10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 24

Yowamushi Pedal - Episode 24

Kinjou and Fukutomi have a manly conversation. Tadokoro and Naruko make Izumida nervous enough to get serious.

After Manami came back through the pack to say hi to Onoda, it's Fukutomi's turn to come back and talk to Kinjou, giving your subwoofer a workout. Deep voices, deep. Fukutomi wants to reassure Kinjou that he'll atone for his sins from last year by beating him straight up, with the strongest team he could assemble. Kinjou only smiles, and gives his shoulder a squeeze, and lets Fukutomi know that he has no intention of losing either. Men. Manly men. Fujoshi swoon... Speaking of fujoshi swoon:

"Nice body", he says. Okay, now stop swooning, fujoshi. We get a little backstory on Izumida as a sprinter, and it was Fukutomi himself who told him there was no more work for him to do on the bike. One of his upperclassmen tells him that's quite chatty for the captain, but points out he didn't tell him to quit, explaining that everyone has their own way of being fast on the bike, and Izumida needs to find his. So he hits upon working out. Now this is true for a road cyclist, that if you don't have a strong core (abs, lower back, glutes, dorsals), you can't be fast no matter how big your legs are. Your core is the fulcrum that all the levers of your cycling body push against. And this is how Izumida became a muscled machine, even naming his pecs Andy and Frank. I hope he's not naming them after the Schleck brothers, because those skinny, tall guys make for terrible sprinting role models. Unless, he uses his chest muscles to help him climb, I don't know what to tell you. If this were an American show, he would have named them Hanz und Franz, here to pump... him up. Ah well, at least they talk to him through spasms to let him know when to get serious.

He has to get serious to get to the checkpoint first because Tadokoro and Naruko change the atmosphere of the sprint when they both realize they don't have a plan to beat him, so, like pure bakas, they decide to just beat him. Heh. They both have their own ways of being fast on the bike. For Naruko, he knows how to fight the wind, so he starts getting himself aero. He chucks his water bottles (don't look, old man Tadokoro!), tucks his spiky hair into his helmet, and his jersey into his shorts (that wouldn't work if they wore bibs), and says he wasn't called the Rocketman of Naniwa for nothing. Tadokoro then shows us why he's called the Human Bullet Train, because a man that large shouldn't be that fast. He draws in a huge breath of air, and claims his lung capacity is about twice the average. This means he can go longer on pure power than most. Sprinters usually uncork their all-out power at about 300 meters, but Tadokoro is unleashing it at the 700 meter mark.

I understand they need to draw this stuff out in an anime to hit the end of the winter season on a climax, but this sprint should have been over last week. Our Sohoku sprinters attack each other, passing Izumida, and he's happy that he gets to be serious so early. He zips up his jersey and prepares to catch them from the perfect sprinter's position. I hope that's done next week, even if they take a whole episode to cover it. In a sprint, even though it's over in about 30 seconds (they're usually going about 60 kph, which means they cover 100 meters in 6 seconds), so much happens, you can only really appreciate it in slow-motion replay. So, I'm okay with drawing it out.
I'm curious to see what Andy and Frank have to say when they're all covered up.

This week's cycling porn features food, form, and pedaling.

We've got a close-up of Calorie Mate's stamina bar and jelly, we've got a tight shot of a compact peloton, we've got Izumida in the full-on sprinter's hump, and we've got Naruko tossing his bottles to lighten his load. The sprinter's hump, head down, out of the saddle, hands on the drops, is the position that turns your entire body into a clenched muscle. You need strong shoulders, strong grip, strong abs, and strong glutes to keep accelerating in that position. It's also very dangerous, so don't do this on a busy street for very long.