Air Gear

Jun 29, 2021

Shellshock123

Mixed Feelings

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

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May 18, 2013

yemudan

Recommended

Air gear....hmm......first time I picked this up i thought it to be a sports shounen manga with a lot of EPIC HIP-HOP PUNK GOTHIC CULTURE and i wasnt wrong, it does have a lot of those elements in it, especially the clothing the characters wear (some of the r just amazing =3=)
and now the art, well, what do I have to say? Its Oh Great! I mean, hes only like the best manga artist I have ever seen when it comes to the art, and is definitely my favourite artist of all time. His art is flawless, and the style changed twice throughout this series. ... First it was alright, pretty shounen style, suitable for young people. Then it got realistic since he was working on tenjou tenge, during that time he used like a LOT of lines to draw the characters, and it got pretty realistic =3= and then after tenjou tenge was finished, his art style changed again, this time to a not-so-realistic but epic as hell art that is so extremely suitable for the pop cultre and was so freaken good
now the story, well, at the beginning it was just like any other shounen manga, there's nothing too special about the plot except for the fact that they ride on awesome roller blades that can climb walls and jump off buildings. Then something happened, and the plot got messy, at at one point i was about to drop this series because the plot was so pointlessly stupid. but then around volume 24, the plot started to rise back up and then, well, I personally loved the plot after vol 24, it was one of the best stories I have ever seen. However most people find the plot to be confusing and some people just find it to be plain stupid. I dont blame them, since you kinda have to think a bit to get the plot and ignore some of the "not so good" elements in the plot. I enjoyed it, but most people hated it =3=
now the characters....well....other than the fact that most character development arcs r like fillers, and the only characters memorable are the main characters. The other ones r, well, forgetful. I mean, okay so oh great tried to bring back all the characters at the end of the series and that, well, totally failed. But then towards the end there were some really good character development arcs especially the fight with Nike, and the final battle. But then it seemed like oh great didn't really plan out the characters and kinda just "put them in the story randomly and expected us to deal with their existence"
I definitely enjoyed this series, especially the ending arcs, and, well, I can't really recommend it after reading all the bad comments about it on the internet. Since not everyone will enjoy it like I did, and I know for a fact most of my friends think its boring =3=
i give this manga, a 9 out of 10

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Jul 23, 2012

Lostmystarcody

Recommended

In my opinion the story was perfect. Although there was a specific flaw that always caught my atention. It never blended right. All the way up until about half way through, I kept wondering what was going on.

The art is all just my opinion because there wasn't any mistakes or whatnot. It was just hilarious, sexy, or just plain eye catching at any given point. The illustrator Had the know how in martial arts and the technique of it. The regalia were also very creative looking.

The characters were pretty damn good, but it was all jumbled up together. Just like with the story, the ...

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Jun 26, 2016

Sore_Loser

Recommended

To be fair when I started reading it first I kind of liked it. The characters were likeable and art was good. But soon the story took a turn and it became a jumbled and confusing mess. We have A-T or air treck a device so technologically advanced that it makes human fly. But after this is all shit. The thing is that wearing something on your foot doesn't give you powers. This most illogical aspect of manga was dragged to finish.

There were too much of unwanted things that were present in the manga which made the story look more un-charismatic.
I liked the art it ...

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Jul 5, 2017

DesolatePsyche

Recommended

First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile.

Second, It's the start of my "reviewing" era, thus probably will be odd.
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Okay, since BBcodes disabled I shalt split thematics onto different paragraphs.
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So Air Gear manga, I really loved the Anime, watched it twice and planning for another re-watch. But because I was reminded that anime OVA does a time skip, so I decided to pick up manga from the beginning.

Story (6)
Starting for probably with the weakest or most tedious part of this manga, which is STORY. What was great about the manga story was it was ... fun friends doing great rollerblades battles and learning different tricks. But at some point story starts escalating in quite a grand theme. Bringing in all sorts of odd things. Extreme superpower Air Treks, cyborgs, quite an odd technology and also a lot of plot turning points, which would been all fine, but it was made in way too confusing way. They started bringing in too many different story points, explanations and also too many characters. For a light reader as me (as I'm not particularly fond of reading) it was really difficult to grasp onto what was happening to the story. At some point I just couldn't remember most of the new characters that were brought in or how was story related to different aspects. Point being, as anime with "fillers" to explain things better. It would been amazing battle shounen anime. But as pure manga format, it felt rushed, tried too hard and too much was thrown in which made the story quite a weak link and led the whole thing astray. Story ended on an acceptable level.
TLDR; story - Starts with fun rollerblade battles, ends up way too chaotic and confusing.

