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Manga Review


Book Cover

Air Gear
Volume 7

 

Author: Oh! Great
Artist: Oh! Great
Tanoshimi
RRP: £6.99, US $10.95
ISBN: 978 0 099 50685 0
Ages: 16+
Available 07 February 2008


Following a humiliating defeat in a fight, Ikki is a troubled student. His luck starts to get better when he meets up with sisters who belong to the Sleeping Forest, Storm Riders gang. The Noyamano sisters provide him with his first pair of Air Trecks, a form of high tech roller skates. Ikki and his gang have had their setbacks so to prove their worth they decide to take on one of the biggest and baddest teams...

Airgear: Volume Seven: Death Match, by Oh! Great is a shonen manga. This volume continues the loosely related vignette of stories. If you're interested in the background to the author then check out the review for Volume Three. None of the stories have a title only being differentiated by their trick number. Volume seven holds tricks fifty one to fifty nine.

As the title of the book would suggest this volume consists of a loose plot which surround two major face-off matches as Ikki and his gang take on Akira Udou’s Four Titans of Behemouth. The first three tricks act as a prelude to the first of the main fights, which happens in an unused water treatment plant, so there’s loads of opportunities for dynamic visuals, and let’s face it this is where the series really shines. For the most part the story is there just to get to the next fight and the next set of moves. As the team goes in the pipes randomly to decide who faces of against each other.

The rest of the tricks are taken up by both major and minor confrontations with no real resolution, which will have to wait until the next book. Some of the language makes this book unsuitable for a very young audience as does the humour and graphic visuals.

The book does come with a nice set of extras. As well as the usual honorifics, there are some translation notes as well as some preliminary sketches and, of course, the preview of Volume Eight.

So as usual this popular title offers up great visuals at the expense of any real pretence of a story.

7

Charles Packer

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