As much as I love Rimba Racer, I can’t help but feel that the pacing can be a problem at times. Earlier in the season, the show spent four episodes dealing with Miles and Tag’s relationship. It felt like it dragged on forever. Yet when the show finally started dealing with the ramifications of Meika’s betrayal, it felt like they were too eager to sweep it under the rug and move on. Sonny’s powerful speech at the end of the previous episode meant nothing. He immediately regretted it in this episode and then Meika simply strolled into his room for a friendly chat and the two of them patched things up. That bugs me. I get that if anybody was going to forgive Meika easily, it would be Sonny, but then why did they waste time making us think Sonny was going to keep his distance from her? This is the first time I have been genuinely disappointed with the show. I can only hope that the remaining six episodes handle the situation with more tact and that the remaining members of the group don’t immediately forgive her in the span of one episode.
That said, it was still a fun episode. There was no race this time, as it was instead a team-based vehicular soccer game a la Rocket League, albeit with a holographic ball that stuck to the top of their cars. It was really nice to see something different, and since Pike elected not to make any moves on the track, the team dynamic legitimately made things interesting as we got to see characters work together who normally wouldn’t work together at all. I enjoyed watching how that entire sequence played out.
The episode ended with hints towards the future, but if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that hints towards the future don’t always pay off. Pike has proven to be terrible at his job, and despite the show trying to make him out to be a genuine threat, I’ve never once felt like he actually is one. Axle and King are now plotting against him and he’s still unaware that Meika botched the job, so his threats come off as extremely hollow. He’s done nothing. The next episode of the season desperately needs to have him make a big move as they can’t afford to put it off any longer.
It’s hard to tell when the next few episodes will air, however, as I was told that post-production work still needed to be done on them in order to get them broadcast ready. Unfortunately, the indiegogo campaign that was supposed to launch a month ago never launched, and while season one was recently picked up by Disney XD’s Southeast Asia network, I don’t know what Glue Studios’ immediate plans are for the show. With any luck, we’ll get the episodes sooner rather than later, but I’d encourage them to take all of the time they need as I want the season to end on a high note. The season has been good so far but there have clearly been missteps and I’m hoping the final six episodes of season two are as good as the final six episodes of season one were.
This episode can be watched on the official Rimba Racer YouTube channel.
