10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Glory Line - Episode 9

Aoyagi falls back to help a struggling Kaburagi rejoin their teammates.

Line.09 - "Sash of Wishes"

Eh?!

I'm not often surprised by shounen sports anime, but the cliffhanger for this week's episode...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And again AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I knew that Aoyagi at some point was going to pull out the Orangeena God's Memo Notes, but what he had written on them... I literally LOL'ed.

Meh.

Okay, I get that we had to put Kouga into the story to get Kaburagi going again, but it's way too much to expect him to show up right where Special K stopped on the road. The course is miles long and the odds that Kouga would climb the hill and then pick the right direction on the road to meet up with a stopped rider... It would take a special kind of suspension of disbelief to accept this. Well, Kaburagi is a special kind of idiot, so I guess we have to roll with it.

Heh.

Aoyagi is determined to pick up the idiot he forgot.

Teshima can't argue with Aoyagi when he says Sohoku is strongest when all six are together. It's the ultimate Sohoku trump card.

The title of the episode bothered me because in America we don't have any kind of cultural context that would give a "Sash of Wishes" any kind of heavy meaning. After looking it up, the "sash" (タスキ tasuki) is the cord that lets people tie up the sleeves on their kimono to get some manual work done. Tying these cords or sashes to someone else must have a Japanese context I'm missing, but it appears to have some importance.

Teshima is throwing out all sorts of death flags for Aoyagi, but you know they're false flags. Why? Because true death flags only come out of the mouths of the people about to die. Doing it for someone else makes you expect a miraculous comeback. Them's the shounen manga rules. Don't blame me for pointing it out.

All that matters is that Aoyagi and Teshima shook hands with their paired gloves. "Certain victory" will surely happen since Onoda isn't racing against them, but with them.

Aoyagi gave Onoda an order. Welp, that's done then. Get to Naruko and Imaizumi before Hakone reaches the front. Judging from the title of next week's episode, Yuuto Shinkai is going to see the full force of the smiling climb.

Yuuto thinks Sohoku burned up another rider. He's wrong, but Manami and Izumida aren't going to disabuse him of his opinion. We'll save that for next episode.

Kouga did warn Teshima about a first year taking on too much pressure, so he got obsessed with his worst case scenario. But shouldn't people have learned to take care of people who collapse after the race?

Har. Special K says pushing is wrong. According to the Yowapeda universe, as long you're a rider in the race, you can push on someone as long as you like. It's not true, but the fujoshi need to see boys hugging each other on the road, so...

How about we stop with the visualization exercises and give the guy a gel or two? Sheesh.

Ha. Special K perked up when his ego got stroked about having the most potential. The flip side of that is you're actually not using your talent and if you have the most potential on the team, that means you suck the most too. Let's leave that last part out...

Whoops. Here comes the peloton. Last year, Onoda and Tadokoro didn't have to fight through the peloton because it had already broken up on the first long climb of the day. It looks like they're combining Onoda's first day with Tadokoro's bonked second day.

Kaburagi's super power is psychological projection, apparently. He's a special kind of idiot alright.

Aoyagi is going to use his big lungs to climb. Supersonic Oxygen Muscle Climb!

And no he's not, because Special K thinks Aoyagi is the struggling rider who needs to get pulled back to the front. Special K Baka Power is strong!

Nice. Let's have the peloton brag on Sohoku for a while instead of Teshima feeding Onoda bad news with his seven bad reasons Kaburagi will not come back to the front.

Sohoku is now famous for being strongest in the face of adversity. Duh. THE NATIONAL CHAMPION OF JAPAN came back from almost being swept up by the broom wagon to winning the whole damn race.

Smug dude is smug. He called it. Sohoku will come back and you won't believe how. That's just how Sohoku rolls.

Yes! The God of Orangeena is about to speak.

Teshima says Aoyagi will need to prepare something special to escape the peloton. Here it comes!

I-is he saying Hime?

AH! Aoyagi says it's the words to a certain song! AH! It's Love Hime! They're going to break out of the peloton by singing Love Hime! Tadokoro knows! And Aoyagi listens!

I can't wait for next week! AH!

Cycling Porn.

This week, we got some loving looks at Special K's Felt, Aoyagi's Corratec, a random sprinter's Cervelo, some sparking clipping in, some misconceptions about bonking, and some peloton etiquette.

First, a word about bonking, or having a "no day." It's not that the pedals feel heavy. It's that you feel weak. That's an actual distinction. During a bad day on the bike, your body has decided to spend its glycogen stores on recovery instead of exertion. Pros call this "feeling blocked." They just can't pull strength out of their muscles. To keep riding, the body needs to have glucose in the bloodstream, so you need to keep eating gels and drinking mix to at least spin the legs. Eventually, the body will release the glycogen because the increased metabolism will signal that there is no rest and recovery happening. Until then, it's very frustrating feeling empty, having your joints tingle, and sweating from being on the verge of hypoglycemic shock. Special K should have been drinking powder and sucking gels the entire time.

Now, it's interesting to see how the riders part for Aoyagi and Kaburagi. This is coming from acknowledgment of their strength from catching them from behind as well their team's placing in the overall. There's no point in blocking them to keep them from rejoining the front. Bonking is like having a mechanical. It's only polite to let a rider regain his position with his own strength. It also means they're not going to help them go any faster. They can reach the front of their pack, but they'll also need to be strong enough to sustain a pace to break away from them and make it stick.

Next time, will we see Aoyagi and Special K do anime karaoke on the road? Or will we rejoin Teshima and Onoda to put the younger Shinkai some knowledge on what 180 rpm looks like while someone is smiling?