Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… wait, I already used that intro last week? Um… Rideback!
So, yeah, Rideback in extremely reductionist theory is another of those stories where a special group of outcasts with a younger main character among them sparks a revolution against an oppressive totalitarian government. But, this one is a good deal different. It has interesting characters, an odd yet effective structure, and motorcycles with arms that can stand up to become beefy wheel robots with the driver on their back. I assure you this is sold as being cooler than it sounds.
At its heart, Rideback is the story of Rin Ogata, a former ballerina trying to come to terms with an injury that, while not crippling in normal life, means she can’t dance like she used to, with the transcendent skill that her late mother was known for and that she was becoming famous for. Rin enrolls in college and ends up falling in with the school’s “Rideback” club, a group of interested students and racers who are into the latest and greatest robot motorcycles, nicknamed Ridebacks. Due to an error causing one she was trying out at the club’s behest to run wild, Rin finds joy and freedom in the experience of riding, and gets involved with the club.
If this is sounding more like a school sports anime, that’s because it kind of is. Rideback is both a single twelve-episode anime that tells the story of Rin and her friends straight through, and also… kind of three different shows in how the themes change over the run.
That’s not to say that some of the later stuff isn’t there. Fairly early in the show we’re let into the fact that this setting is kind of a dystopia – not a severe one, but a setting with enough elements people would probably recognize as dystopic in order to qualify. Specifically, Rideback is set after some kind of World War III scenario that ended (after some unspecified terrible business in Arizona) with a group known as the GGP becoming the de-facto world government. Individual nations still seem to have some degree of autonomy, but the GGP is everywhere and their paramilitary rule seems more like an occupation than something like the UN.
But, that’s in the background for the first three episodes that sort of comprise the first storyline. Instead, we’re concerned with Ogata trying to fit in (assisted by her old friend Shouko and a fangirl who soon becomes a close friend called Suzuri).
So, anyway, Rin takes her accidental first ride, on a cool red Rideback called the Fuego, and pulls some really awesome stunts on it as she does, experiencing a flying leap like the ones she can no longer perform in ballet. With that taste under her belt, she decides she wants to join the Rideback club, but as part of getting in she faces a racing challenge from her new senpai, Tamayo. She has some trouble getting a regular Rideback to move like the Fuego, but ultimately does well enough that Tamayo accepts her. Thus, Rin is allowed to enter a regional qualifier race.
At first, Rin… really sucks. But then the pit crew (including frequent touchstone character Haruki Hishida, the funny nerd of the bunch) notice that the Fuego, which she rode like a champ, had a severely screwed up balancer, to the point where it was basically nonfunctional. They mess with the one on Rin’s competition Rideback and sure enough she takes off, since the machine now moves as she directs, not as a computer thinks it should. She passes racer after racer and rallies to the point where it looks like she might even make a strike for the lead… only to have her machine break down utterly under the strain of pulling the kind of moves she pulls, meaning that despite getting the commentators in an uproar by reaching fifth she doesn’t actually finish. Tamayo, meanwhile, fends off the racer goons who try to jump her and takes home the gold.
Just when it looks like we’re set up pretty well for this sports run, we shift gears into show two. Before leaping into the happenings, it’s time to start introducing the other side of the cast that’s been moving on the background. On one side, the GGP is represented here by a rather gung-ho man, a former war “hero” called Romanof who seems more inclined than the normal GGP to rule with an iron fist, his first order of business being to push by any means necessary the adoption of armed Rideback military police. He has a history, though how much is kept in the dark for quite some time, with the Rideback club’s resident adult and advisor Okakura – once known as “Goblin” and something of a war hero himself under that moniker. However, whatever happened in Arizona that catapulted Romanof towards leadership has made Okakura a haunted man, wanting nothing more than to leave Goblin dead and buried.
In any case, we get a sequence that begins with Okakura and Rin on the road (with the Ridebacks on the flatbed of the vehicle), stuck in traffic while planning to meet up with Shouko. However, a group of terrorists seize control of Shouko’s location, and while the GGP quickly sets up a surround in order to apprehend the terrorists, Rin fears what could become of Shouko if she gets caught in the crossfire. Thus, she gets on the Fuego and takes off into the city with the maneuverability only a Rideback driven by a mental case like Rin can muster, in order to blow past the police cordon, bust in to a terrorist-held building, and rescue Shouko from it.
The path in is surprisingly easy for Rin, and she manages to save Shouko from clear and present danger. Friend acquired, she takes back off, but the GGP forces are better at keeping people who might be their targets in than they were at keeping Rin out, leading to a stunt-driving, bullet-dodging chase through the inner city. The GGP even bust out a helicopter, but a terrorist (later identified as Kiefer) takes it out with a rocket launcher and exchanges a few words with Rin as she escapes in the chaos.
The media, represented by intrepid reporter Megumi Yoda, dubs Rin the “Mysterious Rideback Girl”, and she becomes something of a symbol, identity unknown and affiliation unclear but with a hell of a show delivered. Rin isn’t quite sure how to process this, Okakura wants no part and seals the Fuego away saying he’s scrapped it to cover for the club, and Shouko suffers some pretty intense PTSD from her time in a firefight and/or hostage situation.
