Kita ze Inbou! - キタぜ陰謀!

Series Information

ANN Encyclopedia | AniDB | AnimeNfo
Genres: Science Fiction
Production: MADHOUSE
OP: 「RIDEBACK」 by MELL
ED: 「Kioku」 by Younha feat. GOKU
RIDEBACK-ライドバック-

[ Episode 1: The Crimson Iron Horse ]

Ballet and Ridebacks are the future of transportation!

After what seemed to be an eternity, RIDEBACK has finally arrived and dear lord does it rock. I remember being extremely interested in this series as early as late 2007 and early 2008 but not having any idea when a concrete air date was going to be announced. Well, I can certainly say that the long wait was worth it. Everything was of amazing quality. The animation is topnotch which is to be expected of MADHOUSE. It’s the kind of stuff that makes your eyes water in wonder at the insane amount of beauty. The music is an absolute joy to my ears. I particularly loved the pieces that played during the opening ballet, sakura petal scene, and the very end of the episode. I’m expecting a pretty decent soundtrack in the near future. I must also say that I very much love the OP and ED themes provided by MELL and Younha, respectively. It’s good to see Younha back on the Japanese-scene too and even better that she sung Kioku in Korean (she’s been releasing stuff in South Korea for a while). MELL, of course, is all sorts of awesome as always and I can’t wait to get my hands on both singles.

The story and characters introduced so far are pretty interesting as well. Rin has already received quite large portion of character development so far and it’s only been one episode! The ballet scene painted a wonderful portrait of how she views the world around her and how she feels connected (or rather disconnected) from it. Her mother seems to be the basis of much of her development and reasons for once being in ballet but because of her injury and result loss of passion during her down-time, she has given it up. Though, as evidenced by her time riding Fuego, she hasn’t completely left it all behind.

I’m pretty excited to see where RIDEBACK will go from here. Everything so far has been amazing and the cast seems to be a one I’ll really like, especially the members of the RIDEBACK club. What will be the direction of this series, I wonder? Will there be competitions? Team versus team, perhaps? Or maybe even one-on-one? It’s hard to say since I haven’t read any of the manga but that just makes me even more excited not knowing what to expect in future episodes. I’ve only seen two new shows of the season so far (the other being Akikan) but this is easily the best I’ve seen so far and anything I watch after this will be following-up an amazing premiere.