10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 10

Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 10

Actual club activities. Some introductions. Anime style skills and power-ups. Hot dudes talking to each other. Yup, it's a sports anime.

After the drama of the Welcome Race, we've got some actual slice of life high school comedy mixed in with sports anime activities. Fun! Naruko has to console himself with losing to Imaizumi by shouting at the ocean. Onoda is sore from head to toe. Ask-me-anything Sugimoto's head got a little bigger by finishing third in the race. Imaizumi and Naruko are training in secret because they saw just how close in talent the other is. Unfortunately, they apparently share a brain, because they've chosen the same route, distance, and time of day to get their training in before school. They're going to see each other eventually.

In this phase of a sports club anime, we need to see who the other club members are, their special abilities, and how our main characters need to improve before they can join the larger world of high school tournaments, or at least races, in this case. The ones with the most potential, our big three, get special attention from the seniors in their own specializations. Tadokoro wants to gauge Naruko, Kinjou checks out Imaizumi, and Makishima shepherds Onoda. We'll get a few episodes concentrating on each of these guys, but Onoda and Makishima will get the most attention, since otakus want to see other otakus in action. Needless to say, Makishima and Onoda don't really have much to talk about before they start the steep climb on their practice route, and that was some of the most awkward attempts at conversation I've seen in a while. Plus, with Onoda not being very sociable himself with strangers, it was good comedy.

Now that we're spending a little more time off the bike, I can see why the fujoshi are going crazy over this show. We get lines like, "Don't hold back," and masculine "leaning" into conversations, plus the hero poses the dudes like to show on their bikes. Successful media inspires many, er, kinds of imagination.

Cycling porn this week: more brands and crazy pedaling style.

We've got a Corratec, another Cannondale, and Makishima is rocking a Time. Literally. Since this is a Japanese show, all the techniques have to have names, and the guys need titles too. Makishima's extreme rocking style has earned him the nickname Peak Spider. Also, the Japanese seem to be obsessed with the phrase "dancing on the pedals" (thank you Phil Liggett), and just call climbing out of the saddle "dancing" (ダンシング), so expect to hear that a lot in this show. One thing Makishima tells Onoda is not to copy his style, but to be the best at his own personal style. Since Onoda is short, using the leverage of long limbs won't maximize his body geometry, so his best bet is that super fast cadence. I'm short too, so when I climb out of the saddle, my bike hardly sways side to side, so what I've had to master is shifting my weight forward over the handlebars, and then shift it back over the saddle to deal with changes in gradient and to rest those thigh muscle groups doing the pushing down on the pedal. So that's a different rocking, front to back, instead of side to side, which keeps my short legs on a high cadence when I'm "dantsingu."