Black Wings and Sleeping Forest – Break on the Sky – 02

The internet is a scary place

Fosh: Welcome Air Gear fans to the second ova episode! After seeing that over the top crazy first ova, let’s see how the second episode does this time around. I think they are including the rest of Ikki’s team this time around so more time to watch how crazy Akito and his alter personality Agito and of course Buccha another favorite character of mine, I get to join Overcooled this time to tag review this! Enjoy.

Overcooled: Well, well, looks like I’m not alone this time. INTERESTING. This OVA is the Kogarasumaru vs Sleeping Forest virtual computer battle, which was quite the memorable bout in the manga. Before we get to that, of course, we have to set things up with Ikki trying to kill himself in the middle of the street. Ikki had thought his team was disqualified from the Gram Scale Tournament because of his own doing, hence his decision that life had no more meaning. Luckily, his 3 haremettes jump in to stop him.

Apparently, there’s a tiny loophole. They can still get in the tournament with the help on one man in particular. With Air Gear being…well…Air Gear…the guy is some fat otaku who plays galge in a dark room surrounded by figurines. He agrees to help them, BUT, that’s only if they can beat Sleeping Forest. Not the real Sleeping forest, but an old computer file of the Sleeping Forest roster from years ago. To prove their worth, they descend into the virtual reality world to battle the unrivaled kings and queens of the sky.

It’s a run battle of Balloon where each team races to try and pop the balloon as fast as possible. Sounds easy enough, but just by looking at the environment and Sleeping Forest, things start to look dangerous. I’m not sure what to think when the battle starts off with interpretive dancing…Was that really necessary? Then again, using all your power to destroy some surrounding buildings for show isn’t quite necessary either.

The perfect action to lulz ratio

Yayoi watches from her penguin (don’t even ask) as her teammates fight. She feels pretty useless considering everyone else is risking their lives while she just counts. Look on the bright side, you’re riding a PENGUIN! I’d much rather ride a flying penguin than be cornered by some buff black guy in a hoodie. Which is exactly the predicament Emily is in. But just as it appears like she’s been cut off from the pack, the other team members all close in on him. Looks like they were all decoys, fufufufu~

With Kogarasumaru occupied, the rest of Sleeping Forest revert to beating up oversized stuffed animals. Completely surrounded, they use the POWAA OF TEAMWORK to make it through. Speaking of teamwork, Buccha and Kogarasumaru show some teamwork of their own by having Buccha singlehandedly defeat stereotypical black rapper guy as they press onwards to the real face of danger. It’s a tad bit less badass than Sleeping Forest’s teamwork though, because Buccha gets squished like a pancake.

Someone should have checked for bugs in this game…

Kogarasumaru brave the storm caused by Sleeping Forest, all to distract them from Agito, who managed to sneak his way around to the balloon. Their whole team diversion didn’t really work though. While they thought they were buying time for Agito, they were just fighting some shadow clones. Don’t you hate when that happens? The end result is Agito getting ravaged by Kilik and Sora’s air trek attacks.

Things look hopeless with the panther barely consciously (and barely clothed). Agito turns back to Akito and asks Yayoi to tune his air treks so he can jump back into the battle and not let everyone done. Also, Onigiri became a giant pig and ripped off Rika’s clothes. OKAY, PERFECT TIME TO END THE OVA.

Bonus Airtime:

I’m pretty sure that’s just called ‘gay’, Rika

HMM, SURE IS WINDY TODAY

You sure showed that tower who’s boss, Kazu

Well, I think we all know who MY favourite character is

Ikki never expected things to turn out so badly when he said “I like it rough”

 

End Thoughts:

 

Fosh: Well this second ova was so damn confusing for me, I mean they entered a .hack like game world to train? Strange idea there but I guess it works for this. I was happy they included the rest of team Kogarasumaru this time around! I always thought he had the best team mostly because he had Akito around and his awesome shark attack, we finally get to see him use that attack in this episode.

So now that we get some strange virtual world to run around, they play some odd game to catch a red balloon. I forgot how funny the ideas for various “races” were done this one was more like a free for all, but things got really dumb with all the monsters they had running around. Not sure why they had to include them but it did offer some laughs for me. I had a few laughs with Ikki and Akito’s interactions together thanks to the forced “groping” of another character, damn that Ikki such a crazy bastard.

But I found myself getting really bored halfway through this ova, I think I wanted more insane action scenes to break out instead of the chatter happening. Yes they have to include a story but is there much of a real story? I mean isn’t it all about Ikki becoming the Sky king? Guess he has to work his way up the ranks. Not sure why he has to spend time in a VR machine to accomplish this is beyond me. So maybe the third ova will be worth something better than this one anyway.

Overcooled: That was bad. Like, really bad. The first OVA wasn’t by any means amazing, but it served its purpose as showing a badass fight scene in animated form. This installment couldn’t even do that. Let’s start with the animation. I am pretty tolerant of bad animation, but this was unforgivable. The same poses were reused over and over, as if they cut and pasted characters onto different backgrounds. Any sort of movement that had to be done, which is a lot since this is a battle, was done by having a still shot of the character with air rushing by them quickly. Clever illusion guys, but not if you do it for the entire OVA so you don’t have to animate people doing anything other than flapping their gums. This is probably one of the worst, laziest fight scene animation jobs I’ve ever seen. From AIR GEAR, my beloved guilty pleasure!

