| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and longer
works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime magazines
for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| details |
| The Genre: adventure |
| The Format: 5+ volumes of the manga from CMX |
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| The plot: Ikki Minami is a junior high school
student with a dream - to become the best Air Track
player in town. It won't be easy, as he faces a
lot of competition from boys and girls alike.
What is Air Track? Just the latest craze that involves
taking a two-wheel inline skate and adding a motor,
new suspension and a shock absorber to enable the
wearer to execute the wildest, wackiest, most aggressive
moves you can imagine.
Ikki has a lot to learn as he fights his way to
the top in this wild, sexy manga. Itsuki Minami
needs no introduction - everybody's heard of the
'Babyface' of the East-side. 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, so life's never dull.
But it gets downright 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. Then, the Noyamano girls give him an
amazing gift, one that just might help him save
his school: a pair of Air Tracks.
These high-tech skates are more than just supercool.
They'll enable Itsuki to execute the wildest, most
aggressive moves ever seen - and then bring him
to a thrilling and terrifying new world. |
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| opinion |
| Oh! Great has to be one of the weirdest pseudonyms
ever. I mean, it's not even a name, it's an exclamation--it
even has an exclamation point in it!
The irony (well, okay, it's not really irony) is
that Oh! Great's stuff (I think I'm going to refer
to him as OG from now on) has actually been pretty
great, in my experience.
In my TenTen review I noted that OG had managed
to craft a sufficiently interesting (and sexy) story
for me to get over my inherent dislike of the mystical
mumbo-jumbo fighting genre. With Air Gear, he's
managed a similar sort of trick, although perhaps
with a little less success.
Air Gear has, for its central protagonist, a character
who is, if I'm honest, not actually all that likeable.
Itsuki shares many traits with a lot of other anime
and manga characters--he's not all that bright,
he gets into trouble at school and he's a bit of
a perv. Itsuki also seems to have managed to find
himself parentless and living with four sisters.
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So far so normal (well, normal for manga,
anyway), but Itsuki is also a thug. He's a
member of a gang, and okay, the gang is shown
to be a little bit half-hearted and sort of
the 'nice' gang, but still, the first time
we encounter Ikki, he's beating the crap out
of some people from a rival gang, and not
only that he's both arrogantly lauding his
superiority over them and loving every minute
of it.
This is not an easily likeable young man.
And yet, in a way, this is the greatest strength
of Air Gear, and OG's work in general. He
presents us with complex characters that are
not all simply 'good' or 'evil'. He gives
them reasonable motivations and he develops
character as well as simply letting the action
fly. In this sense, he writes a very mature,
adult tale.
And mentioning adult, as with TenTen, OG
is not averse to flashing a bit of female
flesh at us, and I, for one, appreciate the
effort. I would therefore say anyone who is
particularly not keen on fan-service and naked
ladies in their manga should avoid, although
Air Gear probably falls more into a 'teen'
rating bracket than it does 'mature', since
the fan-service is mostly kept at lower levels.
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Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Ikki. You see,
unlike TenTen which is more of a group work, Air
Gear is squarely focused on Ikki and his struggle
to become the top Storm Rider.
Storm Riders are the people that use Air Treks,
which are like super-sooped-up skates. The idea
is that they have an electric motor in them that
boosts the speed of the skates, and an air cushioning
that allows the skaters to perform huge death-defying
leaps and survive them.
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These Storm-Riders organise themselves into gangs
and it's Ikki's encounter with one such team, the
Sorm-Saders, that brings him into the world of Air
Trek. The basic premise, which is common to many
manga of this ilk, is that Ikki has extraordinary
natural talent and an innate ability on the skates,
but also he's a complete noob.
And it's perhaps this over-familiarity of plot
device that is at the heart of why I prefer TenTen
to Air Gear. There's just too much here that's generic
and by-the-numbers for me. Sure, OG does a great
job with the characters and gives us some nice plots;
his artwork is, as ever, superb and there's a good
dose of the fan-service... but the plot is just
so generic in Air Gear it takes the shine off.
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And it's predictable too. With the focus
on Ikki, we kind of know that in the end he's
going to triumph. Sure, there's going to be
set-backs and pit-falls along the way, but
in the end he always wins out.
Unlike TenTen, where we don't know for sure
that everything is going o work out for everyone--indeed,
we know it isn't going to work out at all
well for some, and even the apparent victors
could be left scarred and traumatised--Ikki
isn't ever really going to loose. Or at least,
if he does loose, he'll soon be winning again.
Part of the reason we know this is the fact
that OG constantly refers to Pro-Wresting,
making analogies to it and even directly referencing
some famous Japanese pro wrestlers. And if
you know anything about the sub-pantomime
melodramatics of Pro Wresting, you know that
the good guy always wins out in the end.
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Y'know, actually, maybe my judgement is slightly
hampered by the whole pro-wresting thing. I must
admit I really dislike wresting, and it could be
that the slight niggling pain I get behind my eyes
every time OG mentions it is the real reason I don't
like this quite as much as Ten-Ten.
Who knows? All I can really tell you is that whilst
it is thoroughly enjoyable for what it is, Air Gear
never truly puts its head above the genre conventions
it conforms so rigidly too. Just that little extra
something and I've have liked it a whole lot more.
Oh, and just to finish the review off, those who
are familiar with the artistic butchery imposed
on Ten-Ten in the name of censorship will be glad
to know that Air Gear is uncut. So even if you don't
like it, be thankful for that at least. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: 4/5 |
| The Score: Pretty good, if a little on the generic
side. |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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