Air Master – the Anime! …is not for children.

Ah, Air Master… It has most everything I like in an anime:

Violence

Kicks

Girls

Dudes

Uh…A completely batshit insane story.

Okay this one just isn’t for kids, we need to get that out of the way now. I’m not going to pretend that at least 70% of this anime isn’t either crotch or crotch-adjacent. Seriously, you get more crotch in your face throughout its 27 episode run than you probably thought could be crammed into an anime and the thing was made back in the stone ages. Ah, anime of the early 2000’s, when I was going to anime conventions like Otakon before every John, George, and Ringo started watching it. Now even Paul’s into this wacky shit. Also, there’s significantly different contexts for excuses to plow crotch into your ocular valves, should you suffer from glaucoma.

This anime has more crotch than a U2 video from the 90’s that didn’t age well. The main difference being that Air Master has aged so well that it’s become almost a parody of itself.

It’s about a former gymnast who, after a terrible tragedy, becomes an amateur street fighter who has to rise through the ranks by kicking the ever-loving shit out of a series of dudes and ladies that show up to shove their crotches in your face, as well. All while wearing a skirt! Go figure…

And some of them you really, really, want to see get their penises kicked up into their nostrils. There are some serious creeps in this show and the sort of thing just wouldn’t play in an anime made today unless it was specifically made to revolve around the topic – I think something this has going for it is that they want to make sure the unlikable characters are completely unlikable – at this, it succeeds, but it also uses a lot of incredibly boring (Even at the time…) tropes to draw attention to things.

The nature of the fan service in Air Master is obviously directed toward crotch, but to make sure they capture the eyeballs of any 2003 old-school weeb in the twilight days of their adolescence, they have a character whose only purpose is to scream, cry, make googly eyes at the main protagonist, and have some tig ol’ bittays. This was a one-note joke that got off-putting and weird by the third time they called attention to it inside of 2 minutes, but after a few episodes it got to be funny again. Then, they kept doing it and it became completely unfunny a couple episodes later.

This anime is over 20 years old, so I don’t figure I have to worry about the risk of, “ruining,” something for you because if you’re going to watch it you’re going to watch it, so I’ll just say she wins a bikini contest by imitating a dairy cow. Classy.

This typical brand of anime stupid works well for this series even if they do really kill the joke, but I also have a strong affinity for the silly and tasteless.

You see the main cast of characters above? Guess which one is a joke based around titties. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Anyway, Maki Aikawa, the main protagonist, exists to be the love interest for…literally everyone in this world, pretty much. Everybody instantly falls in love with Maki and her glorious muscular legs, which she swings in circles and kicks the ever-loving shit out of everything with.

She can FLY, BRO!!!

While using…the power of air!

Hence the title, Air Master. Duh.

I also looked up the never-officially-localized manga by Yokusaru Shibata and I’ve come to a very clear and obvious conclusion… Shibata loves women that, to quote Shoresy from Letterkenny, look like they could, “Box jump a bungalow.” I have no doubt that Maki could do so, unless she’s too busy kicking holes through reinforced concrete walls, showing some bad guys her underwear while she’s using the POWER OF AIR while wearing a skirt, or clearly having a total misunderstanding of why everyone in this world is drawn to her befuddled, violent persona.

This anime doesn’t take itself seriously at all and that is something that I respond well to, it took me a few weeks to get through the 27 episode run and overall I thought it was sufficiently bananas to occupy that time. Will I watch it again? Eh… You don’t really need to. As a matter of fact, if you watch half of the series, you’ve watched the entire thing really.

By the time you get through episode 26, if you enjoy it like I did, you should really stop there.

Because this series has the absolute worst, most boring series finale I have ever seen.

I give it 6.5 sneakers and a pair of white underwear out of 10 stars.