Enclave

Air Gear was a manga, running from 2002 until 2012, with an anime running from 2006 until 2007. It was written by Oh! Great, otherwise known as Ogure Ito, and is a sci-fi rollerblading manga. It’s extremely horny, violent, and full of incest for reasons unknown to everyone (I’m kidding; Oh! Great probably has an incest kink).

Quick run down for some stuff, expect spoilers for about mid-series here; Air Trecks are the brand of skates in the manga, they’re motorised inlines, though some people do have skate style ones.

Skaters are split up into street gangs, following a particular structure of rules to make their fights “fair”. Each group has a rank, allowing other groups to know how skilled their opponent is. At the highest tier, are the “Keepers”, all specified by a style.

There are a group of artificially grown humans, for some reason built to be really good at skating. There were many before them, but the most successful children banded together to fight the scientists and escape. The group became known as “Gravity Children”. In this group were two sets of twins; Kilik and Simca, and Sora and Sora Takeuchi (one taking on the nickname of “Nike”).

Sora Takeuchi (not Nike) was the original Wind Keeper and member of Sleeping Forest, however, he retired after an incident left him wheelchair-bound. He comes across as childish and perverted, despite being in a relationship with Rika. Around Chapter 150, Nike returns and teams up with Sora in their plan to usurp the other Gravity Children. He believes in the potential of humanity, turning on his kin, but primarily wants to be the true ruler of the sky. Anyway, he cut off his own legs and replaced them with inlines. He still uses the wheelchair, but he cut off his own legs for inlines because that’s what manga is about.

Kilik is the Stone Keeper, and true leader of Sleeping Forest. Kilik fell into the role of leader upon their escape into society and despite his excellent precision, he's somewhat naive. Like Sora, he has a strong belief in regular humans, but their views clash over their opinions of the Gravity Children.

Kilik is the gravity child that Sora was closest with during his time in Sleeping Forest. Despite Sora’s childishness and backtalk, when Kilik gave an order, Sora followed it without question as a sign of his trust in him. He was the only person Sora would truly accept as his equal, to the extent of Rika’s jealousy of their relationship.

Speaking of Rika, Rika is a normal human that got into air trecks and Sora’s girlfriend. She was the first human allowed into Sleeping Forest as a Keeper, brought in on Sora’s recommendation without him telling Kilik they were dating. Kilik ended up walking in on them together and learning the truth and left without saying anything. Sora’s relationship with Rika started to cause a rift between them.

A year later, Kilik learns there’s been a number of deaths related to Air Trecks, and starts to make connections between the deaths and Sora’s secret plan. In response, well…

NOW HEAR ME OUT. I KNOW THAT’S NOT MY SHIP AND THEY’RE KISSING BUT TRUST ME ON THIS BECAUSE MY BRAIN IS MASSIVE. Many people are going to tell me that Kilik was crushing on Rika and I’m not gonna say that’s an invalid read but CONSIDER!

Consider that Kilik is first of all, kissing her here because he feels betrayed by Sora and like it’s all he can do to take something back from him.

But why do I say that he might not be crushing on Rika? The answer is in chapter 330.

Now, Oh! Great has the subtlety of a hammer through your skull and for some reason, most random comments in Air Gear are true. If a character calls another character a gay slur, they’re always correct, even if there’s no reason for them to know this. So if Sora says Kilik hates Rika, it would suggest that he has some reason to believe Kilik hated her. I POSIT TO YOU, AUDIENCE! THAT SORA BELIEVES KILIK WAS IN LOVE WITH HIM. BECAUSE ANOTHER COMMENT IN THE SAME CHAPTER?

Kilik watched them fuck, Kilik was there to see the cock, I’m right and I should say it. Kilik both knew Sora was a horrible person and wanted him, despite knowing they would never align.

That’s the main of canon between them so let’s go off on random tid bits that were thrown throughout.

You know what insurance companies love? When some guy comes in to take out life insurance for a guy he has no connection to. Wait… no they don’t why would they ever do that? That’s not safe, anyone could be making money off my death if that was allowed! But Kilik took out life insurance for Sora so, the bare minimum security, he’d have to be his…

Quite frankly, if you’re offered 300 million yen when someone dies, you’d probably be damn in love with them to not kill them on the spot holy fuck.

Quick introduction, this is the new Wind Keeper, Ikki, he’s the protag of the manga or smth who cares.

Kilik’s type is apparently Sky Keepers it seems :) Probably cause Ikki actually has a lot in common with Sora. His bias is showing. Seriously, there’s nothing not romantic about saying they get into your heart, Kilik. That’s gay.

And they have their extra special combo move that only they can do together (I don’t care, this shit is always romantic).

Major Spoilers for Chapter 333 Onwards

Anyway, so in 333, we get this lovely shot.

And like, what’s more homoerotic than this? Holding your ex-bestie’s severed head on your crotch? Now that’s some homoeroticism we can get behind!

And, of course, as Sora falls back down to Earth…

He gets to see Kilik, one last time. There’s been a lot of focus on Kilik’s feelings throughout this because of how Sora is as a character. He’s so big, but we have this final moment of him and everything disappears as he remembers Kilik.

”Hey that guy just cut off the other guy’s head what the fuck!”

Yeah, Chief, that’s the homoeroticism, it makes it better.

But really, this isn’t one of those ships that is made up of fluffy romance, but it’s still filled with love between the two. They were never going to work, even if Kilik wanted them to. Sora’s sights were always above himself and even with Rika he was planning to use her. Only by crashing back down to Earth with his wings clipped would Sora ever be a person who could truly be with others. In another world, Kilik would have been there to catch him and would have welcomed him back because despite his better judgement, he always cared about Sora.

Kilik had always been the ground to Sora’s sky. When Sora flew too high, it was Kilik that had to try and pull him back down. When he falls, Kilik grounds him once more. While he spent his life treating this as being held back, it was what he needed. He needed the anti-thesis to him to make him a better person and to not fucking destroy humanity in skate Hell. Removing him from his life was always a mistake, and one he was too short-sighted to see.

I love my angst. I love the hurt between them and how they are so close but held back by their egos. A load of possibilities or things that may have happened but not meant as much as they could have.

Kilik just reads like the jilted lover. They were dating and Kilik was like yeah we’re exclusive why do you ask while everyone is looking past him to where Sora is making out with Rika. There’s a reason Kilik was always the last to know what was going on with those two.

Air Gear is fully translated and available for Kindle and other digital reading formats. The anime never got far into the story, so most of what I’ve discussed here isn’t in it, and I believe it is out of print.

Fandom has since gone fairly quiet as the manga has been over for a decade (oof) but you can always find the remnants of the works that came before us, even if you wont find much active interest. However, since this is a manga exclusive ship, there’s less interest for it than there are for ships involving characters in the anime.