10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Glory Line - Episode 15

Izumida and Komari finish their battle for the intermediate sprint line. Izumida appreciates Shinkai coming to see the race.

Line.15 - "The Sprint Line of Delight"

Hmm.

This isn't really a hmm thought, but more like a yeehaw! We haven't had a good old-fashioned mentor-junior bro-down in such a long time. How could we, when the bigger than life seniors graduated and we had to focus on our current main characters get used to their new roles as the new characters get their character development and revelation?  For Hakone, we got to reminisce a little about the feelings we had at the Farewell Race, the difference being a sense of hope instead of how we're now watching that hope get fulfilled.

Not only that, the bro-downs aren't finished! Shinkai and Fukutomi closed down Izumida's growth arc, but for the next phase of the race, which is a climbing finale, we're going to have Toudou! Ah hahahaha! (points with Toudou laugh). This is good stuff, because we haven't seen anything about how Yuuto Shinkai fits into the team. Manami is the designated Mountain King heir, and he has his harem, er, fans like Toudou does, but what's Yuuto's story? He seems shy about girls, from what we've seen so far.

Throw Onoda into the mix, with Makishima nearby, and we are going to go brotastically brollistic! With Toudou's genuine affection for Onoda too, there's going to be so much brosparkling dust, little Class Rep is going to feel left out more than she does already. At least give her a name already, Manami.

Unfortunately, it's going to take a while for Imaizumi to join the bro-down, because we have to go through his redemption and power-up arc before Kinjou can brofist with all the feels in the world. This should be enough material to take us to the end of the season. They'll leave the last day of the race for the next season, just like last time. I'm looking forward to all this, now that we've paid our dues to the fujoshi and we can have our regular low background noise yaoi subtext. Thank you, Komari. Your sacrifice to the fujoshi narrative was an honorable one. I guess you were just raised that way.

Heh.

Well, crap. That poor little girl got smacked in the head and now there's a bottle in the road. If this happened when Komari and Izumida reached the 100 meter mark, there's no way anyone would have had time to pick that thing up. We'll have to see to see who has to deal with it, but from a narrative perspective, it has to be Izumida.

Well, yeah, Izumida has to deal with the bottle. Duh. This fits in with getting all that guilt off his back from losing against Sohoku because he braked to avoid those cones instead of powering through like Tadokoro and Naruko did.

And he tells Andy and Frank to shut up! He's going to run over that thing. He could have bunny hopped it. It's not like a bidon jumped off somebody's bike and is skittering around. That bottle is just sitting there.

Anyway, he rolled over it. Izumida is going Initial-D on his pedaling action. It's not called drifting on a bike. It's called sliding across the road and washing out a wheel.

I'll talk about this in the Cycling Porn section, but Izumida needs to be a better bike handler.

I liked this flashback, not just because Arakita the Mad Mutterer is in it, but because he offered perspective in his own rough way. Crying is for the graduating losers. The younger guys still have their shot at redemption.

Ha. Andy, Frank, and even Fabian are pretty deferential guys. They only came back to chatter when Izumida called for them. That's another sign of growth from the previous year.

Oh, yeah. That Komari guy is still here. He's got to rave about his field of muscles. Too bad for him, Izumida had a good workout for the line and his muscles got stronger when he wasn't looking. Of course, Izumida shouldn't have gotten stronger until those microtears healed in a couple of days, but it's anime, just roll with it.

Sasuga (流石, as one would expect) Izumida.

Fun. The insert song is the ending song from the second season when Onoda won and became THE NATIONAL CHAMPION OF JAPAN. Izumida isn't a winner yet, just remember that. Brotastic reunion for Shinkai, though.

I'm getting chills. Kapow!

Shinkai knows Izumida got his revenge for Hakone losing both sprint lines against Sohoku and Kyoto Fushimi.

Ha! Some kid said he got chills. Me too!

That's not a kapow. That's just pointing. Well, at least Shinkai threw in a wink.

Oh yeah, that Komari guy is still here. We need to have an intra-episode recap just so he can talk about how he messed up his muscle calculation. He wasn't expecting Izumida to swell so much it exceeded his imagination. Calm down, fujoshi.

And Komari is put back in the bento box. He can't touch muscles if he hasn't won. I like how Izumida appreciates individual aesthetics when he recognizes them. He's pretty calculating too, as if we hadn't noticed.

Fukutomi! And he sums up Izumida's redemption is as few words as possible. Guilt off his back. He's strong. But! The best revelation is that someone else is watching the race, from a different location!

Toudou!

Har. The omake brings back cute Izumida-kun from the first season. So devoted!

Imaizumi takes his turn for the end card.

Cycling Porn.

This week the cycling brands were just the BH and Carerra we've been seeing for last couple of weeks. The barricades still have the usual real life sponsors of Subaru, Pocari Sweat, that cracker company, and the glasses store. I wonder how Pocari Sweat feels about their bottle almost causing a crash. Both guys showed great sprinting form out of the saddle, but Izumida is still the template. Just beautiful. Also, you can always tell a winner and loser at the line by who's looking down and who's looking up.

Now, let's talk about Izumida's fast and furious drifting adventure. Let me go through a couple of scenarios. First of all, most bike wheels would have had no problem going over that bottle. Those thin wheels should have easily blown the cap off the bottle, if there was one on it, flattening the bottle, and running right over it. We saw the bottle get dropped as the little girl was drinking from it, so there was no cap at all. We should have just seen Izumida spray half the water out of it as he went straight over it. There should have been no wheel slipping as we saw in the episode.

This is why cycling water bottles are so dangerous to the peloton. They don't deform very easily, especially when the top is screwed on tight. It's like running over a solid log. That doesn't apply here. Anyway, after Izumida inexplicably lost traction over the bottle, which wouldn't have happened if he just coasted over it for a split second, he got into an almost controlled skid. Again, he should have stopped pedaling, he was carrying a lot of speed anyway, so losing a little to recover and start up his sprint again would have been no problem.

For recovering this kind of skid, he should have put more weight on his front wheel, which still had traction, apply a little counter steer to push the bike up from its leaning position, the back wheel would regain contact with the road (since he wasn't pedaling and it would just be free spinning at that point), and then he could start pedaling again for his sprint. But, hey, drifting on a bike is way more exciting and Japanese!

Next time, Imaizumi gets some perspective knocked into his hard head, hopefully.