It’s ADAM’s world, and we’re just living in it.
This post will have to double as an episode 12 recap and a series review, because I’ve run out of ways to call this show ridiculous without repeating myself. The finale took all the craziest moments from SK8’s short history and “improved” them, leading to the series’ most absurd episode yet. Adam tapdancing on his skateboard to Beethoven? Check, but this time it happened as he raced downhill during a lightning storm. A character skating down a sheer cliff in defiance of the laws of physics? Check, but this time it was a life-saving maneuver rather than a calculated decision. Reki screaming Langa’s name to give him a burst of motivation? Check, but this time it ended in a diving hug that could have sent both boys to the hospital. The redheaded cop threatening to expose Adam’s corrupt dealings? Check, but this time – wait, that was just as pointless as ever. Why was she written into the show if her investigation was going to bear no fruit whatsoever?
That’s just one of a million questions I have about the direction this anime took, but I want to back up for a second to talk about the finale’s visual presentation. So many goth-adjacent choices were made in conceptualizing the look of this final race: Adam’s new bone-themed outfit and cross-shaped board, the tombstone marking the finish line, the purple filter slapped over the cliffside course. Viewed from a distance, these ideas are all pretty silly, but they may have improved my experience with the episode – how else could the show have one-upped its already campy atmosphere? Adam’s past references to the biblical first man/woman explain the Christian imagery, and the struggle for dominance between two ‘blue’ characters (Adam and Langa) may have been the reason for the overwhelmingly purple aesthetic. There were some veteran Bones animators on this episode, as well – you don’t get linework this crisp without years of adherence to their house style. There’s been a lot of talk online about SK8’s production schedule collapsing, but I feel the staff turned in a solid effort nonetheless.
So the finale wasn’t bad, at least by SK8 standards. It contained its fair share of impossible contrivances, especially Langa’s escape from certain death, but that was just par for the course by the end. Taking a broader view of the series, however, its obsession with Adam seemed to outshine everything else about it, much to its detriment. His presence had consumed the show by the halfway point; it drove Reki and Langa apart, served as Cherry and Joe’s sole point of concern, and necessitated a backstory that was still insufficient to explain his psychotic persona. Everything to do with his political office was undercooked, and while the building blocks were there for an interesting relationship with his assistant Tadashi, SK8 concluded by announcing that he would be Adam’s “dog” for the rest of their lives – a fitting declaration for someone of Adam’s temperament, perhaps, but not a particularly satisfying one. And in the end, he was rehabilitated by the Power of Fun (the show’s solution to most interpersonal conflict), which felt more than a little stupid after all the suffering he’d inflicted on others.
What else is there to say? Adam cast such a shadow over this series that most of my thoughts about it revolve around him. I’ve talked plenty about the ups and downs of Reki and Langa’s story over the last few months: great ‘getting to know you’ phase, not-so-great breakup, mixed reunion. If SK8 hadn’t veered into rain-soaked melodrama during that middle passage, it might not have needed to blast the SKATING IS FUN message quite so loudly in order to bring them together again. It’s that lack of nuance that bugged me at multiple points during this cour, even within its over-the-top framework. Ridiculous villains and impossible skating tricks are not excuses for flattening the heart and soul of your show. Reki and Langa were dynamic characters at the start, with family lives and part-time jobs that created a believable portrait of adolescence. Those things weren’t entirely abandoned during Adam’s takeover, but they were certainly minimized, and the series lost sight of its young protagonists as a result. Ask yourself who the main character of SK8 was by the end, and you’d be hard-pressed to say it was either of the kids it started with.
Maybe I just didn’t get what I wanted from this show, or not enough of it. A fun coming-of-age skateboarding story is what I expected based on the first two episodes, and the remaining ten fit that bill only part of the time. As we waded deeper into a pit of campy violence and superhuman stunts, I regularly found myself wishing that this concept had been handled by a different director – one with an eye for human drama, rather than a lust for theatrics. Even though I feel comfortable saying that SK8 went off the rails, though, it’s one of the milder trainwrecks I’ve witnessed as an anime fan. Adam may have been instrumental in the show’s demise, but I regularly found myself laughing at his antics. The animation may have dipped in spots, but Bones pulled through when it counted. The scripts may have been riddled with convenient developments by the end, but I still felt a bit of affection for all the characters during the final montage. And like Adam jumping out of a helicopter to attend Langa’s victory party during that same montage, SK8 at least had a parachute on during its fall from grace.
