English Dub Review: SK8: The Infinity “We Were Special Back Then”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Joe and Langa continue their race, with Joe gaining a considerable lead and Langa suddenly losing lots of speed. Reki notices this from the crowd and remembers that Langa enjoys skating with friends, overcoming his jealousy and cheering Langa on, which gives him the boost to beat Joe, much to everyone’s surprise but Adam’s. The next match is Adam versus Cherry, which is apparently a bout that Cherry has wanted for ages. He, Joe, and Adam used to skate together, with Cherry being a bit closer to Adam. However, Adam quickly overpowers Cherry by…hitting him in the head with his board, injuring Cherry greatly.

OUR TAKE

Um…so, Adam is definitely disqualified, right? I mean, I know that this competition is kind of loose with its rules and allows things like AI boards and throwing firecrackers, but I have to assume that literally going up and beating someone over the head with a skateboard has to cross some sort of line! Then again this is Adam’s competition…but also why would anyone want to skate with him after he did that? There’s already no clear prize for winning this whole thing, so getting horrible brain injuries seems like a bit too much of a risk, even if you have any personal grudge going on. Hell, Yu-Gi-Oh! had a lot of weird stuff it added to its games to make them more exciting, but I don’t think anyone just put down their cards in the middle of the game just to punch their opponents across the face.

Anyway, as intense as these skating matches can get, I question the decision to put both Joe and Langa’s match right next to Cherry and Adam’s. Given the in-universe high profile nature of these characters, you would think they’d want to space those matches out, but we do only have three regular episodes left (with the next one actually being a recap, but who knows if that gets dubbed). Not to mention it kinda throws Shadow and Miya under the bus since they’re also still technically in the competition but now we have no reason to care what happens to them. It also kinda shows how samey just about all of these matches are given that they all take place on the same track. It is fairly easy to tell the skater’s apart in their styles of skating, but some are a bit too similar and the skating can all blend together if you aren’t paying close attention.

It’s times like this that having a couple extra venues could go a long way in keeping things fresh and exciting. It would make about as much sense as allowing a competition to go on when the host is COLD CLOCKING HIS OPPONENTS WITH HIS BOARD. But in case you were actually getting board, there’s always this upcoming recap episode that may or may not be getting covered! I honestly don’t know. Funimation has dubbed recaps before, but maybe since all the other episodes are already out, they’ll spare us? Guess we’ll see. In the meantime, the story ramps up for its climax.