English Dub Review: SK8: The Infinity “Adam, the Matador of Love”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Reki challenges Adam to skating match when he insults Miya, which Adam accepts if he can face Langa, who he is far more interested in. Reki begins his training for the match, with some help from Miya, though he’s told to watch out for Adam’s signature “love hug”, where Adam skates up hill to grab hold of his opponent. On the day of the match, Adam allows Reki a huge lead, but this ends up a trap to make him lose focus. Eventually he tries his dreaded love hug, but Reki panics and bails on his board.

OUR TAKE

This week, we are properly introduced to Adam, who may be the main antagonist of this series, though I’ll be a little disappointed if he is. It does make sense that a series where skating is the main form of activity that at least one antagonist would use it against the protagonists, but I honestly don’t know what to make of Adam exactly. He’s very theatrical and flamboyant, having a “masked villain” aesthetic while also flirting blatantly with Langa, but he’s also apparently a high ranking political official AND helped found “S”, the course all the underground skaters run, along with Joe and Cherry Blossom (who I haven’t really had much of a reason to bring up before now, which tells you a lot about how much they stand out beyond their character designs). But like Adam, characters like Joe, Cherry, and even the opening mook Shadow all seem to have fulfilling lives outside of skating, some putting on different personalities entirely in those other lives, but still being passionate about this sport. So there’s a lot going on with Adam, almost too much for him to be just a bad guy to knock down, even if this is a short series.

After his defeat last time, Miya seems rather quick to turn around and start helping Reki out, though it’s not exactly any different than other characters in his role. His time as a rival is over so now he’s their pal, especially against the new threat. It seems that Adam also helped him improve his skating game with just a small hint, showing both Miya’s talent and Adam’s dedication to the sport that he could spot someone so good at it out like that and nudge them to greater success. All this kinda just makes the point that Adam is very knowledgeable about skating and therefore is difficult to beat, as illustrated by Reki bombing their match, so now it’s Langa’s turn. Given we’re not even halfway through the series, I don’t expect Langa to DIE or anything, but there has to be more going on with what’s happening than just trying to beat Adam. But then that would imply there’s a much bigger deal to skating here than just using this abandoned area as a track. I am at least somewhat curious to see where that goes, if only because BONES has made it clear they’re going to make it look as good as possible.