Ride Back 1-3: all hail the biker ballerina
I’m back from the brink. After surviving ungodly working hours (long night shifts are looooong) and finally completing the epic Fate/Stay Night visual novel (reviewage to come) I’m finally in a position to sample what the latest season has to offer. No offence to any individual but when your feedreader is following so many blogs simultaneously there’s a lot of repetition that says the same things over and over. More noise than signal, as they say. If nothing else it’s kept me objective and made me all the more eager to take a step back and look at what we have with fresh eyes. Bloodshot and tired, but objective. I hope.
“Born to be wiiiiild…~”
Ride Back caught my attention for really simplistic reasons. The promo art and synopsis didn’t say much apart from “pretty girl and transforming motorbike,” which is fine by me. To be honest I wasn’t looking for anything special apart from a superficial but entertaining piece of sci-fi featuring, well, a pretty girl and a transforming motorbike. At this point I’d like to announce my enjoyment of watching motorbike racing and playing racing games (Wipeout is great with the electronic fuckwin of the Boom Boom Satellites in the background for instance) despite having zero competitive spirit the rest of the time, and several members of my family are motorbike enthusiasts…which are possibly part of the reason why I’m finding this to be such fun.
I have distinct feeling that the emphasis of the series is going to change from the personal to the political at some point given the newflashes and bits of background, which is something I don’t entirely welcome. Library Wars was another short twelve-episode series that tried to place everyday character-driven stuff alongside serious political mechinations, and didn’t really benefit from this lack of focus. Ride Back introduces these dual themes right from the get-go so I’m hoping at this stage that we’re all warned in advance so one aspect of the story won’t detract from the impact of the other later on.
This nagging worry makes the artwork side of Ride Back a trivial matter, which I guess is how things should be. I’m not against the marrying of hand-drawn and CG – heck, it’s a given these days – but the difference between the pretty-shiny mecha and everything else is pretty jarring in this case. It gives a very strong indication, misplaced or otherwise, of where the majority of the budget lies: zillions of yen invested in the mecha CG while the character animation is in all probability outsourced. It’s a shame really that the character designs look so outdated and uninspired (what is this? Gonzo?!) because some of them are really great.
The two classmates bug me a little but the rest of them are generic yet still entertaining. Tamayo is the moody prodigy but her family ties are I’m guessing what connects the college Rideback club with whatever it is that’s getting the military types all riled up (because, of course, the idea of bikes with arms is too vital a military asset to be left to motor racing on TV); Hishida is a cool guy purely because he’s a rare combination of gifted mechanic and hardcore nerd. The only exception to the generic-ness of the series is Rin, the heroine. I must confess the main reason why I’m following the show:
I don’t care what anyone says. This shot is made of pure, unadultrated win
This.
I’m sure some people will find her change in direction to be more than a little odd but I’ve seen both my younger sisters go through a similar transition during which they’ve traded ballet shoes in for biking leathers. Maybe I can see a bit of them in Rin so have a better handle on what she’s thinking, but when an anime character who’s drawn in a way that’s a full decade out of date cannot be pigeonholed into any archetype I can’t help but sit up and take notice.
I must confess that the artwork is of the same lazy style that held back Chaos;Head but everything from the way her hair has that unkempt just-fell-out-of-bed look to the way she refuses to fall into any of the moe subcategories is a breath of fresh air. Unless of course ballerina biker chic is a fanboy fetish I’ve yet to hear about, in which case I’ll be the first to queue up to celebrate it.
The juxtaposition of mechanical stuffs and cherry blossom symbolism is pretty effective I think
Even little details that would yield frantic drooling and screencapping, namely the occasional cleavage shot or PANTSU flash, can be explained away without feeling like it’s otaku pandering: it’s what happens when someone rides a motorbike in a skirt on a windy day. I thought her background could be emphasised a bit more (but then, there are nine episodes to go) but otherwise she’s a character that I feel I can root for because her motives are genuine, without ever getting on my nerves with pointless whining and angsting. While the rest of the series could’ve borrowed elements from who knows how many sci-fi and saturday morning cartoon shows the lead character is wonderfully, refreshingly ordinary, and the series is all the more enjoyable for that.
I don’t have high expectations for Ride Back. At best it’ll be a borderline-cyberpunk mecha racing show with the said mecha becoming a force in the underlying conflicts and giving the heroine a chance to feel the wind in her hair without aggravating an old dancing injury; but I’m not asking for more than that. Rin’s cool, her motorbike’s cool and I’m happy watching her tear up the tarmac with a heartwarming look of carefree liberation. Besides, we seem to have a genuine cyberpunk show coming up in the form of Viper’s Creed, and that has the guy from Supercar singing the OP. The winter season has only just started…
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Ahh, Rideback. I gave the first episode a 9 on MAL and now I haven’t even seen the third episode, this is how quickly my excitement for the show faded, amazingly enough. I am quite happy to see that everybody seems to be talking about it though, it’s the first series adapted from an IKKI manga that received so much attention as far as I know. (A few people have seen Bokurano, Tetsuko no Tabi got only one episode subbed and Noramimi was never subbed).
So please somebody wake me up when this adaptation goes beyond silly Rideback races again. :3
By the way, I am looking forward to more of your 1000+ words posts. ;)
I loved the designs and and thought the reverse about the animation and the CG. In my opinion, CG just doesn’t mesh well with anime.
I’m with Omisyth on this one – In my opinion Rideback probably has one of the best blendings of CG and traditional animation I’ve seen in anime. Admittedly that isn’t saying much (as it’s normally pretty bad, even in high-profile stuff like Evangelion 1.01), and it is a bit variable, but overall I thought the two blended together almost perfectly.
That aside, I pretty much agree with your feelings on the show, although I’m not too scared by the thought of it getting “political”, it might make for an interesting change of pace.
As a side note, I’m also impatiently waiting to see Viper’s Creed get the fansubbing treatment.
One day, everyone will come to realise what a disappointing ride Ride Back has become, and remember to heed gaguri’s wisdom as he was among the very few wary of its hype.
…or he will one day find himself heeding everyone’s words and realise how awesome it turned out to be.
The thing where the show might be too short to develop its politics is getting to me. After episode 1’s Big Moment, I was very hyped up. After episode 3 I find myself thinking that if all the show really has to make it special is that delirious flying feeling, then maybe it should have been an OVA and dropped the political thing into the background permanently. It’s one of those shows that gives off that nothing special feeling for 15 minutes, then delivers pure happiness. I like to think it’ll find a way to cut the slack and deliver purified Rin perfection, but the politics bodes poorly.
@Sasa: I loved the first episode but if it gets as good as that again, you’ll hear it here first!
@Omysith: I thought the CG was very good, but sadly that made the decent-yet-average animation look worse!
@Hanners: the broader story would be welcome but I honestly don’t think such a short episode count will do it justice. If there’s a second season at a later date though, that ought to be okay, certainly if the budget’s a bit higher.
@gaguri: I’m hyping this but with low expectations at the same time, if that makes any sense at all. To put it another way, I have high hopes for it as a fun B-list title (as opposed to having the ambition of being an A-list title and falling short).
@coburn: I think ep #4 will give a better handle on where the series is going. We’re only a quarter of the way through so far but I can’t say whether the pacing is good or not. I wouldn’t call it ’slow’ either, but the episode count is a worry – we’re not dealing with an epic story here, after all.