SK8 the Infinity – 03 [Undesired Hero]

The list of anime tropes I hate is considerably longer than the list of those I love. Even during shows that are largely enjoyable, small annoyances tend to derail episodes or even whole character arcs in my head. I think that’s what happened with SK8’s third outing, about which I’d noted a meager number of positives and one overwhelming negative by the time the credits rolled. As far as tropes go, there were plenty to turn up your nose at: strawman bullies who try to embarrass the object of their jealousy, women fawning over the banter of two handsome men, a Char Aznable clone foreshadowed to be the final boss. But those were minor enough to come out in the wash, unlike the one that prevented me from embracing this episode: an antagonist who repeatedly decried the concept of friendship, then learned the error of his ways after losing to a pair of best friends.

I doubt this post will make it past three paragraphs, as my feelings about “Undesired Hero” begin and end with Miya Chinen, the twerpy skateboarding prodigy with an attitude three times too big for his body. We saw in a flashback that he lost his entire friend group after surpassing them in their chosen sport, which provided the foundation for his present dismissal of cooperation and companionship. In Miya’s mind, people only rely on others because they lack talent or skill. They’re slimes, mobs, commoners. He holds this black and white worldview so tenaciously that SK8 doesn’t have the luxury of exploring it. Instead, it depicts its origins (the aforementioned flashback), lets it overtake Miya’s character for nearly the whole episode, then deletes it after Langa beats him with a custom board that Reki made. See what they did there? Langa won with the power of (a skateboard created due to) friendship! We’re approaching levels of thematic layering that shouldn’t be possible.

All of this would have been easier to swallow if the show hadn’t framed its main characters as Miya’s saviors. Watching his eyes glisten with tears upon hearing that Reki and Langa wouldn’t abandon him gave me a fierce case of whiplash. Miya met them just a few days ago, and their entire history until that point was characterized by insults, so the kid’s emotional walls crumbling after a single phrase didn’t compute. And that’s before you factor in that Miya’s interest in Langa was just for show – he only approached him at ADAM’s request, a fact that he let slip midway through their race. The presence of a puppetmaster character like ADAM is another thing that’s at odds with SK8’s previously lighthearted tone, despite his insistence at the episode’s end that “skating should be fun.” What is his idea of fun, exactly? As a matter of fact, what is this show’s idea of fun? It would have been hard to imagine a need for that question last week, but after this big-ass disappointment, it bears asking.