RideBack - Episode 1

Starts off with Rin Ogata, the main character, doing ballet in front of a large audience. During this we hear her thoughts and she begins the story for us. She tells us of what happened before this moment. She repeats ‘The world will change’ in a hopeful way. Just before the lights go out, she twists her ankle in the middle of the dance and crashes to the floor. When the lights go out, she repeats ‘The world will change’ again.

The next scene is with Shouko Uemura, her best friend, talking and celebrating a new school year in the same room. They celebrate in a shower of pink petals. During lunch, she meets a fan of hers called Uchida Suzuri, a 1st year. Shouko gets angry from being ignored. Rin leaves and once outside is met by rain.

She hurries inside a large ‘shed’ to get out of the rain. Here she meets Fuego, the RideBack. Haruki Hishida, thinking she wants to join, the RideBack club, lets her get onto Fuego, which she does with much style. Once on, Haruki starts the RideBack and shows her how to ride. She learns this with ease because of her ballet. The rain stops and Rin ventures outside. She moves forward, only to find that the breaks stop working and she is heading for a wall. She reacts and manages, with Haruki’s utter disbelief, to turn and race off with a nice ‘Power Slide’.

As she races though the campus, she realises she isn’t scared on Fuego and jumps over a small fence. She now has good control over the RideBack, but finds out that she cannot stop it. She rides past a guy on another RideBack who asks her to stop, she explains that she doesn’t know how and he tries to fix this. But it was too late as in front was the end of the road and then a large drop. Unable to brake, Rin goes over the edge, and is ‘flying’. Haruki is amazed at her skill.

This episode was a great first episode. The ending was amazing with great suspense and amazement. This ending stuck in my mind and made me want to watch more. The drawing is brilliant, great colour, vibrancy, clear and smooth. All the main characters are likeable and full of life. The story line seems to be very good, and the begging snap shots are probably going to be introduced later on. With a mixture of characters there is a wide range of feelings and thoughts. The RideBack is a very cool machine with very high technology and the relationship between Rin and Shouko is strong and seems flawless. How they are going to fill out the next 11 episodes will probably involve action and a fair amount of racing. Bring on episode 2.