odd. There is an entire tournament arc but some weirdo shit happens and apparently they win but we don't get to see anything, we don't get to see how it happened. It just did, moving on. Its really stupid how the author how wastes so much time dragging on certain fights while simultaneously skipping everything else. The boat fight lasted way too fucking long. These were just some of the issues in regards with the story.

The characters could be better. Again with the nudity issue, The series has a sexual harassments problem. At least nobody was a casual rapist. Baby steps Japan. But yeah the male lead was basically casually assaulting women randomly. But its not a big deal because women don't have rights in this possibly dystopian world. The bigger issue was the short fat guy he was easily the least likeable character. His entire was sexually harassing women and he was not a cool character. The less I saw of him the better.

Oh Great is as you'd expect Great at drawing. His artistic talent is top notch, and honestly this series did have the right main approach when it came to action. Men vs men anyway. If you are girl fighting your clothes will get ripped off. This is a universally accepted fact Not many series can fuse together Action and ecchi well and Air Gear is not one of them. It kinda sucks really.

Despite this Air Gear did reignite my love for battle shounen. There is nothing more satisfying than having a 0% chance at victory and proving everyone wrong due to the power of friendship and Oh Great clearly shares that same love. It just kinda sucks that he constantly ruins this with all that other garbage.

The part though where i gave on the story is the buddha stuff that starts showing up. I gave up before then but this really was the final straw.

I do find it kinda funny how the main arguments i see for Air Gear is the fact that you should just be happy that a manga didn't axed. Like that should be enough. That is the main argument from Air Gear lovers.

In the end Air Gear held up longer than I thought. Yeah there is a literally no consistency whatsoever. A lot of shit happens. There are twists in this series because that happens in series and no other reason what so ever. But i think i still didn't really mind this series. It was very inconsistent with its entertainment. I wouldn't really reccomend it. But i wouldn't Not recommend it either.

TLDR: Its awesome and it sucks dick. Very inconsistent series. 5/10

... Last updated on June 29th, 2021, 10:48am

yeah, i know the plot/worldbuilding gets a bit crap, but i like it nonetheless. i care about the characters and the art is phenomenal. the concept was good too, the author just maybe bit off more than he could chew.

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.

... Last updated on April 13th, 2014, 4:23pm

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.

... Last updated on April 22nd, 2014, 3:58pm