English Dub Review: SK8: The Infinity “DAP Not Needing Words”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shortly after Cherry’s defeat (but before he was hospitalized), the quarterfinals conclude with Miya versus Tadashi. Miya, who’s main gimmick is making genre savvy meta jokes, somehow does not grasp that he is not a main character and is easily left behind by Tadashi’s dust. This makes sense, as he was actually the one who taught Adam how to skate and now plans to beat him to stop this madness. With Tadashi taking the final spot, that leaves him, Shadow, Adam, and Langa for the semifinals. However, Shadow, being clearly the odd man out here, is also hospitalized by his boss’s ex who blames Shadow for being dumped.

To fill the slot, Adam has Tadashi reach out to a downtrodden Reki, who was also just beat up but not as badly, to fill in…despite him being EVEN LESS QUALIFIED than Shadow, though this is likely because Adam noticed that Reki’s cheering inspired Langa to do better and Adam wants to eliminate the competition for Langa’s heart…board? But unfortunately for him, Langa and Reki do end up reconciling in a loving totally not gay bonding session at the skate rink.

OUR TAKE

Alright, they skipped the recap! And hey, this episode wasn’t half bad either! In addition to trimming the fat of the tournament by both culling Miya and Shadow and reinforcing why the remaining four (or rather remaining three and shoe-horned replacement) are so important to the thematic core of the series, which is the importance of skating with your friends for fun. It’s pretty stock shonen, but whether it’s skating, tennis, or children’s card games, it’s a lesson that endures for a reason. Obviously Reki and Langa reflect that theme, especially now that they’ve made up and reinforced their hot steamy bromance. But Adam and Tadashi each act as two separate but important dark foils for this idea. In fact, Tadashi, while he’s been less featured, actually gets a lot of time to explore his mindset this time, most notably during his conversation with Reki. He taught Adam how to skate because Adam was so alone as a kid, but his domineering father kept it from him, warping it from a fun pastime into an obsessive act of rebellion, and on top of all the legitimate reasons for why skating has remained a pretty underground and niche sport that he mentions to Reki in the episode, he now sees it as a dead end that only leads to what Adam has become.

But Reki responds to this by saying that it doesn’t matter if it might seem like an impractical waste of time that doesn’t make as much money as more mainstream sports, there’s a strong and storied culture of people who have come to express themselves through their skating and found an experience that is unique to it, followed by Langa backing this up by repeating how he found a community and passion in skating that he lost in snowboarding once his father died. Now these two are lined up to both symbolically and literally push back against these criticisms of their sport, which is about as close to a core that this series has managed to get. It’s been pretty shaky as to how things match up where and how it juggles its shonen archetypes and tropes, but it all seems to be falling into place now. And it’s kinda neat that Reki is coincidentally taking over the spot for the first opponent they faced at the start of the show. Likely unintentional, but it’s pretty a nice touch. Anyway, last two episodes, let’s see how we wrap this up.