10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - New Generation - Episode 20

Aoyagi and Kaburagi fight Doubashi for the first sprint result, with the winner decided by a photo finish.

Ride.20 - "Full Throttle, Kaburagi!"

Heh.

Since this is Yowamushi Pedal, obviously a one kilometer stretch that would take the kids about 90 seconds to cross is going to take 24 minutes. That's sports anime!

Doubashi's thing is breaking zippers so his jersey flaps behind him. It's also good for the fujoshi to look at his wonderful abs.

Doubashi is like the perfect mirror image of Izumida. Izumida zips his jersey up to go fast, while Doubashi yanks his jersey open. Izumida says "Abu!" for emphasis, while Doubashi says, "Bu-a!" Every Superman needs his Bizarro.

Now's the time to let all the weird superpowers out in the open. Aoyagi had a good one! I did not expect him to pump his legs like that!

I thought he was just opening his lungs to get more air, but he was tensing all his core muscles out to let him get more lung capacity. He did the same thing to his thighs to get more blood in there. I'm sure his final form will be everything at once so he can feed extra oxygenated blood to his thighs.

Opening up a sprint at 650 meters is way too early. At least Aoyagi knew that he was doing something against conventions.

Ha! The flashback showed how much the other Sohoku kids appreciated all the wind blocking that Aoyagi's Human Bullet form gives them.

I always get a kick out of how American cultural appropriation gets expressed in Japan. Aoyagi called his "running" form Human Bullet Bambi Style because it's a final sprint to escape predators like a deer would. Like Bambi! Either Doubashi has good ears or he's on the same cultural reference page as Aoyagi to call his running away Bambi style too.

Obviously Aoyagi wasn't going to hold that kind of sprinting for too long, but this is Sohoku sprinting. There's always two!

Nice. Kaburagi was hiding in Doubashi's blind spot made by his flapping jersey. Izumida should slap Doubashi up the side of his head for ripping his jersey open like that. Maybe he should just get a club cut jersey where the zipper doesn't go all the way down. He can rip those zippers off all he wants without the jersey flying away from his sides.

Alright, alright! The "God" of the Orangeena vending machine told him to sprint! That was a nice moment that shows off both Kaburagi's idiocy and Aoyagi's sentimentality.

Oh, so now going to the drops is releasing Kaburagi's pure sprint. It's just a decision on his part to start sprinting. He could start it off by picking his nose if he really wanted to.

I thought for sure Doubashi would lose when they showed him shifting gears without a sparking cog. I guess the spark is just to signal the springtime of youth, or something.

Oh, now we're showing some cat-and-mouse tactics like sprinters are supposed to do. Doubashi couldn't tell if Kaburagi was getting behind him on purpose or not. Kaburagi is stupid... stupid like a fox!

Oh, hey! Girls! Still not getting old.

Doubashi has fans because he sprints fair and square. This is good to see. I thought Izumida was going to make Hakone sneaky like Midousuji made Kyoto. It turns out that the kids' strong personalities just look at things differently. Doubashi is just a brash loud guy who thinks his way is right. That's a pure kind of honesty if you don't take his arguing for his perspective with any malice behind it.

That's kind of meh to introduce Kaburagi's mental image of gears meshing to signify when he's mentally prepared for the win. With Ashikiba, we got a nice backstory about his piano playing to tie in with his Metronome dancing. Kaburagi's answer to Aoyagi about gears doesn't have any meaningful context.

Man, that's some bad karma for Kaburagi to lose to a superior bike throw from Doubashi. He didn't learn the lesson from his close race with Sugimoto for the sixth spot on Sohoku's racing team.

I did like how both sprinters thought they won it. That shows how close it was and how pure sprinters always think they're going to win.

Still using Windows 7 on that laptop.

So, Kaburagi lost. The next episode will probably show Hakone capitalizing on its first moral victory from last year and how Sohoku has to regroup. Coming in second on that sprint starts chipping away at that fluke consensus, though. Just like their reputation, Sohoku is going to leave it to the last second to break that fluke idea.

Har. The omake had Aoyagi considering whether to use a voice to convey "God's" advice, instead of written notes. Thankfully, he resisted.

Cycling Porn.

This week, the only bike brands belong to the three contenders for the first sprint line: Aoyagi's Corratec, Kaburagi's Felt, and Doubashi's Specialized S-Works. We've also got sparking tires instead of gears, which is just wrong in so many ways, Sohoku enjoying Aoyagi's wide slipstream, a detailed look at Shimano shifters mounted on handlebars, and some nice pedaling showing the rear mech and the chain ring from the front fork view.

Next time, Hakone gloats a little, I'm sure. Maybe we'll get to see more of the personality of the younger Shinkai.