10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 11

Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 11

Sports club anime strategy. Rivals more alike than they want to admit. Competitors introduced.

If I could sit behind a big dude like Tadokoro, I wouldn't have to worry about working hard to stay in the Human Bullet Train. We're starting to see how famous the Big Three seniors from Sohoku high school really are. They use just 3 members at a qualifying race to hide how big their actual team will be, and to hide the strength of the new members from the scouts. That's just sports club anime strategy 101. Unfortunately for the seniors, the Big Three 2.0 in Imaizumi, Naruko, and Onoda are just as bike crazy as they are. Skipping school just to see them race, and also forming their own Human Bullet Train to carry Onoda who had only brought is mommy bike to school that day. I like those little reflections the storytellers throw in there.

Imaizumi and Naruko are also making a running gag by saying the same things at the same time, and making Onoda smile about it. That's some good camaraderie forming too. At the race, a normal 10 lap circuit criterium, the Big Three 2.0 see the Big Three unleashed. They got a taste of their power in practice the day before, but to see them working in actual race conditions gets them excited to practice harder.

After the race, Kinjou explains why they didn't tell the youngsters about the race: they have 2 months before the actual race, they only needed the three they brought to win the qualifier, and they wanted to hide the new guys from the scouts. I think Kinjou likes have three aces in his back pocket instead of just one or two. He also doesn't lack for confidence, like telling the other team when they passed them on the last lap, "you've got a well-organized team; I look forward to next year." Then, boom, gone.

Talking about the scouts is a good way of introducing the other teams our heroes will be facing. And it looks like the trick of using only their seniors is enough to fool them initially. But they've got two months, and there's only so many places around their prefecture that a cycling team can find good roads to train on, so there will be some discoveries made before the big race. Besides, Sohoku has to do their own scouting, so that's another avenue in getting to know the high school rivals.

Our cycling porn for this week has some bike brands and scenes from tent city:

In the race we saw a Bianchi and a BH. I had a devil of a time trying to figure out that BH brand. The script was DH, but it could have been a GT or a Cervelo series R or P, but after I saw the decals for the Basque brand, and how it got placed on the top tube as well, it could be no other. And tent city had all your usual stuff you see at bike races with sponsor tents, food and drink stalls, and cyclists warming up and getting their gear ready. I still can't understand why the Kanzaki shop put a rear derailleur on Onoda's single gear mommy-bike, except as a chain lengthener to handle the double crank.

Naruko said that he and Tadokoro did their practice loop 10 times, but somehow it felt like it was more than that.