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"Air Trek... huh."

It may be a bit lame to open a review with a quote from the series, I've seen plenty of reviews that have been opened like that. Though I have to admit I'm absolutely terrible in starting and finishing stuff like letters, emails and report, but in this case this particular quote just popped to mind when thinking about Air Gear.

Now before actually starting to review I probably have to admit that for some reason I enjoyed Air Gear a lot, probably more than I should have. But before you decide to stop reading this won't be a glorified "omg this anime roxxx ... its da best" fanboy review, I do have a brain and I realise that my liking of this anime does not make it a good anime on its own. In fact I realise that this anime is probably not even that good.

The reason I gave it a 7 in this review (2 points lower than I gave it in my personal list) is because although for me personally it felt like a brilliant anime, when I look at it unbiased I realise the fundemental flaws in there that may disturb others when watching. As I said before, I still don't really know why but this anime has stolen a spot in my top all time for no appearent reason, and I highly doubt it will do so for anyone else.

The fundemental flaws with Air Gear are its chaotic story, which seems to progress illogically and at times even completely unreasonably, it seems to want to try really hard to be comical and serious at the same time. In the manga the story makes a lot more sense and after reading it I noticed a lot of minor and major parts were cut out which only increase in the instability of the story in the anime. It's so severe that even the way ikki gets his air-trek is considerably different, which acts like a butterfly effect causing major issues later on which really degrade the quality of the story.

Due to the issues stated above, lots of the character development seems just as chaotic and surreal making it hard to actually feel connected to the characters and their wishes. Not to mention the fact that only a very few of the characters actually get any meaningful existence in the anime. Most of them are just there to pose as challenges to overcome or as generic friends that need saving.

I find that most of these quality issues went past me when watching the anime, I found it highly enjoyable to watch as it's still comical and I still managed to actually understand and get a feel of the story. I do however consider myself to probably be an exception. In fact, I hardly ever read manga's, and after watching the anime I just HAD to read the manga because I couldn't resist not having any more air gear.

But the manga misses something amazing that the anime does have, the sound. Anime makes a story alive by giving a manga colour and motion, but in a lot of cases the sound makes the feeling complete. In Air Gear this is taken to an extreme and it feels like a lot of the atmosphere is carried by the music and sound. It would probably be a worthless piece of dung even to me if the anime didn't have this good of a soundtrack. In fact, I'm sure that there are plenty of people that will dislike the soundtrack (that's what human taste does, one person's trash is another's treasure) and for those people this anime probably will be torture to watch.

All in all I wouldn't recommend watching this if you're out to find a meaningful and fulfilling anime. But if you want to watch something you can laugh at but still has its (or at least attempts to have) slightly meaningful "battles" and comfrontations then Air Gear is something you might enjoy. Might. I will not guarantee it.
Maybe thats why I enjoyed it so much, the fact that its trying to be comical and serious and even attempts to throw in some twisted forms of romance and morality. To me it seems like the feeling Air Gear gives off is unique and works for me, but I realise that to most people it simply won't.

To conclude, it will either turn out to be hillarious for you or you'll be annoyed at how strange Air Gear is. Only one way to find out.