Rideback

Worlds change in an instant, mused Rin Ogata as she danced on stage. She was a rising star in the ballet world, but when her ankle gives way it changes what she had thought would be the rest of her life, following her mother’s path of the prima ballerina. Now that the dream had slipped away, there was a void in her life; something was missing which left her aimless.

An aimless existence carried over into college, where she resigned to coast through life. However one day when Rin was caught in the rain, she found something to love and gained purpose in her life. Rin found a rideback, a motorcycle with arms, a mech on wheels. She hops on it and the rideback sweeps her off her feet. Like falling in love can sometimes be, the first contact was scary, thrilling and transforming. Madhouse’s choreography and animation execution of Rin hanging onto the rideback gave me a taste of that transforming moment. RideBack has a couple of mesmerizing action sequences where the animators took glorious advantage of Rin’s background in ballet to do some coolness with motion, time, and music.

In some ways RideBack’s story and characters belonging to a college racing club feel like an anime from a recently passed era, at least during the first few episodes. It looked like Rin’s story would be a magical rookie story. She would quickly rise above the level of seasoned riders as the journey of self-discovery, but about a third of the way through the series, the plot shifts from what looked like a tournament anime into a story of rebelling against an increasingly dystopic status quo.

The plot shift is telegraphed during the first few minutes of the show and we’re shown news clips throughout the early episodes about the maneuverings of the world military type government, called the GGP. Obviously, this was to come up and be part of the main story. The buildup and transformation of Rin, the eager magical rookie racer, to Rin the reluctant rebel on wheels felt right, rather than coming from right field. However, watching the last leg of RideBack felt a bit like a letdown.

What proved most problematic with RideBack’s political conflict was an incongruent Big Bad Evil Guy. Rin was written and thought out well, but the enemy, the GGP, was not. The GGP seemed less like an oppressive world-wide regime and more like douche-bag foreigners led by an incompetent dick, which might resonate more with a Japanese audience. Still, it relied a little too much on disliking Romanov, the face of the GGP and filling in the blanks by thinking about it and understanding that nobody really wants to be occupied. Even with that understanding, the GGP did not feel like an opponent on par with the care taken by the show to develop their heroine.

That and the story put too much emphasis on the ridebacks as the instrumental technology in the GGP’s rise to power. While the rideback is the perfect vehicle for Rin Ogata, an absolutely beautiful pairing of character and machine, it’s a nonsensical vehicle for explaining how the GGP achieved worldwide dominance.

So while the rebellion against the GGP plot felt under achieved as a result of a poor BBEG, RideBack does resolve Rin’s personal journey in the end with a dance on her RideBack. Each time the animators cut loose to showcase Rin dancing on a Rideback it’s a treat. Rin faces the murderous drones and finishes what she couldn’t finish in the opening minutes of the show. The circle closes. There is satisfaction in watching her story to the end.

Who would I recommend this to? A number of different viewer types, with some sort of asterisk or hedge against a for-sure-man recommendation, but I think RideBack has appeal for anime viewers looking to watch something a little more sober than the more hyper-whatever’s that are currently being blamed for anime’s downfall. RideBack felt more like something I was watching ten years ago than what’s airing today.

The English dub was just okay.