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"The law of skaters is hard, but it is the law"- Some idiot who came up with the rules for this sport, probably.

At first, I dropped this anime around episode 8 because of the copious amount of ecchi and the over-seriousness of the sport, but looking back on it, I'm glad I finished it.

Story: welcome to the world of Ikki, a guy who just learned how to skate a few seconds ago, yet is already popular enough to have the attention of the hottest girl in the litter (heard this story before? Me too). This guy has an ego the size of his overgrown ... hair and flies on Friendship and SuperpowersTM. This is Air Gear, a sports anime like any other and certainly not on the top of the list.
Yet, despite all this, it's a pretty entertaining show, why? Let's find out!

The good:
Air gear has a nice mix of humor thrown throughout the story; each character having its own brand of comedy. Most jokes won't make you roll over laughing, but it certainly got a snigger out of me.

Characters/ designs:
The characters are as diverse as they are plentiful. Designs like these make me hopeful that one day, all anime will be this diverse. There are black characters, white characters, tanned characters in all sizes from XS to XXL (something you rarely see in today's shows, where everyone is a stick puppet - while sometimes simultaneously having massive breasts that should realistically bring harm to the body; yes, even the breasts in this anime are somewhat realistic).

On the subject of personality, they all have their own clear-cut stereotype, yet they are not afraid to sometimes go beyond it (though sometimes to such an extent that it feels more like personality swapping- I'm looking at you, Ikki).

The side characters are also very interesting and get a decent amount of back-story most of the time. This is a contradiction to our shounen-hero Ikki who barely gets any back-story at all- in the beginning it's hard to guess what Ikki's living-situation actually is (I'm still not sure).


The mediocre:
Animation: Looking up close, the animation doesn't look too good- verging on awful sometimes. However, the colors are appealing and the designs are fun and diverse; it's easy to distinguish the characters.

Sound: The OP really fits the theme of the show with its upbeat hip-hop sound. The ending however, isn't all that exciting.
The ost for this show, though nice and upbeat, gets repetitive after a while.

The bad:
Pacing: Our main character literally flies through the story at an alarming pace. There are barely any setbacks (and if there are, they will quickly be swept away by either the help of a Sudden Ally or the Power Of Friendship/ wind).
It goes surprisingly easy for him (even with his natural talent for riding the wind), and during battles, the enemy seems to have more at stake than him.

Pacing to me is almost paramount, it shows how realistic the scenarios are and what a person can achieve in the time they are given. Alas, this anime doesn't do too well in this department.

Taking things too serious: How can taking something too serious be bad, you ask? Well, the feel of the show has to align with the story and the sport somewhat and the antagonists of this show are bringing a gun to a knife fight. Death is a constant threat and if not, serious charges and possible arrest -by a faction who thinks the ends justify the means- looms over the head of every skater.

Add that up to the mysterious superpowers that are on the same scale as Kuroko no Basket (and sometimes even more ridiculous), and you have a show that makes you feel like you missed the clue. Did they drop in a fantasy world where all this is totally acceptable? Is this all a dream thought up by our shounen protagonist? Who knows, these things are never explained in any case.

Should you watch it? Well it depends; if you can sit back and relax without over-thinking too much, I'd say go for it. Are you an ecchi enthusiast? Well sure, just do it (though it does tone down after the first few episodes).

But if you like your anime a little bit more clear-cut and realistic, I'd say skip this one. There are better fish in the sports anime sea.

I see what they were trying to do; that's why it pains me even more to give it such a bad grade.

The Good things:
Concept:
The concept was great: a human girl who wants to be a witch falls into the witch realm, and finds it different then what she was dreaming of.
In theory a great start, yeah? I'll tell you where it went wrong at "the bad things".

The art, holy-moly the art was fantastic. It was refreshing, almost realistic, but not off-putting. It seemed to have come directly from a colorful web-comic like W.I.T.C.H. (but with even better art). There are so many ... wonderful designs for objects solely used by witches (the dog-chest, the dragon-house etc.).
The only thing that was off-putting were the facial-expressions sometimes. They picked the weirdest times to show off their skills in the "dramatically-disturbed look" department. (you know the one, big eyes, forehead-zoom in that looks really creepy).

