Rideback - Episode 5

Despite breaking pretty much every rule in the book when it comes to realism, I make no apologies for my abject love of the last instalment of Rideback - I didn't start watching this series for realism or in-depth political intrigue, I picked it up because it looked cool. Episode four was cool by the bucket load, ergo it was an excellent instalment.

Of course, it would be nigh-on impossible for the series to keep up that pace in the very next episode, and thus what we see here is a far slower instalment documenting the fallout of Rin's rash actions following the terrorist attack. While Rin herself is feeling nervous enough in the wake of facing off against GGP's army, perhaps more surprisingly it's Okakura who seems to be feeling the heat the most, suspending club activites and mothballing Fuego with a view to dismantling it completely, something which he later claims to have done already. As the episode progresses, we start to pull together a picture of just why Okakura is so edgy about getting entagled in anything to do with GGP, and it turns out to be quite understandable based upon his history.


While Okakura is indeed in the frame, it's the mysterious girl on the Rideback that took on the GGP forces that everybody wants a piece of, with freelance journalists trying to track down the suspect and TV experts all having their say. While these disparate elements fish around for the truth, the bad news is that GGP's intelligence services are far more on the ball, and come the end of the episode Rin is the prime suspect in this particular case. What does this mean for our former ballet dancing heroine? Time will tell no doubt....

Given the adrenaline pumping nature of episode four, perhaps it's for the best that this was a far more calm instalment in pure action terms, preferring instead to ramp up the tension by slowly dragging us along to the point where Rin is unveiled as "the Rideback girl", while still leaving us to ponder what happens next. This was achieved in a reasonably well-executed manner, leaving an episode that won't live long in the memory but at least sets things up nicely for some tougher times ahead for Rin and company. Now that I've really seen what Rideback is capable of, I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when the going gets tough.