Our blond bombshell, Tamayo, is so pissed with the skills of Rin with a RideBack that she challenges her to a cat fight/RideBack race out of pure jealousy. Who will win, Japan champion Tamayo or our newbie Rin? Who cares, it’s hawt girls in leather suits; it’s a win-win situation.
…It’s so hard to resist making a sexual connotation each time I read “Spread Legs Form”…
Times of Chaos and Conspiracy
A small note before starting the post: right after the OP and ED, the RideBack spinning around during Geneon titles changed from Fuego to RBZ ( the green RideBack that Tamayo owns).
An old man bedridden in a hospital room and a well dressed man are watching then news about the most recent attack of BMA (Borderless Military Alliance), some kind of rebel armed movement that opposes the GGP. Notice that the news are broacasted by SNN (lol) and that the BMA’s insignia is a skunk…(double lol). They discuss about the attack and how it fits under the GGP’s plans. It seems the chaos provoked by them is the perfect excuse to allow GGP to enter the subcommittee in exchange for the introduction of White RideBacks (in the police departments?) for public order. I’m not sure if the White RideBack refers to a particular model of military RB or it’s a RideBack squad.
They have a fucking skunk as a symbol? Something smells.
Even so, the younger man doesn’t seem very happy for the offer. The older man comments that the younger man sister went to ride the ridebacks even with the disapproval of the family. The sister is revealed to be Tamayo in the pictures the man has near him. The older man calls the younger man Ryunosuke as he leaves the hospital room. It’s most probable that Ryunosuke is the grandson of the older man.
After the Flight
We get a cafeteria scene where Suzuri goes lesbo again over Rin for her perfomance with the Fuego and her miraculous flight leap. Along with Shoko, they talk about how Okakura helped Rin (he seems to be the RideBack club advisor), when Hishida appears, along with another club member, a fatty bowl cut haired dude called Kawai. They introduce themselves to the girls as 2nd and 3rd year mechanical engineering students respectively. They bring a club application form for Rin but Shoko pushes them back, complaining they where reckless for letting Rin drive a dangerous and out-of-control vehicle and they should apologize.
She sure seems to know how to squeeze liquids out of anything.
Meanwhile, Okakura is on his desk, watching on his laptop a SNN news about a second attack of the BMA, this time with videos of them using Ridebacks in the attack. He then gets a cellphone call from Tamayo, who wants to talk about Okakura about Rin. She sends to his laptop a profile about Rin, revealing her ballet background, which she has been involved since she was 3 years old. She’s the daughter of the world-class famous Ogata Yuki. Tamayo also remarks that Okakura wouldn’t recognize the name since he’s a thick headed gorilla.
Imagine him together with Tamayo. There, I’ve just fscked your mind.
A Challenger Appears
Rin returns to the RideBack club warehouse and instead of Fuego, she finds the RBZ, a green RideBack. Tamayo appears behind Rin and challenges her for a race in the next Saturday, 10 AM. If Rin wins, she’s allowed to ride any RideBack from the club; if Tamayo wins, Rin will be her personal servant. If Rin doesn’t show up, it will be considered a defeat. Tamayo even gives an one lap handicap and Fuego as Rin’s ride for the race, after it comes back from the repairs. After all this, she gets on top of the RBZ and speeds aways, not even allowing time for Rin to answer back. A small note, is Tamayo wearing a mini-skirt while riding a Rideback???
*Insert joke about sexual connotation here*
Later that day, while talking to Suzuri and Shoko, our lesbian meganekko reveals that Tamayo is the club leader. She’s even ecxited that Rin made a RideBack expert jealous.
While talking on the phone with her brother Kenji, Rin asks him for Rideback tips. Kenji takes the chance and asks for the autograph of Tamayo since it appears she’s the winner of last year All-Japan RideBack race.
Evidence Nº 15 of Suzuri being a lesbian: Booty Book
Later in her room, Rin is caught looking for RideBack sites in her laptop by Shoko. Shoko asks her if she’s free next Saturday, but Rin replies she can’t because she needs to study, but Shoko wasn’t fooled by it. In the shower, Rin recalls the feelings she felt during her wild ride with Fuego.
