RideBack Episode 01 – These Tears of Mine Are Tears of Happiness
Author: nova
Like I said I would, I am now beginning my episodic blogging on RideBack, a show that appears to be a curious mix of Initial D and Toshokan Sensou. I mentioned that RideBack caught my eye the most out of this season’s selection, mainly thanks to its political aspects and more mature characters. Produced by Madhouse and with a first-time director Atsushi Takahashi at the wheel RideBack has a good chance of being the most memorable experience of the season…or another Chaos;HEAd. The first episode caters us solid character animation, beautiful BG art and intense driving scenes with adequate CGI and I can only hope that it stays on this level.
RideBack takes place in the near future where by the year 2025 a resistance organization GGP has successfully overthrown all major world powers utilizing unknown military technology and brought about a new world order. The heroine of the series is Ogata Rin, a girl who fails to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a legendary ballet dancer due to an injury during a performance and enrolls to a university together with her friend Uemura Shouko. The first half of the episode focuses mainly on Rin’s past events explaining why she quit ballet and follows her as she is settling in at her new school. The background setting of the world of RideBack is explained although rather briefly. It appears that the world isn’t as unified as GGP likes to think though and disputes have risen. If anime is even a tiny bit faithful to the manga this becomes a major plot element soon enough.
The events kick off when Rin enters a run-down hall seeking cover from pouring rain and sees a man drive off on a weird vehicle that looks like a cross breed of a moped and a mecha. As she ventures inside she finds another one of these vehicles and a nerd-looking guy who bids her welcome to the RideBack club. He explains that the vehicles are called RideBacks, semi-computer controlled two-wheeled machines that are able to move in all three dimensions – essentially what you could call a humanoid motorcycle. Although riding them does not require any special licence, they have not been approved for use on public roads and are yet rather unknown to general people – as such they are regarded as sort of an otaku thing in the series’ version of Japan. The bright red RideBack Rin encounters is named Fuego, after the Spanish word for fire.
Unable to resist the temptation when invited for a test drive, Rin takes Fuego out for a spin. However the machine runs out of control, speeding down the campus with Rin along with it. On the way she gains an understanding on how the vehicle is controlled and starts to enjoy herself, executing ballet maneuvers and whatnot. It doesn’t take too long for the joyride to end though as she understands that Fuego is still largely running wild and refusing to shut down. The man with a small RideBack who we saw earlier appears and attempts to help Rin regain the control of Fuego. This is all too late though, as Rin fails to break in time and crashes through the safety barriers off from an incomplete road into the air. Not that she seems to be aware of the danger though, with a bright smile on her face. The episode leaves Rin airborne, but as the preview at the end didn’t seem to have any hospital scenes, I guess everything’s dandy.
Episode 1 is a nice introduction into the RideBack and I’m pleased to see that it took its time explaining things in more detail than the manga, which felt like much more rushed and held back on answering many questions. Looks like Rin versus Tamayo-race is up in the following episode and hopefully we get to learn a little more about the political background of the world of RideBack as well. The integration between CGI and drawn animation is somewhat blocky, although thankfully the intense scenes cover this up quite effectively – the similar issue didn’t stop Last Exile from being awesome either. I can’t tell how the show will end up – I was very positive about Chaos;HEAd too – but for now I’m seeing good signs about it.
