SK∞

I love me a good sportsmanga or -anime, so when I saw SK∞ happened, I really wanted to watch it and with just 12 episodes it’s a nice bite sized anime.

Going into it, I thought it was going to have Air Gear vibes, because of that street-sports thingy going on, but it ended up being much more like Initial D. Btw, I did not watch Air Gear, only read the manga so I don’t know how much was actuall animated. The manga kind of got weird towards the end, but I have to give it to Air Gear, it has one the coolest crowning moments of awesome in a manga I’ve read, when Ikki was declared Storm King. It wasn’t even a big win or anything, Ikki was in normal boots, it was literally just a declaration, but the build up and how it was done was just so damn epic. I was considering to reread it just for this scene.

The entire structure was much more Initial D-like, though. It’s just instead of cars, they’re skating downhill on skateboards in mostly one on one battles and the main character is a genius.

The animation, being done by studio Bones, looks amazing for the most part. Wider shots look kind of cheap here and there, but overall very nice to look at. Especially the beefs looks really good and paired with an amazing soundtrack, it’s so much fun to watch. The final skate had such great music and visual, even with paper thin characters and storylines, it’s fun to watch.

Here’s the biggest downfall: the story is pretty much non-existent. It’s basically “let’s beat the bad guy, because I want to and skateboarding is fun”. That’s the extent of the story. Honestly, in many sports stories, the story is pretty thin, it’s usually about some sort of tournament they want to win. Yes, there is a tournament in SK∞, but it all boils down to “skating is fun!” This is the message thats drilled into your head: “Skating is fun! And it’s even more fun with friends!” Yes, sure, I would guess everyone is doing their sports of choice, because it’s fun. This message is conveyed to the point where it gets annoying.

Let’s move on to the characters. The first main is Reki and he’s like a skateboarding nerd, he’s decently good at it and teaches Langa. I like that they tried to go a different route with Reki, that he’s not the best and the most talented and the genius – that’s Langa. I still feel like I’m kind of disappointed in Reki. He literally lost every single beef he had in the entire series. He didn’t win even once. He did have his crowning moment of awesome when he managed to keep Adam in check and just barely lost to him. It makes sense that he’s just not good enough to beat Adam, but couldn’t they have given Reki another moment of awesome linked with a win? Since he lost it feels kind of disappointing after all, even if he was awesome. Also, he’s totally Langas waifu and spends half his screentime screaming “Langa!”

His depressive episode was well done, though. That was cool. That showed some real weakness and depth of his character. It’s very understandable he get’s upset when everyone around him is so much better than he is and even the guy he taught how to skate is suddenly pulling away very fast. Kudos for this.

Langa is a little bit too perfect for my liking, they could’ve given him more flaws. Since he’s a very experienced snowboarder I guess it makes sense he catches up skaeboarding very fast, they kinda overdid it a little bit, though. And he’s always nice and understanding, never said a mean word, yada yada. He was unable to properly deal with the situation when Reki was depressed, but it’s not like he royally screwed up or something, he just didn’t know what to do and tried to reach out to Reki, which was fine tbh. They could’ve make him miss his father a little more and his mother is really cheerfull for a fresh widow. I wouldve liked to see more anger and more sadness within him. He’s too much “good guy”, too one dimensional.

The main antagonist is Adam, who’s quite frankly batshit insane. When “S” was founded, he was a teenager, but now he’s an adult who’s messing around with mostly underage teenagers. Pretty much all of his “techniques” are extreamely dangerous and are meant to injure other skaters. He assaults teenagers to the point of attempted murder. He crashed his skateboard into Cherry’s face, while Cherry was going top speed downhill right into it. I’m pretty sure under non-anime-circumstances, that would’ve killed Cherry. He tried to do the same to Reki. He crashed Reki into walls and tried to straight up beat him up. What he’s doing is screaming “Oh my God!” on so many levels, I don’t understand how the adults present, who actually know who he is, can just watch and let it happen without bringing him to justice.

Yeah, I get it, he has every reason to be messed up, but that doesn’t make it okay to act like that. Because he was abused as a child, doesn’t make it okay to abuse underage teenagers. This man needs to be locked away and needs professional help very urgently.

The few adults in this anime are not exactly very responsible. I thought they would look out for the kids, but instead they’re okay watching them getting killed (Cherry and Joe) or injure them themselves (Adam and Shadow). Reki was more responsible than any adult in the series. At least he stood up for Mika when Adam was verbally attacking Mika to the point of psychological abuse. The rest of the cast is very trope-y. I liked they picked up Rekis promise towards Mika to not leave him alone, when Reki was depressed and pushing everyone away. Mika had every right to be pissed at Reki for breaking his promise. Honestly, if Mika would’ve been left alone, he probably would’ve turned into another Adam somewhere down the line. Just by being a friend, Reki saved Mika. Also, that cat suit? Adorable. Cute angry kitten. No as smol as Yuri Plisetsky, but still pretty cute.

And then… there’s the fujioshi-bait. This anime is nowhere near as straight up gay as Yuri on Ice, but I’ve already mentioned Reki was basically Langas waifu. At the finale of the last beef when Reki was waiting for Langa at the finish line? And how Langa threw himself at Reki? Yeah, sure, you guys are “just friends”. Then there was the whole thing when skateboarding wasn’t fun without Reki and his heart wouldn’t go dokidoki without Reki when he was skateboarding and then his mom thought Langa was talking about a girl he liked, but it was actually Reki… they definately didn’t say it straight out and in the beach filler epsiode they made Reki interested in a girl, but the bait is out there. It’s deifnately out there.

Overall it was a fun watch. I don’t expect a very deep story or deep characters from a sports anime, even though it’s very much appreciated. They tried a couple of interesting approaches with Reki, which was nice, but they very much overdid Adams violence. I guess what bugged me the most was the repetitive “skateboarding is fun!”-theme and Adams overly violent behavior towards underage teenagers. They could’ve made him the villain just fine without attempted murder and yes, it was very satisfying when Adam was laughted at, becasue he tripped. he deserved it, he actually deserved so much more. Like, I don’t know, a one way trip into a closed facility.

I did rate it with a 7/10, despite it’s flaws. Mainly because it was still overall a pretty fun watch and the visuals and music was very outstanding. It’s kind of a guilty pleasure. On a scale of 1-10 it deserves more of a 5-ish, but the enjoyable parts where very much cool to watch.