It’s a Good Day to Race
Saturday arrives. Kawai is setting up electronic checkpoints along the rideable roads of the campus, Hishida is tuning up Fuego and Tamayo relaxing in a chair. Even Suzuri is there, dressed as cheerleader, pompoms included. Finally, Rin arrives with the same posture as a samurai reaching the site of his duel. Tamayo can’t help but smile when she sees Rin and asks Hishida to loan Rin one of her rider suits.
Both girls are geared up and on top of their Ridebacks. Tamayo proceeds to explain the rules: the course goes along the rideable tracks of the campus up to the water tower and back; the handicap is 1 lap, which means Tamayo needs to finish 4 laps but Rin only needs 3; before the start of the race they will make 2 test laps to memorize the tracks. The rest of the club members will be able to follow the race in their laptops thanks to the checkpoints that Kawai installed.
The race starts and surprisingly, both girls are riding along the track very fast for a test lap. Rin is managing to keep up with Tamayo and even forcing her to keep up the high pace. Using the embedded mics on the helmets, Tamayo tells Rin she was foolish to have come to the race since the results were already decided. But still, she came, being unable to step down from a challenge even knowing she would lose. Tamayo says she knows that Rin is like that because herself was exactly the same and the fact that Rin was racing was the proof. Rin replies that Tamayo is wrong, that she came to the race to check what was the level of an All-Japan champion. Tamayo interprets that Rin sees her as inferior, so she changes the handicap: Rin gets a 2 lap handicap but the race starts right at that moment.
Detours
The girls find a small obstacle: part of the course is temporally blocked because there is an inspection proceeding there for future construction and the path will only be available in 5 minutes. So the girls make a small detour through the 8th dorm. As the riders show us the 3d riding capabilities of ridebacks, Suzuri asks Hishida if it’s hard to ride them. Hishida replies that it’s very easy to ride them, since most of the complex operations like balance and turning are controlled by computer, like a Segway. But Tamayo and Rin are in manual mode, which is very hard to use, even for people with good reflexes. Suzuri begins to admire Rin and ridebacks even more for combining ballet moves like grand jeté in a miraculous way.
The race really begins when they pass in front of the RideBack club warehouse, where Shoko had already arrived to watch the race. Tamayo speeds up the pace by shifting into Spread Legs Form (S.L.F. for short), which Rin replies by also shifting to S.L.F. While Standing Form is more stable and easier to control, S.L.F. spreads the Rideback legs to thr front and back, giving it a lower gravity center, less air resistance and a look more close to today’s motorbikes. The counterpart is the Rideback is harder to turn and speed control.
Tamayo uses Rin’s inexperience and baits her into a trap. She keeps a high speed while entering a S-shaped turn and skillfully shifts between SLF in the curves and SF in the straight parts of the curve to keep a steady speed. Rin, having too much speed in her attempt to keep up with Tamayo, loses control and gets thrown off the road into a nearby road.
Ooops.
It’s Not Over Until I Say So
Hishida gets ready fish up Fuego out of the pond when Suzuri notices that Fuego beacon has moved. Rin has regained her composure and waits for Tamayo on the road to return to the spot, since she was already on the way to complete her 3rd lap. Tamayo gets impressed with Rin’s persistence and continues the race. Meanwhile, Okakura is on a nearby hill, watching the race from afar.
Rin improves her time and gets side by side with Tamayo when they reach a left-right 90º straight roads betweem buildings. Instead of reducing speed to pass safely, Rin enters the path at full race, making Tamayo fear for an accident . But Rin skillfully makes a tour en l’air from one corner to the other, while keeping a constant speed and regaining that sense of adrenalin she had when she made that grand jeté on episode 1 (a tour en l’air basically consists on a jump with one, two or three turns in mid-air. Normally it’s a male move and the landing is made with both feet).
Tamayo gets stunned with Rin’s crazy driving and barely misses a cat that was passing by. Unlucky, she crashed due to that and slams into a near wall. Rin rushes back to help her.