Characters (7)

What can I say, hate or love. It had both. Most characters were kind of a "punks, thugs, energetic brats and so on.." which was fine for the most part. It made into great battle shounen and enjoyable stereotypes and cliches. Only specific comments I might add about characters would be that main team was fun. Very "nakama-power" heavy with bunch of really cool rivals, villains and gangs. As for female characters, they were quite hot. But some I did really dislike as they were really loose ***** and ******* whilst counterpart some guys/punks were quite rapey. But nevertheless I did enjoy the cast whilst still can't get over how one specific character was plottwisted (was in anime too) in a direction I wasn't hoping for. Aside that, only specific comment about characters I might add, would be Tuners. I'm still not sure whenever they were tweaking AT's or doing something indecent.

Art (9)
The strongest part of the manga. The art was really cool. Battle sequences were really nice. Background/scenery was done really niceley. Character designs were cool and female characters were really sexy and they managed to add the cuteness aspect as well quite well.

Enjoyment (8)
Since most of my review has the "enjoyment" aspect of review in each paragraph. I will only add few extra things here.
I wasn't yeah, particularly fond of some character stereotypes/personalities. As they pissed me off. Also yeah, anime was 10/10 and manga for some time also 10/10, the amount of stuff they threw in and the confusing I was given.. caused me to lower the score. Comedy was also great aspect, lot of references and randomness that I'm fond of.

Overall (8)
All I can say is, for a battle shounen anime It's quite cool. Nice world, interesting concept, epic battles, sexy girls, cool guys. Cool powers and so on, it's good Manga. But yeah, story confusion, the amount new characters being brought it makes it quite difficult manga to keep track on. Plus yeah, some characters being quite a ahem.

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Aug 5, 2018

SeoPark

Recommended

This manga screams 2000's shounen manga personally. Also I have read and reread the manga for the purpose of this review.

So my name is Aki and my format for manga reviews is usually initial thoughts, criteria summary, then summarize my thoughts.

So a light summary; our main character ikki is your usual tough guy with his antics and popularity as some sort of boss in a group. He has a harem filled life with his step sisters who adopted him and through certain circumstance was introduce to an Air Gear. If you didn't know what an Air gear is, think of it as roller blades with ... small engines (dont question it, its fictional).

Now initial thoughts are the story is really intriguing but as someone who reads a lot of manga when I was young till now I was never fond of heavy ecchi and this manga is definitely heavy on that but nonetheless that story continues to intrigue me and made me want to continue reading regardless.

Story 7.5
Now I feel like the story has ups and downs but overall it was very intriguing and I keep wanting to read it. Some arcs of the story feels like fillers or at the very least does not progress anything which is fine if done properly but at times had issues with it being to bland. I want to emphasize that the "Sports" genre in this manga is quite different formula from what people are used to but nonetheless have sports elements at the very least. To cut it short and simple, if you really like Shounen, action, and a bit of romance (of course Ecchi too) then this might be for you. But just because you dont like the genre doesn't mean you wont give it a try, id say at least read until ch 50-100 first since this is where I got into the manga.

Art 9
It definitely is reminiscence of the old style of drawing but it did age well (at least for me). Some manga's during 2000 didn't age too well and I would have a hard time reading them but Air Gear is definitely great art wise. Later on you will appreciate the good art style.

Character 8
So first lets talk about main cast of characters. All of them are really good with amazing personalities and are really interesting, some are quite lackluster in terms of character development but some have really great background story about their past. I wont spoil too much but my favorite character is definitely Agito and Kazuma later on the story. Ikki is your usual cool character of course but Kazuma is definitely someone you will like as the story progresses. Agito on the other hand without spoiling is a special character and has amazing background story (even better than ikki personally). But the rest of the cast are ranging from good to really good so you wont be disappointed too much. Only thing that lowers the score for me is they introduce characters with great importance but has little story time or worthless characters in general with big build up but maybe thats due to the Air Gear being a 2000 manga having a different story building/structure.

Enjoyment 9
Without spoiling the manga is definitely one of my favorites in the 2000's era. As a person who dont really like reading mainstream manga like the usual One Piece, Naruto, etc. I find this manga similar to them with its own twist in the story. That aside I appreciate the manga for what its worth, the build up is really good and while the Ecchi is at times disturbing or borderline too ecchi, it doesnt mean its poor or only tries to catch people with its ecchi drawing. Further in the story the ecchi stuff will subside and thats when I really liked the manga. The pacing was really good too, and like I said the build up each important chapter is really good which makes you want to crave for more.

Overall 8.5

Quick summary, its good if you enjoy shounen manga's, enjoy action, and has good storyline.

send me a message request if you want recommend me a manga you enjoy :)

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Aug 20, 2013

Fistula

Recommended

Preliminary (178/358 chp)

The story is well paced and interesting; however, it fell into the same "character thinks he's great, fights someone better than him, gets better, repeat" cycle as so many manga. Air Gear's saving grace are the characters, technology, and comedy that keep it from getting boring.

Art was rather stylized, but it was still realistic enough to help bridge both serious and silly portions of the story. Oddly enough, the gratuitous fan service only helped. It kept the story from seeming too serious, which would have gotten boring very quickly considering the... repetitiveness of most archs.

The characters definitely helped set Air Gear apart from other ...

