SK8 the Infinity – 04 [ADAM, The Matador of Love]

I think it’s safe to say that SK8 the Infinity has abandoned the mask it wore during its first two episodes. This is no longer an anime about having a rad time skateboarding with your bros – now it’s about settling beef with your bros, and I’m not talking about the burgers that Miya refused to eat at A&W. Everyone wants to start beef with ADAM, a bloodthirsty politician from a well-to-do family who channels his aggression through extreme skateboarding. This is such an insane premise that the only way to make it work is by leaning completely into the insanity, which this episode did without hesitation. And it worked! By the end, I was laughing at everything ADAM said and did, from skating uphill groin-first to villainously licking Reki’s blood off his cheek (framed with a Dutch angle, no less). I still miss the version of SK8 that we glimpsed two weeks ago, but at least this new model is demonstrating some knowledge of its own stupidity.

ADAM has completely taken over this show, at least for the time being. He just whooped Reki’s ass as a means of challenging Langa, plus Cherry and Joe have stated their intention to battle him. All these conflicts will take several episodes to resolve, which means he’ll be at the center of SK8’s plot for a while yet. Given his sudden prominence, I’d love to explore his motivations a bit, but there’s not much to dig into. He feels burdened by the expectations of his powerful family, so he started an underground skateboarding circuit in order to attract opponents on whom he could vent his repressed anger. That’s as deep as his character runs. The more interesting question is why a Final Boss like ADAM would take center stage this early in the story. Will he really remain the show’s major antagonist for eight more episodes, or is his premature introduction a sign that a bigger baddie is lurking in the shadows? Perhaps his three tea-drinking aunts will reveal psychotic skater personas in the finale, and Reki/Langa/Miya will have to team up to defeat them.

Speaking of Miya, I liked him a lot more this week than I did during his formal introduction. All it took was an escape from the “friendship is bad” strawman mentality, and he became tolerable in a flash. In fact, he’s become the series’ voice of reason. One scene that stuck out to me was the moment in Shadow’s car when he immediately resorted to blackmail so that the boys could get to their destination. Reki and Langa just bowed their heads and begged Shadow to be their chauffeur, but Miya threatened to tell his boss at the flower shop about his secret identity, which was ten times as effective. He also spoke about the importance of nutrition and training routines, and maintained a pragmatic view on Reki’s chances of defeating ADAM. I don’t expect him to be much more than a mascot as SK8 continues down its edgy path, but I did want to note my improved opinion of the kid.

One area where my opinion hasn’t changed is the backgrounds, specifically the overwhelming brownness of the racing scenes. An open-air mine illuminated largely by lamps is going to be brown, there’s no way around that, but it’s been wearing on my eyes all the same. This would be a non-issue if it were limited to the dirt course, but it’s not: the trees are olive-colored, the manmade structures are heavily rusted, and even the clouds look like they’ve gone through a sepia filter. I’d provide some examples here, but I don’t wish retinal cancer on anyone, and if you’re current on SK8 thus far then you can likely picture what I’m talking about already. The number of beefs that the story has lined up leaves me with little hope of a non-race episode in the near future, but one has to come around eventually, and it’ll be a welcome reprieve when it does. At least the animation is holding steady, with the flashiest bits being dedicated to ADAM’s crazy poses and physics-defying tricks. If it weren’t, his character (and the show itself) would be a lot harder to watch.