Recovery
The RideBack Club members are on Tamayo’s hospital room, which seems to only have suffered a mild concussion. Tamayo asks Kawai for a racer form for Rin, so that they can face off again, this time on a real race. Later that day, while watching the sunset, Shoko tells Rin that her performance made Suzuri sign up into the RideBack Club. She also gives her approval to Rin to officialy join the club too, since it seems to suit her.
Ep 3 Preview
Rin’s participating the race and oh boy, it looks more like a cross country marathon than a normal race. But that’s the epitome of RideBacks, to ride where there are no reads.
Impressions
Having read the manga, I’m happy how they’ve changed the plot. The producers are focusing on the action/race elements first, leaving the rest to the series climax. It makes the show much smoother and less confusing.
Suzuri is one heck of a raging lesbo…or she has one seriouc case of hyperactivity ( I hope it’s lesbianism, always good to have some around). Either way, this anime exclusive character is bringing some much needed craze to the show.
One thing that I’ve forgotten to comment in the previous ep: Fuego has a 670 gb HDD, which you can see when Rin’s starting Fuego for the first time. WHY THE HELL it needs so much space? Or is Hishida keeping his porn collection there?
Brief thought by jiff
Quick note: the only other person I’ve heard of who majored in the same thing as me in uni ^_^
I usually stay away from anything resembling mecha, but after reading Extrange’s post on the first episode of this, I was intrigued. After watching the first two episodes, I have some questions: has mecha always been this cool, or is it a new development? Where are the whiny, emo characters and the ridiculous and convoluted plots, or were those a figment of my prejudiced imagination as well? I doubt I’ll be watching Geass anytime soon, but I’m sure as hell hooked on Rideback.
I was immediately fond of the character design; it reminds me of Candy Boy, in that all the girls are cute, spunky, and bright, with adorable hair and wonderful clothes. Suzuri especially reminded me of Saku-chan, and I’m hoping they share more similarities as the show progresses…
I know we can never fully escape the shadow war throws over mecha shows, but the way it’s looking now is that Rin is going to be thrown into some illegal activity and perhaps even fight for the resistance (heroes always fight for the resistance ^_^;; I still think you’re a hero Crusader!) Extrange tried to tell me what happens, but since I haven’t read the manga yet I doubt I’ll start now that the anime is going on. I’m patient, and I like the buildup between episodes, so no spoilers, please! I can already smell some tension brewing between Tamayo’s family and the rideback club; perhaps her family wants to claim ridebacks as purely military devices and she opposes that purpose?
At the most basic level, I am enjoying this show because of Rin, Her attitude and her grace are not something I’m accustomed to seeing much of in anime girls these days, especially with Clannad ringing louder in my ears than any other show of this past season. To translate ballet to motorcycle riding is unique and thoughtful; I really am glad that they focus on balance and grace more than strength and nerves; perhaps the reason this appeals to me when other, similar show do not is that this is taking a decidedly female approach to a testosterone-laced genre – I feel like Rin must have felt, flying through the air: a skipp in my heartbeat and fresh wind in my face. I can’t wait for the rest of this show.
23 Comments
You probably wouldn’t want to watch most Gundam / Tomino series either, a lot of the UC included, since many of those series do have plenty of angst, emo and contrived plots if that turns you off (in my opinion that’s not enough to make up my mind either way)…but Rideback is barely a mecha series at the moment, although that’s not exactly a bad thing.
The action sequences were nice and so are most of the characters but I’m not hooked on it yet though, since I don’t want to get my hopes up too early when it’s just started and the plot could go anywhere, literally.
What, 670 GB HDD? WTF? Why would it need so much space indeed.
You’d be surprised how much space aircraft engine controls need (especially military engines) to keep the plane running correctly. For software as complicated as making a big piece of metal stand on two wheels, 670 GB doesn’t seem too far off.
@Jiff: Well, you should definitely watch Macross Frontier. It has a distinct lack of whiny, emo characters ( Alto is a bit touchy about his masculinity, but else what can you do with a nickname like “princess” ^^ ) and the plot is quite comprehensible all the time. You´ll like the mecha fights and the show has the best female lead character since, like, ever in Sheryl Nome.
