10 Second Anime - Long Riders! - Episode 4

Ami wants to buy a road bike on sale and takes on a somewhat embarrassing second job to pay for it.

Episode 4 - "A Secret Part-time Job"

Meh.

The inconsistent animation quality is becoming a major distraction for this cute show. The season is already a week behind after the third episode was delayed and now the 5th episode will also be delayed for a week. I wouldn't mind the delays so much if the studio that made the image on the left below actually redid all the crappy animation the subcontractor on the right did.

That right-hand quality would be okay for background crowd characters, but not for two of the main characters in the center of the screen. At least the CGI bikes aren't messed up.

Heh.

Alright, now we're showing cute girls doing cute things!

Every episode (I was going to say every week, but when episodes are showing up every two weeks, I can't really say that), this show hammers home the point that cycling as a hobby is expensive. Cute girls need to work at cute jobs to pay for that habit, er, hobby.

Hinako and Yayoi seemed to recognize the cycling girl Ami was talking about going up the Shibu Pass.

These girls own a lot of bikes! I figured Yayoi and Hinako did, but then Aoi admitted she had a road bike in addition to the hybrid we see her on all the time.

Ami already works part-time at a family restaurant. I had a feeling her clumsy waitress shtick was going to be important.

Will we ever get the story behind Alpaca Cycle? The salesgirl says "-paca" at the end of every sentence and wears an alpaca hoodie. I guess we have to go with it because it's cute.

Speaking of cute: helloooo cutie waitress Chiharu! Ami has a nice habit of collecting beautiful level-headed friends.

Aoi's facial expression the whole time she was in the shop was one of apology. Like she has to be sorry for dragging Ami into this expensive pastime.

Well, there's the bike that's in the opening credits. I wonder what Ami is going to name this one.

Uh oh. Ami's not the only with a part-time job that she wants to keep secret from her friends.

Oh, Hinako won't take a compliment from her "fans" at her family's Chinese restaurant, but she turns extra shy getting praise from her girlfriends.

I want to see Yayoi work at Hinako's family's restaurant too!

Aoi's imagination went wild trying to picture a job Ami would do that she didn't want to talk about.

Well, there's no way Ami could handle being a self-confident hostess like that, but she had all the moe in the world to be the clumsy blushing maid waitress.

That's a lot of moe-power to make that food taste good, Ami-chuan!

Ha! Her manager encourages her to put on the clumsy maid service.

Cycling Porn.

This time around, we spent a lot of time looking at Ami's future road bike, which is a Focus Culebro with either very old Shimano components or new cheap ones. Also, Ponta-kun got some loving maintenance with a dust rag and lubrication.

Now, how do I know about the components on that bike being old or cheap? The shifters on the handlebars look like the old Shimano Flight Deck design from 12 years ago. Shimano has 5 tiers of quality for their road bike components. From Elite-Pro to beater bike, you have Dura-ace, Ultegra, 105, Tiagra and Sora. Dura-ace for the pros always get the newest design and each year after, that model trickles down the tiers. However Dura-ace looks this upcoming year, Sora will look like that, although with much more plastic and steel, 5 or 6 years later. So, looking at Ami's new bike, it's either got really old model elite-tier components or not-so-old cheaper consumer components. Let's hope they're the old elite stuff so she won't have problems shifting consistently and they'll handle the miles much longer.

Looking at those Shimano components gives me a nostalgic feeling, because the shifters, cranks and brakes have the exact same look as the Ultegra components on my bike when I first bought it almost 13 years ago. Only the handlebars, brakes, wheels and seat post are the same attached to the carbon fiber frame.

What's the difference between all those quality tiers anyway? Basically, it's the materials and the precision machining. The cheaper the component, the more plastic and die-cast steel there is instead of carbon fiber and high precision machined aluminum parts. This allows for mechanisms to be lighter and much more reliable in their operation for much longer.

See you again in two weeks. Hopefully the girls' faces are more (moe) consistent too.