Rideback - The Complete Series [DVD]

Rin Ogata was an up-and-coming ballerina but when an injury forced her to give up dancing she found her life somewhat unfulfilling. When she enters university she discovers the RideBack Club and when she tries to ride one of these unusual machines she discovers that she has a natural talent and grows to love the feeling of riding. Meanwhile, terrorist organisations and the corrupt and oppressive GGP who begin to use RideBacks for their own purposes and Rin slowly begins to be drawn into the conflict between the two.

I didn't know anything about this series before I started watching it and I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed it. The RideBacks themselves are a nice mix of motorbike and mecha and I did like many of the characters, especially Rin. The animation was good and the English dub is reasonable as well. The setting is interesting and although the plot is good, I feel it could have been just as good if the series had stuck with the racing element from the beginning of the series rather than gone the armed rebellion route. The only real problem with the series is that it is only twelve episodes long and it is all over far too soon.

This was a very nice series and I feel it deserves four and a half to five stars.

rideback is a little under the radar gem ,
it has great story telling and themes of lost dreams , freindship , hardships
the animation is fluid and vibrant it looks stunning
soild dub performance and great music that adds to action and dramatic sences
well worth buying this
for a full video review on youtube look for the walking00dead

£24.99 is much too much to pay for this anime. The show lacks character development, struggles to make the story interesting, and worst of all, it has no heart. Thankfully, not long ago it was only £7.99, and that was still too costly.

The characters are introduced one by one, but all, to the end of the show, shall remain bland and one dimensional to the point of being annoying and unlikeable. One character dies in quite sad circumstances, which in most shows would have been a powerful and symbolic moment. RideBack expects us to feel for this particular character and even shows flashbacks to previous episodes, but even though that person was arguably the most developed (a tiny, tiny bit), it had absolutely no emotional effect on me.

And you could say, "well it's under 15 episodes, it'd be hard to provide much development". But there are so many wasted episodes in the middle where the characters could have been taught valuable lessons or we could have seen more of their past, I'm not prepared to forgive the show.

Just like Wall-E, just like the Tachikomas, just like a Rozen Maiden doll, we should easily fall in love with the quirks of RideBacks, right? Nope. Not once are they portrayed as having a mind of their own, or capable of doing things without human interaction, which makes the whole 'RideBacks and their riders are equals' shtick fall flat on its face. They clearly aren't very intelligent robots, so stop telling me they are!

So if the characters aren't much use, and the RideBacks rely so heavily on these characters, we're left with the sensation of being isolated from the show's story. There is no involvement.

So yeah I can't really recommend RideBack, sadly. Ultimately, this anime would get a 2.5/5 from me (but Amazon doesn't allow half star ratings just yet), but I rounded up in the off chance that the odd person will enjoy the show (it is probably possible, it isn't hugely offensive). But as for me, it was pretty disappointing. £7.99 seemed like a bargain too!