*edit* “…what else can you do…”
You guys should add an editing option for posts, I hate when stupid grammar errors like this one can´t be changed.
The only problem of the episode is that Rin’s tour en l’air – graceful as it may be – is physically impossible. She had to slamm into the wall despite her jump.
RideBack is mecha, racing, and ballet all rolled into one. You can’t go wrong with that combination
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Yes mecha has always been cool.
Rin is a better protagonist than a generic spineless wimp.
Why is gingerbread man smiling?
Nvm, maybe he likes that one-on-one bath massage by Rin
Anyone else notice how freaking big Okakura’s nose is? When they show the side shots of it, man its huge.
for me, Rideback = Initial D x Mecha x Awesome (but not moe) Rider Girls rolled into one.
i’m waiting to see how the story developes. haven’t read the manga, but i’m guessing it’s either the track of racing, or the track against those terrorists who used ridebacks for terrorism. I prefer the first, but wouldn’t mind seeing our main heroine slash some terrorists.
It has Mussorgsky in it. I’m in.
Hmm. Mega les stalking action soon o.o? Anyways, nice episode. Nice to see some different, new elements starting to mix in.
There’s no doubt Suzuri is a stalker too.
I find the metaphor between ballet and motorcrossing quite refreshing and invigorating. Even I was perplexed about the “Spread Legs Form”. All I knew was that the pose will appear like in a ballet, but in mecha form and more erotic.
Anime creators have tried numerous times to cross something hardcore or shounen with something feminine or romantic. It may come off completely wrong, steering into an iceberg, or in Rin’s case, a huge body of water. Although, so far, I think the creators maybe able a pull off a hit. I enjoy the action and the character Rin is very exceptionable. Right off the bat, the producers made the viewers sympathize and ponder how Rin will overcome her slight depression. She’s pretty and strong-headed. By showing that she still has some faults in this episode, we, the viewers, feel more connected to her situation and the other characters.
For me, I thought of the anime IGPX, but the other comments also have rationality. I haven’t read the manga, but I would like it if she didn’t win first place in the race. If she didn’t win, then we can see how Rin will grow, learn, adapt, and come back even stronger to win. If she does win, then I can speculate her roads will have more obstacles when other Ridebackers consider her victory as a fluke.
Btw, that skunk is also a metaphor in ballet to do a “stink attack” when lifting your behind in the air to the loser in the back. That’s a joke. I don’t know what it means either.
Not a blockbuster, but the lack of abuse of super robot powers, fanservice, emo and triangle is refreshing. Im not dying to see the next episode, but I keep these anime bookmarked.
Looks very promesing
Spread legs form should be sideways. Just like a human. The mechs are doing it all wrong
Yeesh. Even the title “Ride Back” is a sexual innuendo. Otherwise, I’d love to ride on back!….. non-sexually of course..
Freud is always right. No exception.
@magnuskn
I think that’s all perspective, as I felt MF was pretty downsy in it’s own right. Sure people got back on track fast, but that was because the plot fast forwards and that kills it because the endings are all terrible.
It’s hard nowadays for Japanese series to not be downs AND still not affect it’s story.
I mean, UC and old Gundam series were damn emo because people DIED. Like, literally, people just died left and right. It is “justified” in a sense. It would be ridiculous if MS Igloo all of a sudden had a rainbow popping out with mylilpwny crossing it ridden by Char. I mean cool yes, but definitely not fitting.
And yeah, Sheryl is the best character of the series. Of course, the artwork could have been better so that not everyone had square noses and made Alto look the most girly out of the ENTIRE CAST. But alas, no.
Then again, Ride Back is imo even less than Blassreiter art/animation speaking. At least for the 2d characters. 3D it’s all equally crap and MF destroys any competitor in 3D action despite having recycled it’s scenes over 90 times after the first 5 episodes. I mean, the first 5 episodes during the first invasion has yet to be topped in CG action for 08/09.
Still, Ride Back is…kinda neat? I’m not a vehicle lover though so =/ and Initial D shouldn’t ever be compared unless you are talking about the garbage 4th season. The rest, specially 1st season, was beyond godly in technical aspects and CG displaying it’s awesomeness.