Rideback - Episode 1

Rin Ogata is a ballerina - Hardly the most likely of heroines for an action-based anime series, I grant you. Rather, I should say that Rin was a ballerina... one who looked set to follow in her mother's footsteps as a true prodigy until a ligament injury ended with her deciding to pack in that particular career path.


Meanwhile, the world we're introduced to in Rideback is one of recent revolution, with an organisation known as Brittania... sorry, the GGP, having staged a massive coup and somehow wrestled away control of the entire world thanks to the use of some nifty new technology. Improbable I know, but never mind - The upshot is that a new world order is in place, but there are hitns of unrest at the military style of this new leadership.

Of course, all of this matters little to Rin, who is more interested in starting at a new school, sharing a dorm with her best friend, and trying her best to avoid all of the people who know her only as "that famous ballerina", or worse "the daughter of that even more famous ballerina". It's an attempt to avoid such situations that sees her stumble into a garage containing a Rideback - Think motorcycle with arms, or mecha motorbike if you'd rather. Rin is granted the chance to give it a quick try to pass the time, but when the Rideback malfunctions she finds her ballet training as made her more adept for this kind of thing than she originally imagined.

Now, how this sweet and mild-mannered girl who makes mechas do ballet is going to be turned into some kind of hardened revolutionary (as no doubt she will be in no time) I really have no idea, but given the implausibility of a guerrila group taking over the entire world in one fell swoop I suppose realism isn't going to be one of this series strong points. Then again, who cares? When you have an anime featuring motorcycles with arms and a ballet-dancing rider, such things really aren't important. It may not promise anything revolutionary, but this opening episode of Rideback was certainly fun to watch while oozing a certain degree of coolness, and that's really all I can ask for at this point in time. I can forgive some slightly shaky plot points along as it continues in a similar vein.