Okay, let’s push the shoddy animation to the side for a moment. How was everything else? The seiyuu were fine, they did their jobs. That’s one good point. I mean..Kansai accents, oh God yes. Sora, you beast, why didn’t you talk more? Plus, my beloved Agito swears like a sailor in engrish, which just ends up sounding adorable. Sadly, even the seiyuu couldn’t pull of the jokes, leaving me cringing instead of laughing. Buuuut, on the bright side: topless Agito.

Manga comparison time! I was pretty happy at their selection of the Sleeping Forest vs Kogarasumaru battle for the OVA, since that battle had some notably nail-biting moments. It was a battle of intellect as well as speed and brute force. Either my IQ was drastically lower when I first read it or the OVA took out every intricacy to make it a simple game of tag. What happened to the intense battle from the manga, huh? I get the feeling they left out a lot in order to just show the main points of the battle. Which means this OVA has a bad plot and lazy animation. It really is a disappointment to everything Air Gear. I hate to be ripping on Air Gear, the series I turn to for mindless, testosterone-driven fun, but…it was really bad. If the 3rd OVA is better I might just review it again. If not…well, you know it’s not worth your time.

 

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16 Responses to “Black Wings and Sleeping Forest – Break on the Sky – 02”

  1. Ruby says:

    I was surprise to see that the WHOLE EPISODE was focused on the battle, at this rate it’ll probably take up to 10 OVAs to catch up to the manga XD If they stop following the manga so closely and think of something more original, it would be much more interesting. Even right now the manga feels like it has no direction, the battles aren’t really battles, its just like big talk and then everyone gets along~ the shocking secret about Agito is just so.. o_o! I feel sorry for those who don’t keep up with the manga, they prolly had no clue what’s going on~

    but yeah like you guys said it was huge disappointment, we can expect lots of disappointment from animu these day~ nothing satisfy our expectations anymore u_u

    • Foshizzel says:

      Yep mostly a huge let down from the previous OVA which had a great battle! But not sure what happened with this one seems rushed.

      Agito is awesome at first I hated him in the series, but slowly became a fan favorite of mine fast.

      Let’s just hope the 3rd OVA gives us something fun 🙂

    • Overcooled says:

      I don’t think they’re ever planning on catching up to the manga…T.T *sigh* Air Gear stopped making sense a long time ago, I don’t even know how to comment on the Agito revelation…lol…Oh well, I read it for the sexy art, action and cool characters now =/

  2. Alynn says:

    Pfft penguin. That is all i have to say.

  3. Gunny says:

    sir, they’ve done it. fucking OVA is worse than the first one @_@ TELL ME HOOOOOOOOOOWWW COULD THEY HAD TURNED THAT BATTLE IN THIS SHIT?!!??! 9 chapters in one OVA… *facepalm* D8
    And that fucking subtext between Sora and Kilik… they were partyng out with that hoodie guy as the dj on the manga… too lazy to draw some background? AHH? D8

    Man, I know Air gear is really messed up these days gundams everywhere but I don’t feel like dropping it, not yet. My hopes remains here… well, but they aren’t intact. I just can’t have that urge to check the new chapters… since Emily bodyswitch… D:
    oh yeah, baloon catcher Emily is here alongside with topless Agito. The only good things abut this OVA.

    Fosh, did you read the manga?

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    • Overcooled says:

      They really ruined it…They ruined a perfectly good battle…T_T Air Gear really has no idea what the hell it’s doing anymore, to the point where every conversation makes no sense. What, wings? roads? Kings? OBAMA?!?! HUH?? I’m up to date and things don’t get much better after the bodyswitch…lol…

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    • Foshizzel says:

      Nope I haven’t read the manga for this yet, I do hear the manga is better so I will have to find some time and check out a few chapters.

  4. Gunny says:

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  5. Demented-P says:

    I think this battle was too big for them to handle. Seriously, this whole thing had such huge focus on nearly every character, and for them to fully do that would be to actually make into a whole anime arc of its own.

    I would’ve preferred if the OVA was about Kilik’s reveal to Ikki about Sleeping Forest’s true past, which was happening at the same time as Sora’s reveal as the main guy who was fighting alongside his brother Nike against Kazu, Spitfire, and Aeon Clock/Sano. If they did that, it would’ve been better plot-wise and that fight was quick yet epic.

    • Overcooled says:

      It was a pretty long battle, and they definitely bit off way more than they could chew. They probably just wanted to choose an epic battle with no regard for how they would cram all that action and all those characters in an OVA…

      That might have been a lot easier to animate, while still intense (it was a good fight~). I guess they felt they might alienate non-manga readers though by using such a plot-heavy battle that explains so much. :/ They should just continue the anime instead of making half-baked OVAs!

  6. ikkithecrow says:

    haha my firts anime number one hhaha i like it :>
    2006-2011

  7. idk says:

    69931155575003064096072900000043990830706110[spoiler]your mom

  8. idk says:

    69931155575003064096072900000043990830706110[spoilr]your mom

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