You know, this show made me see there’s a lot of problems that are endemic with Hiroko Utsumi’s work. Although she is a very popular director yes (I loved the episodes she directed at KyoAni), her shows for the most part are great visually, and her shows have been very popular (including this one in fact, judging by the BD/DVD sales), there’s just too many problems in her shows that prevent me from fully enjoying them, particularly in her biased preference of certain characters over others, the painful melodrama included or her need to have her characters do things that make sense thematically, but not so much narratively. Her shows just leave me cold personally.
Free! s1’s ending was an early offender of this, sidelining Rei’s character development just to allow an eliminated Rin to swim with his old friends again in the swim meet and getting the team disqualified in the process. Free! s2 also had that last-minute melodrama added in for the sake of it, and got resolved too quickly (a vacation to Australia with Rin is what brings Haruka out of his angst). Even Banana Fish, her sole adaptational work so far, suffers from so much getting skipped over and compressed to fit 24 episodes which meant too many characters get sidelined and subplots get forgotten in the process. The problems here don’t just lie with Okouchi’s involvement.
I think this in particular shows that although we need more female creators in the industry, this empress has no clothes. After all, this was made because she wanted to tell everyone about her new skateboarding hobby.
I’d still go for a season 2 of this or an OVA though, just like back when I was still interested in Free! years ago (and before it went to shit with s3/movies and I gave up on it). There’s still much more that can be done with the cast honestly and there wouldn’t need to be as much ADAM baggage as in here next time.
P.S. There were many other interpretations about ADAM I read that were interesting and imo changed my initially negative outlook on the ending hours after it aired so here’s a few I found:
https://twitter.com/justThemys/status/1379500814792802311
https://twitter.com/alchimique/status/1379155811604201472
https://twitter.com/seekittens/status/1378746421344673793
P.S.S. I am convinced that Langa diving onto Reki at the end of the race was an intentional reference to Yuri!! On Ice’s famous dive/kiss in episode 7. No one can tell me that this and many other lines they said weren’t meant to signify them being more than friends. Or the fact that a Drama CD was made that did a parody of Cinderella where “CindeReki” went to the ball and fell in love with Langa as Prince Charming with a glass skateboard. Same with the interactions between Cherry and Joe; the change in the ED in episode 11 where Tadashi caught Ainosuke instead of covering up his fall, or the fact that Tadashi smiled at being considered ADAM’s “dog” suggesting a kinky love relationship lol.
P.S.S.S. And actually, I was more annoyed by how much Shadow was ultimately cockblocked in the end as a cruel little joke. Poor guy.
P.S.S.S.S. The English dub’s fucking great so far. Both the writing and acting from the cast, especially ADAM’s English VA. David Wald’s great.
Haha! I maintain my status as the author who likes Sk8 the most on the site! A shame it didn’t click for you the way it did for me. I loved how when I thought ADAM couldn’t get any more extra Sk8 found a way to do that and more.
In the end I think Sk8 just tried to take the middle ground too much for me. Not sporty enough to be a sports anime, and not enough drama for a drama. If they had ramped up the camp and drama much more, it really could have worked. Instead you have ADAM as the only camp character in an anime where literally every single other person is the straight man. I saw people comparing ADAM to Hisoka, which is apt, but their contexts are completely different. I want to see more over-the-top made up skate moves, elaborate skating outfits, and dramatic ultimatums. I want to see more insane, logic-defying skating venues. I feel like ADAM is raising the stakes every episode and raising the camp factor, but everyone else is still stuck in sports anime mode. All the competitions against ADAM (with the possible exception of Cherry with his AI skateboard) just felt like Vanilla vs ADAM. I was hoping Langa was going to pull out some crazy stuff moves of his own in the finale to combat ADAM’s Love Hug and whatnot, but nah.
So I’ve been reading a few interviews from Utsumi and Okouchi post-series and well, it’s interesting to see where the creative choices and issues came from for this one.
https://twitter.com/gays_on_ice/status/1380203310825709568
https://twitter.com/lau_ren_s/status/1383817233676136458
Namely that this was not just Utsumi’s first original show (Free! was loosely based on an unpublished novel), but it was also Okouchi’s first show aimed at a female audience. But much of the decisions the story and characters take in the series were mainly Utsumi’s ideas with Okouchi having to fill in the gaps. It’s only a given then that the ideas that Okouchi introduced himself (i.e. Kiriko, the political investigation subplot) are the parts that feel truly bad and out of place. But much of the issues I felt here are starting to feel endemic with Utsumi’s other works regardless of the writer like I pointed above. I respect what she does, but her shows (Free!, Banana Fish and now this) just leave me cold in the end.
And like the sucker I was at the end of Free! s1 back in 2013, I probably wouldn’t mind watching a s2.