10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Grande Road - Episode 8

Yowamushi Pedal - Grande Road - Episode 8



Onoda, Arakita, and Manami regroup to chase down Hiroshima, even passing their own teammates along the way.

Heh.

This is one of my favorite episodes so far of both seasons of Yowamushi Pedal! Not only do we have Onoda showing off his awkward, yet brave, negotiating skills along with his super chase ability, but we have the Mad Mutterer Arakita complaining about everything! Throw in Manami revealing his other skill in the furious chase, when we've only seen him on a tailwind climbing attack, and we've got an all the way cool reprise of these characters' stories with some added wrinkles as foreshadowing for the later parts of the stage.

Arakita saw some similarities between Onoda and Fukutomi, because they're both otaku. オタク　(otaku) has come to mean geek or nerd, but actually just means enthusiast. Whereas Onoda is the modern definition of geek or nerd who is an enthusiast of niche animated and cartoon media, Fukutomi is the old school enthusiast, except his hobby is cycling. So immersed in cycling is he, that people can barely understand him, which we've seen with Izumida thinking Fukutomi wanted him to quit the team, and Arakita just trusting his judgment when he told him to lead Manami back to the front if he gets separated.

Manami is so fast on his initial attack that his teammates have to warn him on causing gaps if they're trying to follow him. Fukutomi must see potential in him to be a future ace with a punishing kick, and not just a climber.

Manami has seen the fast cadence machine before, but having a strong leadout man like Arakita get impressed by a skinny little kid was great. Manami even warned him, "Oh, he can pedal much faster than this." It was like when Onoda asked Tadokoro if it was okay if they could start passing guys when they were trying to rejoin their teammates on the second stage. "Is it okay if we pass that guy?" Ha! I still love that scene. This episode we got the, "Is it okay if I go as hard as I can?"

The two younger riders may have some big engines in little bodies, but they don't have a leadout man's pure strength or Arakita's handling skills.



We saw Onoda's special chase mode and then we saw Arakita's extra hard lean. Manami showed us something new with his fast launch and wind blocking skills, but I guess we only get to see his wings on a climb.

With Arakita sniffing out Onoda's change in "smell" when he went into chase mode, I'm glad Onoda didn't say anything about Manami's "nice smell." I'm sure the fujoshi are disappointed...

I also liked how Arakita was able to notice the difference in motivation for Onoda's chase compared to his. Onoda's chase is to join his friends. Arakita's chase is like a wolf needing to devour his prey. And Arakita's prey is the look of despair on a rider he just caught, like Machimiya's.



That was a neat turn of events, but not totally unexpected, to see Arakita's group catch their teammates before Hiroshima. The other guys had been pulling since the start of the race, while Hiroshima was riding protected in the peloton. At least the other riders in the peloton quickly realized they had been conned, but they no longer had a strong personality in there to keep them organized.

More surprising to Onoda was when they just kept going and passed right by them. Anything goes on the last stage of the race.

Onoda is part of Arakita's pack now. You can tell, because he's calling him Onoda-chan. Who knew that he even knew his name?

In the little omake at the end of the episode, we saw that Fukutomi and Kinjou weren't the only ones Machimiya stole "stars" from.



The fujoshi got some relief with Manami talking all quiet to Onoda, but no "nice smell" comments to finish them off. Well, Izumida getting molested should be a good consolation prize.

Cycling Porn.



We got to see Arakita shooting through small gaps in the peloton, some good looks at Onoda's chromoly, Arakita's borrowed Bianchi and Manami's gleaming Look. We saw Onoda having to get into the drops to be in the proper position for a breakaway group. And we saw some sparking as Arakita leaned over so far his pedals were scraping the ground.

You may see that he's nowhere near as low to the ground as Midousuji was on that final turn into the second stage's finale. The difference here is that Arakita was still pedaling, while Midousuji was coasting and made sure the pedal facing the ground was in the top position.