Winter 2021 First Impressions: SK8 the Infinity, Project Scard, Kai Byoui Ramune

SK8 the Infinity

Short Synopsis: A skater boy introduces a Canadian transfer student to the world of underground racing.

Wooper: The thing I found most striking about this episode was its design work. All the characters were attractive and easily distinguishable from one another, and I mean all the characters – even crowd members were given unique outfits, hairstyles and expressions. That kind of detail counts for a lot when you’re trying to build a world like this one, because SK8’s premise is frankly ridiculous. The show’s midnight races are supposed to be top secret, but the abandoned mine course they’ve built is so brightly lit that you could see it from space. There’s also a snowboarder who duct tapes his feet to a skateboard and slaloms downhill at 60 mph on his first attempt, because all extreme sports are the same, bro. Despite all this stupidity, this anime looks to be a lot of fun because its characters move and speak dynamically. Reki is passionate without being obnoxious, and Langa is cool-headed rather than dull. The former uses big gestures to communicate, while the latter is given life via minute facial expressions – it’s a neat dichotomy that I’ll be observing each week this season.

Potential: 70%

Lenlo: Yuri on Ice did it for ice skating, Hajime no Ippo did it for boxing, Welcome to the Ballroom did it for dancing and now Sk8 is going to do it for skateboarding. This was unironically the best and most entertaining first episode of this season. Someone on this team has a tremendous love for skateboarding and its community, and it shows. The care put into how the characters move, the aesthetic, the in-anime community around the sport. It’s soaked into every facet of this show. Sk8 isn’t just an anime based around skateboarding because it’s cool. Sk8 IS skateboarding. And I loved it. I have a slight worry about the “Cute Boys Doing Cute Things” vibe I sort of get from it, similar to Hyp Mic from last season, but even with that I loved this premiere and will without a doubt be watching it this season.

Potential: 95%

Project Scard: Praeter no Kizu

Short Synopsis: A bulletproof gunman chooses a successor with whom to entrust the fate of a lawless city.

Mario: GoHands has such a bad reputation that everything from them ought to be viewed through a harsh filter. But I’m here to be a contrarian on this one: this premiere about hot boys fighting against the system is pretty solid. Cheesy? Yes, but the sentimental ending works to set things up in the future. What it sets out to do is sell a brief relationship between the “Hero” and our MC – I can’t say it succeeds based on how quickly the plot goes, but I’m not lying when I say that they’re the most interesting characters in GoHands’ body of work (which admittedly is a low bar). We have a setting that immediately establishes the conflict between the hotboi team – or as they term it, “Scards” – and the other organizations. Visually, it’s a GoHands production alright with an over-saturated color palette and those weird white dots everywhere on-screen, but otherwise I don’t take much issue with it. Like Shaft, it has become their in-house “style” so we’re better off just rolling with it. It has some dynamic action scenes, though. I reckon the show will get dull later on, but after this first episode I am willing to give it more tries.

Potential: 50%

Wooper: As the credits rolled on Project Scard’s premiere, GoHands’ logo appeared on screen, accompanied by the slogan “Animation entertainment to advance.” My question is, advance what? The number of eye doctor visits taken by the average anime fan? The blazing light sources and blue-green color filters on display here would certainly accomplish that purpose. Maybe they intended to advance people’s free time, since about five minutes of Project Scard’s first episode involved characters explaining what had just happened in the previous scene. How thoughtful of GoHands to put a skippable segment into their show so we could make a sandwich midway through! Or maybe they wanted to advance the downward trend of people’s expectations for media mix TV adaptations – that would make sense, since this was one of the worst I’ve seen in recent years. There are just so many ways to interpret “Animation entertainment to advance,” but you know, that’s the mark of a great slogan: it really makes you think!

Potential: 0%

Kai Byoui Ramune

Short Synopsis: A girl who cries mayonnaise is treated by an eccentric “doctor.”

Lenlo: So to be perfectly honest, this is just a bad discount Monogatari mixed with a bad discount Great Teacher Onizuka. The doctor solves occult diseases that are based in your emotional/psychological troubles just like Monogatari, except the actual emotions and ways of fixing them are (at least from the first episode) trite and straight forward. Meanwhile its trying for the same sort of wholesome conflict resolution as Great Teacher Onizuka, confronting the parent and having the truth talk and realizing what is really important to you, but it does so in such a superficial “look at me” manner that it lacks all the heart Onizuka had.

If Monogatari was too wordy for you but you still want something occult akin to it, or Onizuka is too dated for you and you are ok with bargain bin heart-wrenching resolutions, then maybe this can be for you. Personally though? All I see is Walmart brand anime where everything in it was done better somewhere else.

Potential: 0%

Mario: The “solving weekly supernatural cases” anime is not entirely new in this medium, with HellGirl and xxxHolic or GeGeGe no Kitarou coming to mind. And even within that sub-genre Ramune ends up at the bottom of the barrel. While the manga was first published in 2017 (and is still on-going), it has the look and feel of a much older anime. And I mean that in a negative way, with the titular doctor being the main offender. First off, his unorthodox method of curing patients is intentionally ambiguous and makes us slightly uncomfortable – but I was more turned off by his “shout-until-it-sticks” behavior. Worse, while I appreciate how the sickly girl’s current issues deal with psychological stress, in the end she’s just a victim of her shouting doctor and screaming one-dimensional mother, so I feel the solution was pretty unearned. Add to that an annoying MC, unremarkable cast and even less remarkable production values, and unfortunately Ramune doesn’t offer much.

Potential: 10%