Air Master Review

The plot, is not particularly deep. The main character, Maki, a former competitive gymnast seems to be seeking to recapture some of the same excitement she felt in her younger days and is using street fighting as the method. Though there are a few stories that take a few episodes to cover, there is no real continuing plot arc as of yet. For the most part we are introduced to a series of diverse fighters employing different styles and at some point they and the Air Master go at it.

The animation and fight scene design are extremely well done in this show and its main strength. Though the characters obviously go a bit outside the realm of realism (the idea of BMXjutsu is amusing though), they are still much more grounded in basic physics than you see with a lot of similarly themed action shows and most importantly they actually fight. No one is flying around tossing out boring ki/energy/psychic blasts. Maki's style is a kick intensive martial art that uses elements of her own gymnastics background, and unlike, say, in the movie Gymkata, it actually comes off fairly well.

None of the character designs in this show are particularly attractive. Even most of the female characters look rather manly and plain. It didn't particularly bother me, since in a show about brutal street fights it would make sense that it wouldn't be all the beautiful people fighting, but certain anime patterns might cause people to be a bit disappointed that there aren't more bishonen or that the females aren't a bit more conventionally beautiful.

The overall tone and feeling of the show alternates between a lot of somewhat silly and somewhat puerile comedy and deadly serious fights. There are no clean fights in this show. Most of the fights tend to be very close and rather brutal. I was a bit surprised to even see them kick around a few poor "civilian" types in a few scenes.