Air Gear, Vol. 1
Published by: Del Rey Books
Writer & Artist: Oh!great

232 (208) pages.
Original Language: Japanese
Orientation: Right to left
Vintage: 2003. US edition July 2006.
Translation & Adaptation: Makoto Yukon
Lettering: Janice Chiang
Publisher’s Rating: Older Teen, Ages 16+

Rating: 4 out of 5

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Premise: The very latest in cool gear are inline skates with power boosters, called Air Trecks. It’s all fun and games until the Trecks are adopted by the local street gangs…

Synopsis:

Meet Itsuki Minami, near legendary street fighter, hero of the Eastside, known all over as “Babyface”.

He can beat anyone except any of the four girls he lives with, the Noyamano sisters. All five are orphans; both families used to be close friends, and circumstances being what they are Itsuki lives in the Noyamano household. Itsuki makes due, looking out in his own way for his ’sisters’ while trying to keep from getting too beat up at home.

“Babyface” Itsuki may look like a softy, but outside of the Noyamano household, he kicks serious ass. He’ll take any challenge. The troubles start when he accepts a challenge from a rival gang, and while he wins decisively, he has no idea that the Westside punks have dangerous underworld connections.

Avenging their recently-defeated cohorts, gangsters on Air Trecks move into Itsuki’s turf– defeating his gang, kicking his ass, and generally making life a bitch for all the kids involved. Soundly beaten, Itsuki loses any cred with his gang, or his rivals, or the Sisters. But he’s like family, so the Noyamano girls help the poor kid out.

With new trick skates and a few choice skate tricks, Itsuki finds redemption in the mangled near-corpses of his enemies. Of course this takes a few chapters to cover, including the inevitable one-on-one showdown with the rival gang’s boss.

Now turned on to a whole new (underground) world of blood, skates, and flying leaps, in some ways Itsuki is just more confused than he’s ever been, but he wants to know more. As he goes in search of answers to all these burning new questions… we get a pretty solid setup for what we’ll all get to read about in Vol. 2.

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Review:

Oh!great is the pen-name of Ito Oogure (go ahead, say his last name out loud… you’ll see where he picked up his nom de plume) and he has built up something of a reputation over the past few years as a writer and artist with a flair for fight scenes and violence.

In that respect, at least, Air Gear does not disappoint. Also, Oh!great does some really good work with perspective and motion, imbuing a number of scenes with a definite sense of soaring over an urban landscape.

While the pages are pretty, sometimes the story takes a back seat. Important plot points flash by in a single panel, occasionally hidden or obscured by a stylish but confusing layout. I found myself re-reading pages just to figure out exactly what was going on, and how Itsuke managed to get to where he was, three pages on.

The story moves in fits and starts, not really settling into a steady narrative, or bothering to expand on characters or circumstances much past a rather two-dimensional portrayal, including the so called hero. But the art is nice to look at, and perhaps if Oh!great steps back a bit to tell his stories with a bit more space and care, it’ll all make sense in future volumes.

As a special bonus, Del Rey gives us the first 8 pages rendered in colour (a nice touch) and of course the extras at the end of the volume include their usual translation notes, along with some character info/preliminary sketches, and a few preview pages from volume 2, which are sort of nice to look at but only really handy if you happen to read Japanese.

Volume 1 is a slick and fast-paced opening for a series with an original concept and some very nice artwork… you know there’s a “but” coming. The premise works, for the most part, but the whole gangland-skate-challenge theme could be written off as just a flashy 90s extreme sports retread overlayed on old 50s car culture memes, right down to a final duel (or should I call it a race?) between the once-beaten hero and his nemesis. If you can buy into the ground rules, though, it looks like we’re in for a hell of a ride.