English Dub Review: SK8: The Infinity “Our Infinity!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Psychologically torn by his near defeat by Reki, Adam does a complete wardrobe makeover to a more Grim Reaper like costume in order to prepare for the final match against Langa. He attempts to pull Langa into “the Zone” in order to get him trapped in the same obsession with skating, but Langa is able to escape it thanks to learning about the fun of skating, which he then teaches to Adam. In the end, everyone becomes friends and no legal charges are pressed on Adam for his weird and destructive behavior because he sold out the guy on the police that was helping him cover it all up. Happy end?

OUR TAKE

Despite the week break from the dub releases (which seem to be becoming fewer and farther between as it looks like normal dubbing operations are beginning to resume with the world slowly getting back to normal) the ending to SK8 feels no less predictable, though it’s not really a bad conclusion either aside from a few things. As I’ve gone into at length throughout our coverage of the series, the core theme at the center of it all is about having fun in your passions and hobby instead of being consumed by competition or obsession, so it’s no surprise that the ultimate tool to defeat Adam and pull him out of his spiral towards darkness is to remind him of the fun he had skating all those years ago. This series has tackled this idea from a few different angles over its run with surprising nuance, but when it came down to this last race, it made sense to just put it plainly as the concluding statement to this thesis. It’s a simple point made simply, which actually points to it being a pretty strong and important lesson to keep telling in all the forms it has been.

However, it ends up feeling a bit TOO clean an ending, especially considering what happens with Adam. Everyone else basically just continues on with their lives, including Reki and Langa who are now able to skate freely as gay love-ER I MEAN best friends who are in no way romantically involved. But Adam…well, he put a guy in the hospital and nearly Langa really hurt too. Not a totally unredeemable act, but to have all of that totally forgiven and have him continue with his manslave and no consequences is a bit of a weird choice. In fact, he kinda gets negative consequences, as that weird subplot about that investigator looking into his weird hobby gets unceremoniously dropped and some innocent guy has to take the fall. Okay, maybe not totally innocent, but certainly more than Adam. It’s just…so weird that they ended on this sort of note, almost as if they just ran out of energy or interest and just wanted it to be over. Which is a shame, since the fun air about this series implied something different. I dunno, maybe they’re leaving some things open for a second season? Either way, let’s look back at the whole thing in a Season Review.