OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Four short segments where groups of the characters do a series of comedic bits.OUR TAKESK8: The Infinity was a dozen episode series that came out four years ago and was only the second anime to focus on skateboarding (the other apparently being the one that had a couple clips shown in the opening credits of Malcolm in the Middle). Naturally, in order to make it stand apart, the show turns the drama up to eleven regarding its two protagonists, Reki and Langa, and how their lives in the local skateboarding scene turns into the most important thing in the goddamn world. The show was fairly popular when it came out, mainly because of the stylish character designs and fluid animation, and a second season was announced about a year after the first finished, but nothing came of it and the series fell into obscurity. Now, for whatever reason, a single new episode brings back many of the central characters to do a bunch of comedy shorts. I’m pretty sure this is all of the old cast since none of their actors retired or anything, but it’s also been more than four years since the show finished airing. Maybe there just wasn’t a good plot in mind that involved skating like before, but bring everyone back just for this feels, well, kinda disappointing.These short segments really end up just centering on character dynamics anyway, instead of the skating that the show’s title centers on. The characters look like they’re just carrying on with their lives as normal and the animation looks just as nice, but if we’re gonna go this long without anything, it would probably be best to have an episode that just shows how cool these characters are at skating. The segment focusing on former antagonist ADAM even seems to set something up like that, but who knows if we’ll ever get to see it. It’s also possible this release is to gauge interest on the show continuing, in which case I would definitely say I’m all for it. Even now, we don’t really have any other skateboarding anime besides this and the other, so it would already have a niche that makes it stand out, and there are still plenty of people who liked the first season who would be seated first day for a second. And yet, there has been nary a mention of doing more than this lone special, so we’ll have to wait and see if this sparks enough interested to get back on the half-pipe.