Voice acting: The voices showed off the character's personalities well (tbh, I wouldn't be able to pull of Arusu's up-beat character for so long even If I had the training).
The only voice-actor that left me wondering was the one of Lennon (Renon), whose gender was supposed to be ambiguous, but the voice left little to the imagination.


The mediocre things:
Characters: Don't get me wrong I like them, archetype and all, but their personalities were either too consistent or all over the place. A change of one's mind could take up a few minutes before they'd be back to their old personality again. Their motivations are also vague.
(Does Arusu want to go back to the human realm, or does she want to stay? Who knows, not her).

Sound: I didn't hear anything special in it. The Opening was just a less than epic instrumental and the ending, though soothing enough to make you fall asleep, didn't really stick with me. The rest of the OST didn't stand out to me and was sometimes a little creepy- though that did fit the situation sometimes.



The bad things:
The plot:
With the plot I mean the following: Structure, pacing, possible potholes and other plot bunnies that never came to fruition.
Man oh man, from the beginning I could tell the pacing was off, and it irked me bad. The beginning wasn't a beginning but a flash-forward, just like many of the scenes to follow were either badly timed flash-forwards or flashbacks. Take this and put it into a structure that already had no clue where it was going, and you have a mess.

The storyline started off simple enough; one objective, and a punishment if it wasn't done. But the objective was not only undoable, but also unfair and mathematically (or evolutionary, depending on how you look at the fairy crisis), nonsense. [You want to tell Me, there's only one fairy of every species in that entire world? Makes no sense at all.]

There were many things that, in the end, didn't get resolved (or I had to guess at, like the timeline of the Witch realm and the human realm: a complete mess). Facts were almost always presented late, or kept as guesswork.

Some questions I have that contains spoilers- read at own risk:
[Why is there such animosity between witches and warlocks? When was the human realm and witch realm divided, and how? How did daddy dearest have two children in different timelines (which doesn't add up), How did a child survive alone in that dimensional sea? ] /End of spoilers.


Conclusion:
It's such a shame it turned out this way. If the story-boarders had just paid a little more attention to the structure and maybe a little less time on quests that didn't make it through anyway, I might've actually given this a way higher grade.
If you just like to watch something when you're bored, this show is not a bad way to kill time, but don't expect too much, or you might get dizzy.

"Say, did you know... that every game has rules?'"
This is the main point of the movie, a constant game with rules that aren't even explained.
I've seen flashbacks, flash- forwards, dreams and hallucinations but there was one thing it didn't have: common sense.

When the producers made this I'm sure the whole way through they thought the same thing: "What just happened?" and honestly,... I'm still thinking that.

Story: 2
Like I said before, this story doesn't make any sense, there simply is no story, my advice is to read the manga first, because the base isn't even given in this movie.
(Although the manga and the movie ... are both different stories the base is the same so it should help you figure things out a bit more).

Art: 8
The art was the only thing that really urged me to watch further because even though it makes no sense everything is drawn so wonderfully and happy that you can't help but smile when seeing the surroundings of Heartland.

Sound: 5
I didn't hear anything extroadinary but the opening was intruiging, like the song says: "It's an enchanting trap with no escape in sight" the song says it all.

Character: 3
There is no backgroundstory of where she met them and barely what they are like, some even pop up in the middle of the story with no introduction while Alice seems to know them very well.
There are even characters who don't know what role they are playing (if you see Ace you'll know what I mean).

Enjoyment: 4
I have to give them some credit for the use of fitting seiyuu's and design but if you compare it to the story and character development itself I was more confused than awed.

Overall: 4
I've tried my best to keep up with this beautiful designed world but the plot simply wouldn't let me, maybe people who played the game will be the only ones who'll fully understand it,... on the other hand, I don't think anyone will understand this work of strange animation.

I think Angel beats! is absolutely brilliant and it opened my eyes to allot of things (like the main theme of this anime: death and the afterlife).
Although it's about the afterlife the tone is set in such a comic way that you almost forget they're rebelling against disappearing from their midway-afterlife. There are allot of touching moments in it too- even cried once or twice to be fair.
The action in it isn't too bad either, there're allot of thrilling fights- you almost forget they can't die- and allot of comical deaths too (beings pierced by iron objects and later on walk around as if ... nothing happened for example).
The characters are hilarious- and some even comical sadistic- and they all have their own storyline and almost all are covered in one of the episodes.
All in all it's a must watch show for everyone because almost every genre is covered!