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Aug 15, 2020

Auvisome

Mixed Feelings

Preliminary (179/358 chp)

One of the hardest manga I’ve ever tried to read. It’s just so pretentious and nonsensical with its storytelling. Just one thing I’d like to address, and it concerns Air Gear's use of metaphors.

"Flying"

This manga throws out that buzzword as if it actually means something. At first, I thought it was just some metaphor to liken a character to an animal, but later on the characters began to use it as actual explanation for the nonsense that takes place.

Are they flying? Fuck no! They’re rollerblading for god sake!

Also, Ikki shitting out an EF4 tornado from his fucking shoes completely contradicts the law of conservation of ...

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Jun 18, 2021

Sukamii

Mixed Feelings

As I'm writing this review its currently 2:00 am so bear with me if the writing is somewhat... well, ass

Air Gear is a frankly frustrating, confusing mess of a manga that is extremely entertaining to read through; is the only way I feel I can start this review, let alone summarize this manga. This is my first outing with anything written by the mangaka Oh! great, and I feel like you can solidly grasp his style of story telling and character direction from this manga alone, he really lays it all out on the table for you to read so it makes it very apparent ... if you're going to be a fan of his works or not.

I'm rambling at this point, so I'm going to cut to the chase already. Air Gear is at times utterly phenomenal, capturing that "shonen magic" that keeps you reading chapter after chapter until you realize you've read through the entire night and the sun is already rising. For roughly the first 200 chapters, well to say I was engrossed would be putting it lightly. The story felt incredibly tight, each character had clear drives and motivations, and the Air-treks themselves felt grounded in their absurdity. The pacing was just fully on point.

Another thing to point out, and this is something that is painfully apparent from the get go, is the heavy usage of ero/ecchi/harem. I genuinely despise this kind of writing. It feels lazy, and takes away a lot of the impact of the female cast when so often they get reduced to nothing more than "haha look I have fat boob and ASS". It is like this throughout the entire manga; and while not all of the humor stems from this, too much does. It's just really boring.

Another thing that is bluntly obvious from this mangas start, and probably what got you most interested in reading it (as it did for me) is the utterly stunning art. If Oh! Great can do anything, it is pull off beautifully framed, easy to read action punctuated by breathtaking spreads.

Gonna keep this review short at this point since I'm meandering and don't think I'll be able to properly express the frustrations I had with this story or the rest of its flaws and strengths so rapid fire is the way to go!

Air Gear doesn't really know what it wants to be exactly, a super natural-battle-sports-action-ecchi-harem-comedy. It's kind of a mess of these ideas, and for a long time it does balance these concepts, but after a while they seem to put too much weight on the core sports-shonen theme. It gets bloated, introducing far too many characters, far too many concepts and ideas that don't get developed enough or get too much development., it gets to a point where you don't really care about anyone in the main cast of characters, especially with ones who are barely even in the story. The main twist villain is a weird dance between stupid and earnest, but borders more on the comically ridiculous and overly serious than actually entertaining and smart. Air treks become absurd with what they are even capable of doing and it stops being entertaining to read about them.

For the final stretch of the manga (the last hundred chapters or so) this manga becomes an absolute slog to read through, and frankly I hate that about it. Air Gear displayed so much promise and potential at its inception, that by the time I finished it I was left frustrated at its inability to fully live up to what it could've been. Alas, I had a ridiculous amount of fun with this manga. There are genuine lessons to take away from this story, but I feel like a lot of the meaning gets lost in itself. Ultimately, I recommend this manga. It's a shit ton of fun, and is worth pulling through to experience the whole thing.

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Dec 22, 2021

13o13

Recommended

The manga is great as a teen, kinda annoying as an adult. The art is great and the concept is cool, problem is that the dialogues are redundant. How many time do you need to use metaphors relating to wings or flying until its enough. Like, we know that the main message of the story is all about being free and how important it is, but do every character possible needs to remind us of it? The story gets better further in the chapters but it does stay cringy no matter what. The manga has other flaws but its mostly subjective. I would rate it ...

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Mar 3, 2022

DeathRage

Recommended

Ok. To begin with, if you're easily amused with a confused story and get mad at unecessary, out of place jokes, this manga ain't made for you.
That being said, I loved every minute reading and appreciating everything about the world that Oh!Great created. It's not about being rotulated as sport/fighting/etc that really matters, because why rotulate when you can have everything in a single manga.
Starts as sports and evolves into something else, so if you looking for a straight sport manga to start and end, I would not recommend air gear.
Said that, I think the manga is a masterpiece created.

The characters even ...

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Nov 20, 2022

kermitxgod

Mixed Feelings

Im really not all that good at writing so im just going to summarize from the start.

Air gear is honestly a really good manga with beautiful art and cool character design, the concept is insanely cool and the humor is often very funny however it does suffer from rapid power escalation and i often wished it would have gone back to the more simpler stories. The ecchi part is a bit distracting but it is what is and the humor that leans into the ecchi part especially with one of the character (you will know) is just annoying in my opinion

Basically good shit, read ...

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