10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Grande Road - Episode 7

Yowamushi Pedal - Grande Road - Episode 7



Imaizumi and Shinkai catch their leaders, while the peloton catches most of the rest. Hiroshima breaks away from the pack leaving Onoda isolated from his teammates.

Heh.

As I expected, Machimiya rode that peloton until it caught the leaders' teams, and threw it away like a used water bottle. Also expected were the useful idiots in the pack who couldn't believe that Machimiya was just a con man.

Hiroshima is all together, but Sohoku, Hakone, and Kyoto are split up.

Kinjou tried to tell his juniors how bad the last day would be, but they didn't start believing it until they were actually in it.



That's right Imaizumi. Shinkai is going to attack you until you get to the finish line. And Onoda, you might never see your teammates again.

Makishima gave Onoda a great lesson about motivation, though. Onoda wants to ride with his friends, and started to feel lonely and disappointed that he might not. Makishima told him to feel that with all his might, because that extra motivation just might let him get everyone back together again. He's going to need to remember that after getting swallowed up by the peloton and being left behind.

I liked that Onoda was able to have a nice chat with Toudou, but all the fujoshi want to see their OTP having their moments.



J-just where are you putting your hand, Manami-kun?

I thought it was interesting that the two youngest climbers could feel the charged air of the galloping peloton before the other riders got their early warning systems blaring at them. Arakita sniffed them out, Izumida got a warning from his pectoral named Frank, and Tadokoro and Makishima just knew it was over.



So dramatic!

It was disappointing to note that the last time Sohoku might be together was at their team meeting the night before.



Nobody knows better than Kinjou how your best plans can fall apart on the last day, so the point he wanted to drive home was that if you have to leave your teammate behind, take his resolve to win with you. We saw that with how sad Tadokoro was to leave Onoda behind. Don't worry Tadokorocchi. I doubt very much that's the last time you'll see Onoda on the road on that last day of the race.

After Hiroshima broke away from the peloton, we saw that Sohoku and Hakone had their aces and helpers still up the road. Midousuji was hanging with them, and his helper was in between the remnants of Sohoku and Hakone. Hiroshima was in the gap between those guys and the peloton. In the peloton, we had the rest of Kyoto (if they managed to grab the tail of the pack), Onoda, Arakita, and Manami. I think that's a big enough group to do some damage on the big climb of the day.

Cycling Porn.



We've got some good pedaling action by the leaders and their helpers, good paceline management between Sohoku and Hakone, another mangled brand logo, and a breakaway taking advantage of disorganization.

We've all seen the bikes of Hakone and Sohoku before, but it has been a while since we last saw Izumida's BH. Hiroshima is riding Cannondale. A new altered logo was worn by Kinjou, sporting a Bontrager t-shirt. Bontrager has changed their logo in recent years, from the older capital B to a fresher lower case b.  Kinjou's t-shirt looks like a combination of both styles using an upper case B.

Hiroshima broke away from the peloton at the right time. One could argue that they could have kept the peloton whipped up until they caught the front, but there's too many risks involved with that. Whenever a large pack swallows up a smaller pack, there's a small window of hesitation as the larger group incorporates the riders. If it's just one or two, there's barely any pause as those individual riders are shoved over to the side. Because they caught 8 guys, and 5 of them stayed ahead, the guys at the front of the peloton hesitated as they figured out if they actually captured everybody and gave the slower guys space to pass through.

In the pro races, you always see some opportunists make their way up to the front as they near the breakaway so they can attack the peloton during that window of hesitation. Hiroshima did it right in choosing this moment, because if they had caught the front, that would have meant having to attack 50 guys for the finish line, instead of taking their chances of 6 against 9 up the road. Without a patron in the peloton keeping those Japanese kids organized, the pace of this particular pack would surely slow. That wouldn't happen in the pros when you have 3 or 4 motivated teams paying attention.