English Dub Review: SK8: The Infinity “Passionate Dancing Night!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Langa accepts Adam’s challenge after Reki is injured, though Reki thinks this might be too dangerous. Cherry and Joe explain Adam’s “love hug”, which he does by rolling uphill to grab hold of his opponents. Eventually the day of the match arrives and Langa tries to outsmart and avoid Adam. It’s a close race, but it’s eventually interrupted by the sudden arrival of the local police, which surprises Adam as he had apparently paid off the chief of police to keep the skate park off the local patrol route. In the aftermath, Reki has Langa promise to not face Adam again.

OUR TAKE

The events of this episode will prove to be a turning point for many characters, specifically Reki, Langa, and even Adam. Reki and Langa’s burgeoning friendship is built on the fun and excitement that they’ve formed through skating together, even using that as the way to beat Miya two episodes prior. However, now we bring in someone like Adam, who seems to get sick pleasure out of injuring and pursuing other skaters like prey, almost like he’s a Yugioh villain who stumbled into Rocket Power instead of children’s trading cards. He is definitely not just in skating for the fun of it or to make friends, as we’ll learn more about later, but his passion and dedication to the sport also hints at greater pursuits that don’t seem to be possible just taking the friendly approach, which we will see cause an increasing divide between the two main friends of the story. But at the same time, it’s also still kinda weird that Adam is putting this much effort into skating of all things. I mean, people have their passions and all, it’s just that I’m feeling a bit of an emotional disconnect when trying to understand how this leads to someone dressing as a flamboyant matador and skating in secret.

And that leads to the odd amount of secrecy around the skating location the characters play and that suddenly being found by the cops like they were doing drugs or something. I kinda get that this is meant to be an underground sport and they’re technically trespassing, but why not just have someone buy the area and make it an official place for people to skate? I guess it wouldn’t be as underground and more casual skaters would probably hang out there, but what’s the point of that? The secret names and costumes are cool and all, but what exactly is the downside for people like Cherry and Joe being known to also do skating in their down time? Who’s going to judge them? Adam’s situation is A TINY BIT more understandable, since he’s an up and coming politician with three aunts who badger the hell out of him, and I guess it wouldn’t look great if everyone knew he was hurting people while wearing a matador costume, but I can’t imagine it would sink his career. Ah well, next week is a downtime episode, though I’m not sure this series has really earned downtime at this point.