Review: AIR GEAR

This month we're looking at nothing but shonen manga.  The focus has been on Viz's offerings for the better part of two decades, but I'm going to start with a somewhat forgotten title from Kodansha.

AIR GEAR (Ea Gia), by Oh! Great.  First published in 2002 and first published in North America in 2006.

PLOT:

Itsuki Minami is the talk of his junior high class.  He's the leader of the Eastside gang, has incredible strength, and lives with the tough but beautiful Noyamano sisters.  One day, the violent and vindictive Skullsaiders gang take their violent revenge upon Itsuki's gang, which plunges him into despair.  That's when the sisters reveal that they are members of a secret gang of their own.  They bring Itsuki into their fold, gifting him a pair of special motorized in-line skates called Air Treks.  These combined with his natural strength and agility give Itsuki the ability to do all sorts of fantastic feats.  Now Itsuki has the tools he needs to rebuild his gang, take back his turf, and spread his wings.

PLOT:

No one will ever accuse Oh! Great of being a great manga storyteller.  He has built his career upon making big, dumb, horny shonen stories and Air Gear is no exception to that.  Still, I feel that Air Gear's first volume shows that he learned a few lessons since the early days of Tenjo Tenge.

The cast is built primarily out of tried and true archetypes.  Itsuki is in many ways your standard Shonen Boy: super strong, not very bright, kind of pervy, but has a lot of big dreams and goals in his heart.  He's got an old mentor to teach him things, as well as a bunch of shallow, vicious monsters with a predictable and distressing fondness for rape.  The Noyamanos are a veritable collection of well-worn character types.  There's the sweet and motherly Rei, the tough tomboy Mika, Ringo the requisite Childhood Best Friend (tm)/Love Interest, and Ume the token loli.  That said, the dynamic between them is legitimately kind of sweet.  Itsuki was just some random orphan kid, but they willingly took him into their lives and all of the girls treat him like a brother.  Sure they might pick on him when he screws up, but when he needs support they give it to him without question.

Every shonen manga needs a gimmick, and here the gimmick is 'extreme sports.'  More specifically, it's the Air Treks which are a sort of fantastical combination of rollerblading and skateboarding that feels like something out of Jet Set Radio.  This gimmick is also what commands the most suspension of belief.  Oh! Great makes a decent effort at trying to explain how the Air Treks work and how people can fling themselves about on them without shattering every bone in their body, but most of it operates on the Rule of Cool.  

The story here is definitely toned down when compared to its predecessor.  There's still plenty of fighting, but there's a lot less fanservice right out of the gate and all the magic on display is technological in nature instead of ki-based.  The cast thus far is fairly balanced as far as gender goes and it relies a lot less on putting those ladies into peril.  Obviously a lot of this is due to the fact that this was published in a shonen magazine versus a seinen one, but honestly a little restraint does Oh! Great a lot of good as a mangaka.  It forces him to rely less on shock value and more on good action and high energy, and it's those qualities that make this volume something of a delight to read.

ART:

As always, what Oh! Great lacks as a storyteller he more than makes up for as an artist.  This series in particular is a big step up visually from Tenjo Tenge, leaving behind the big-haired, big-hipped, big-tittied weirdos for the more realistic designs he's been working with more or less ever since...at least, as far as the heroes are concerned.  It's the villains where he lets himself get wild, with one gang leader looking like a literal demon and another who shows up late in the volume who can only be described as a combination of a woman, a toad, and Jabba the Hutt.

While he's reduced the amount and intensity of the fanservice in his art in this series, Oh!Great is still very skillful at incorporating it in seamless, organic ways.  He's never shy about the panty peeks and the cleavage, but their presence doesn't feel like it's disrupting the flow of the story or the panels.  Where he really shines with this series is his ability to evoke the feeling of fast action and flight through his art.  There's lots of strong, dynamic posing, exciting angles, and even a few stop-motion-photo-style montages, and that's all very good.  What took my breath away was when Itsuki and the others started zooming around on their Air Treks.  When they do, the pages open up into these huge spreads where Itsuki and the girls swoop and soar through the air and scenery, enhanced only by the use of low angles and the tasteful deployment of speedlines.  When Itsuki launches himself into the air, you can practically feel it.  It's absolutely stunning work.

RATING:

Air Gear's story is not all that deep or original beyond its twist on extreme sports, but its artwork makes the whole thing soar as high as Itsuki himself.  It's probably the most approachable of Oh! Great's work in English and as such an easy recommendation.

This manga was published by Del Ray Comics/Kodansha Comics.  This series is complete in Japan with 37 volumes available.  All 37 volumes were released in single volumes and  18 volumes were released in 3-in-1 omnibuses. The physical volume are out of print, but all 37 volumes plus the omnibuses are available digitally through most major digital manga vendors.