The reporter manages to catch up to Rin, following clues in order to hopefully get her scoop, but she and Rin notice a gang of Rideback-riding hooligans… including her little brother riding tandem with one of them (he was sort of acting as a contact and mechanic, because he thinks Ridebacks are cool). The reporter helps Rin get close, but because she’s actually insanely reckless for a girl who usually comes off as quite demure, she ends up intervening. With what, you may ask? Well, the rideback bike gang becomes the target of enforcement by the GGP. With Romanof itching to show off his stuff, he has his elite White Knights deployed to round up and dispatch these annoying hooligains. They corner the group on a low- elevation roadway, and aren’t terribly concerned with arresting people alive. Rin runs down, takes up the Rideback of one of the fallen, and starts stunting in order to protect her brother. However, when she realizes that her resisting arrest has hurt actual people and it seems like the authorities aren’t going to shoot to kill, Rin surrenders.
Technically this all should have been caught by the reporter, but that actually doesn’t seem to come back into focus.
In prison, Rin’s brother is coerced into signing a bogus confession that he killed the guy he was semi-unwillingly riding with, when in fact it was the GGP goon throwing him off his machine that did it. This is, in turn, used as leverage against Rin, in order to hopefully convince her to quietly accept some sort of judgment, possibly because some connection between her and Kiefer’s terrorist group (no relation to the one that attacked that day in earnest) is suspected.
This stretch is four episodes, and is sort of the “Crime drama” arc, being concerned with more general if sensational criminal behavior, punishment, and (unfair) policing. However, that’s all about to end as we move into the final five episodes and show number three, the version that’s about dystopia and revolution.
This begins when Kiefer reappears and springs Rin from GGP custody, essentially abducting her from a prisoner transit scenario. He takes her back to his lair, she tries to recapture the idea of feeling good about Ridebacks and almost manages to stick it, but her guilt over hurting actual people seems to preclude her involvement in the anti-GGP activities, despite Kiefer being in awe of her skill. Romanof’s forces attack the hideout, but largely get owned by Kiefer and Okakura, who is working with Kiefer mostly, it seems, because Romanof won’t leave him alone.
After surviving and getting out of that scenario, Rin decides she’ll give up the Fuego and the idea of Ridebacks, but forces moving behind the scenes seem to have other ideas, as Romanof and the opposition gear up for open conflict and the general populace starts to not take kindly to Romanof’s hamfisted and totalitarian decrees.
The latter note culminates in a large, peaceful protest against the seizure of civilian Ridebacks that has been proposed, with Suzuri making a dramatic appearance and getting herself and the crowd (which mistakes her for “the Rideback Girl”) hyped, waving a flag, and so on. Rin, meanwhile, is on a train that passes by the scene, and Suzuri rides proud to wave to her… before Romanof’s forces decide to shoot to kill since she didn’t realize she was being actually pursued.
This leads into the penultimate episode, in which Rin decides to face what’s coming on Fuego’s back rather than running, even when an exit is offered to her. It turns out she does so in the nick of time, though, because urban warfare has been engaged with the deployment of some Rideback-like drones and Romanof is taking no prisoners, cutting through swaths of Kiefer’s goons and pursuing Rin and Tamayo as they escape.
This leads to a pretty good chase/firefight in the streets, happening at the same time as Kiefer launches his last, desperate attack on Romanof’s HQ. Rin fends off killer robots with her dance moves, finally finding herself, while the terrorists and government clash. Romanof is ultimately offed, but not by Kiefer: it’s his aide who does it, a character who didn’t get a lot of focus but you could kind of guess saw him as an impediment to governing properly. As she takes over, we also have Romanof’s dirty laundry provided to the reporter, setting up the idea that the ability of the GGP to exert unilateral control the way Romanof did will probably be dismantled going forward.
So, in the end, the strength and weakness of Rideback is basically the same thing: This isn’t a show about racing, or crime, or revolution. The whole “Show number one, two, and three” thing is a superficial distraction to the fact that this is really a show about Rin’s emotional journey. It’s a good journey, even if her moping phase between being arrested and getting back on Fuego in the penultimate episode could be seen as being a little long, and that really helps carry the show, giving it a strong backbone and a clear source of interest.
At the same time, if you like the racing or the chasing or the rebellion stuff… it’s not in central focus. We never do find out what the full history of Romanof, Kiefer, and Goblin is, what really went down in Arizona, how Romanof alone of the three managed to get his exalted position – none of that. And of course we only see one informal race between Rin and Tamayo and one competition before the idea of racing the cool transforming robot motorcycles is done for the show. So, if you’re here for one thing like that, you’ll probably find that Rideback either starts slow or ends early.
From my perspective though, I think Rideback is a fine character-driven drama. It has a touch of action, in a few different ways. It has a touch of intrigue. And it has a strong main character. That’s enough to earn it a B- and my general respect, marred only by the latter-middle movement taking a little long and a couple elements being dropped perhaps when they should have come back in, like the fact that the reporter should have had record of the police brutality Rin interfered with, rather than being introduced looking for a scoop and then, unconnected to what she did before, having it given to her by forces inside the GGP. Still, I’d recommend Rideback, and think it could get a little more recognition.