Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

It’s quite the amazing first episode. This season appears to be some vehicular mecha wankfest, and Rideback is the climax! Featuring two-armed motorcycle mecha that can transform into humanoid forms, the Ridebacks are probably the freshest mecha designs in eons. While the other mecha show Sora wo Kakeru Shoujo chooses to use a more integrated mecha rendering that blends in seamlessly with the characters, Rideback, animated by Madhouse, goes for extreme action, sacrificing a bit in terms of fitting in with the background, to produce far more lively and fast paced scenes.

Set in 2025, the story revolves around a cute ballet dancer, whose innocent and demure outward appearance masks an inner adventurous drive. The daughter of an ultimate ballet star, she sought to emulate her mother’s success but snapped her achilles tendon in the middle of a show, thus having to give up the art. The girl, Rin, enrols into a college and stumbles upon the Rideback club, which is akin to a motorcycle club, only with mechabikes. By some persuasion she gets on one, and it malfunctions, preventing her from braking. Rin goes around the city dancing her way past obstacles and flies off a cliff, doing ballet poses with the bike. And dies. The end.

Ok I made the last 2 sentences up. Anyway, the design of the bike is incredible, in its motorcycle form, it resembles a ballerina in their trademark jump split, while in humanoid form, it’s manly and carries the rider like a man piggybacking a child, hence the name Rideback.

Best show of the season! Impz will hate it of course because he hates robots. I will look forward to more episodes.

The 2nd best show is Major season 5 of course, for nostalgic reasons. Looks like Goro and Shimizu are getting hitched!