10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - New Generation - Episode 24

Teshima fights as hard as he can to stay close to Manami as they race for the first KOM sprint line.

Ride.24 - "Ride of the Weed"

Heh.

The title of the episode has one of those Japanese puns based on the kanji they used. 走りの雑草 (hashiri no zassou) could (or should) also be translated as "The Weed of the First Harvest." The character for "first harvest" also means "run; ride," so there's the first of those visual puns. The za character in zassou means "miscellaneous," and is part of what Midousuji keeps calling ground fodder with his "zaku" epithet. This phrasing is all just a way to reference Manami calling Teshima a Summer weed, tenacious, but eventually will be harvested with the crop and discarded. Fun with Japanese visual puns!

The whole plot of this episode was to see what's inside the head of an ordinary rider turning himself inside out to stay on pace with a much more talented athlete. These middling riders always crack, but their stories become more compelling the later it happens near a pivotal point in the race. It's not an accident we get a cliffhanger with 400 meters to go before the KOM sprint line.

Here comes one of Manami's super powers: reading the wind and launching when it becomes a tailwind. Teshima knows about it, but it's hard to do something about it when those switchbacks keep coming and he can't cover every single potential move.

I'm kind of disappointed. Manami's wings here are his regular brittle ones that Onoda smashed through last year. I suppose he's saving his other weapons for when he needs them.

I like the musical score during all this racing between Teshima and Manami. It's so frantic and desperate, matching Teshima's mood.

Oh hey, look! Girls! Still cracking myself up.

Heh. Aya actually said, "Geh." She remembered that Manami kid that almost beat Onoda last year.

Manami's superpower is reading tailwinds and launching wings. Teshima says his superpower is pushing himself too hard. We'll see about that!

That's not a good sign. Teshima is starting to fantasize about relaxing after a long day of school. I noticed that his perfect day included getting complimented by a cute girl. Feel that frustration, fujoshi.

Whoa. Teshima almost did what Onoda did at the First-Years' Welcome Race last year and what Naruko did on the last day of the Inter-High last year. But you can only do that after get over the top of something. Don't fall yet!

This show is still using the spectators to explain things. Yeah, Teshima did look like he grayed out there for a second.

We have to touch on Manami's character point on feeling the pain of effort to feel alive. Teshima is still in contrarian banter mode and said he feels like he's already dead.

Oh, we've flashed back to when Onoda left the Sohoku group to catch up with Teshima and Izumida let him go because it was too late anyway. Izumida figured Onoda went up there just to support Teshima to the end of the stage.

Aoyagi explained to Kaburagi that Teshima had to be the one to follow Manami because he was weak. If anyone else went, Hakone would have responded with covering the attack, and Sohoku would still be a man down because Onoda wasn't with them.

I'm beginning to think Teshima is playing an even deeper level of chess because he figured Onoda would catch up to the group too late, but would chase on anyway, but that Izumida would follow the proper rule of calculation and let him go too. Right before the line, it's going to be two against one and Manami is going to lose out! Well, we'll see if that happens. I have some other thoughts about the chain dropping cliffhanger too.

They finally caught that fool who told his teammate to ride another cyclist into the gutter. Loser deserves all he's going to get by being a dishonorable git.

Teshima keeps flying death flags. Can't he win just one result before his high school career is over? Not if you ask that question in a shounen sports anime with 2 km before a finish line...

Teshima was looking for an opening, a slip, a miracle if he could just stick with Manami, and he got one. That's the right place to put a cliffhanger too.

The omake flashed back to the training camp with "ordinary" rider Teshima just completing 1,000 kilometers. But he's so tired, he just wants to stop moving and sleep in his bed. Aoyagi and Koga say he can't be that ordinary if he's done all that distance in a short time. But then it's dinner time and the two sprinter race ahead. I just had to crack up at Aoyagi screaming Teshima's name as if they were about to win a race, when they were just running to eat some food. 

Meh.

What the hell was that?

Dropping a chain in the middle of a bike race at the moment of a hard gear shift is not a rare event. But how Manami dropped his chain looks impossible. The visual shows the classic dropped chain when a rider tries to switch to the smaller chain ring near the pedal cranks from the big one when the chain is at high tension. Basically, the chain is taut line that suddenly gets a lot of slack, whips or snaps itself, and jumps off of the gear teeth. An experienced rider can just shift the front derailleur back to the big ring and let it take up the chain again. Then you change chain rings like you're supposed to do by relaxing the chain a little bit. I've done this going up a hill many times. It's not a big deal.

If that chain jumps over the small ring to land in between the ring and the bottom bracket, well, you'll have to stop and get your hands dirty to put the chain back on. Good luck getting the bike going again on a steep hill. Nothing graceful about it.

But that didn't happen with Manami. He's been in the small chain ring the entire time and has been shifting into faster gears (smaller cogs in the back), and he did it again right before he dropped his chain. That was his right thumb shifting up on a Campagnolo drive train. The chain would not have done this. I can think of one very unlikely scenario to explain what happened here, but none of this was shown. If Manami had hit a big rock or bump at the same moment he index shifted, the chain would be loose in between the cogs and a huge bump at that moment might be enough to jump the slack chain out of the small ring.

The other scenario is that the chain popped one of its links, but didn't break all the way, otherwise you would see part of the chain dragging on the ground.

But, again, the anime showed the chain being in the big ring falling down. Manami was never in the big ring. He also shifted the rear derailleur, not the front one, making a broken chain unlikely. This is all bullshit.

Cycling Porn.

This episode was almost entirely made up of Manami and Teshima riding together, so we got some good long looks (heh) at their Look and Cannondale bikes. You can also see how Manami's chain is in the small chain ring as he pedals and his thumb shifting makes the chain go to a smaller cog in the rear. They'll also never give up that sparking gear change. Teshima almost bit it on a metal grating. It appears the Japanese put those thermal expansion guards on mountain roads in addition to bridges. Teshima also showed why you should be paying attention to your road surface before you make a big acceleration that makes your bike go side to side. Bike tires don't like smooth metal for that kind of maneuver.