Air Master!
Posted by erin at May 2, 2003 04:26 PMNYU Anime Club is over for the semester, but I attended it's second or third-to-last meeting, wherein they screened a pathetically hilarious show called "Air Master".
Air Master is the story of an (apparently) 8-foot-tall girl who is a master gymnast and street fighter. When she gets into street brawls she uses her gymnastic skills to leap off of buildings and through the air in such a way that she seems to be flying. The closest equivalent of this I can think of is when Xena jumps into the air and scream "Aiaiaiaiaiaiaiaiai!!" while running around on the faces of her enemies. Air Master is equally implausible and homosexual, however, the quality of the show is much lower.
The character designs for "Air Master" are hideous. The Air Master girl has a look about her that makes the viewer ask some serious questions, such as: "Is that a man? ...or a drag queen, or what?" In the first episode s/he (the Air Master) starts hanging out with a group of girls she meets in an arcade. Each girl in the troupe is unintentionally hideous, and some of them appear to be drawn in art styles that were either plagiarized from other shows, or could be parodying other styles. For example, the smallest girl appears to be a kindergartener from Astro Boy.
When the tiny tot turns out to be in the same grade as the Air Master, it's implausible. When she starts hanging out with the Air Master as a friend, the series takes a horrible turn for the worse (this happens about 5 minutes of the show).
Make no mistake, despite the protagonists being girls, this show is shonen. "Shonen" refers to boy-themed manga or anime, the most well-known example is Dragonball Z. The book Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga outlines the rules of shonen for us: 1) There must be panty-flashing in every panel. 2) There must be a four-eyes to rescue. and 3) The structure of shonen is like yakitori on a stick - one fight follows another. Usually in shonen the protagonists are male, but Air Master gives us an all-female cast. The four-eyes character is embodied in the tiny crybaby chick, and the panty-flashing is conveniently provided by the Air Master herself. As she "flies" through the air in her school uniform, the viewers get a lot of disturbing looks up her skirt, where it is still unclear, even after many flashes, which gender she may be. I assume someone is supposed to find this sexy, I'm just not sure who.
Air Master isn't all bad. Some of the fight scenes are actually pretty cool. In the first episode the Air Master fights a random Mexican wrestler, complete with face mask (you can't go wrong with a Mexican wrestler). He has the "flying" martial arts ability as well, and gives a hilariously incoherent speech about why he fights. He's the best character in the show!
The real trouble with Air Master is that it's hard to tell whether the show is being sincere or not. If it's not sincere, then it's really funny. If it is sincere... yipes!
There are a couple of websites about the show but, neither of them are in English:
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