Quick Note: Apart from Reki, and Langa, from this point I am going to refer to the other characters by their “S” alias since that’s how they are being referred to.
Well that certainly didn’t end well. The more they told us about Adam the more concerned I became and I knew it was about out to get ugly. There is no doubt that Adam’s house-hold environment and expectations has contributed to this warped personality we see today. “S” is like a sanctuary for him, where he is in control of everything, where he is the most free, and he can play to his twisted heart’s desires.
They show us today how Adam is a sick bastard who gets off of savoring crushing and terrorizing his opponents, licking their blood of his face, and injuring and almost killing them altogether. His signature move, “Love Hug” (which is a a disgusting name for a bullish move), is an act of intimidation because he drives himself up-hill, and as result it startles his opponents into wiping out. We didn’t actually get to see precisely how he did it, but we did see Langa experimenting the legendary move out of curiosity. By the look of it, I think Langa might already be onto it one of the steps involved to make it happen, but he just wasn’t going fast enough to pull it off. This is just a guess based on the fact one of Adams biggest strengths is his insane speed, which is likely needed to propel himself up the slope.
And it was because of Adam’s notorious reputation that Miya had tried to get Reki to call it off (but I doubt Adam would have allowed it without consequences). But in the end, he was cruelly mocked and toyed with, and couldn’t beat Adam. And if that wasn’t enough, he ended up heavily wounded, a head injury (probably a concussion) and at least some broke bones. Varying on how battle injured he is, that means he might not be able to be back on the board for a while, much less working in his workshop on them as he likes. We’ll have to wait and see what the extent of his injuries are next week.
This means bad news for Langa after he had stupidly and naively agreed to be Adam’s prize for the bet. So now he is Adam’s newest “Skate Partner”, if that’s the word for it. But little did he know at the time, this guy has a notorious reputation for crushing his favourite skaters one after another. Basically he’s butchering them, and many, if not all of them wound up in the hospital. For this precise reason, I am worried about Langa. This guy has a nasty game, but if there’s one basic thing everyone needs to overcome to even have a chance to beat him, is to not lose their focus when he uses his intimidation tactics to (quite literally) throw them off.
It’s unclear whether Langa will be challenging Adam next week, or he is being forced to skate with him to comply with the conditions. We also learned how Cherry and Joe have their own respective grudges towards Adam. Furthermore the two of them have history with him even before he had founded “S”. Cherry in particularly seems to be the most eager to fight him again despite knowing the potential consequences involved. He just hadn’t had the chance to confront him since the guys rarely makes appearances unless there’s someone who catches his attention. So Reki, Langa and Miya share something in common with these two, which will probably help form the relationships. Shadow so far has been able to sit out of this, but it’s pretty hilarious how they are using him as a driver and interact with him despite the crazy things he has done. Though I do agree, while he can be pretty bad himself, he is definitely not in the same category as Adam. (He still shouldn’t throw fireworks at his opponents though, that’s dangerous man!)
That’s all I have to say for this week, see you next time!
PS: Langa has been promoted from “Duct-Tape Rookie” to being referred to as “Snow” now. I say that’s a fitting name for a guy who uses snowboarding tricks hahaha!
