10 Second Anime - Yowamushi Pedal - Glory Line - Episode 17

Manami and Onoda hope to race each other in the mountains, but Midousuji and Kumamoto's team have different plans.

Line.17 - "Start of the Mountains"

Heh.

Yay! Flashback to race planning, just like at Makishima's house. This time, we're at Kouga's house.

Lots of jokes from Onoda and Kaburagi about never having been in a tall apartment building before.

Aoyagi already knows he'll have to watch over Special K during the race.

Kouga is a good guy. Once the team leadership was decided after the training camp, he's all in for the team like he was last year.

Nice camera. Everything in this show looks like it's at least 4 years behind current tech. Except for some of the smartphones and the computer screens. Windows 10...

Well, if Kouga rode the whole course by himself, it's almost plausible he would know where Kaburagi ended up when he bonked. Almost...

Watching Kouga's video, very similar to watching my boring videos on YouTube, is also like Tadokoro showing video of a marathon so the team could see the road before they actually rode it.

Asking for personal goals in a race is just asking for personality jokes. Onoda is just happy to be there.

Oh, but he does have a wish - to race Manami in the mountains on the 2nd day. Their King of the Mountain race while Toudou watched was snowed out, so Toudou couldn't give away his title. They all knew they would have to wait for the 2nd stage of the Inter-High Race for a real match.

And now, today is that day!

Ha. Onoda is going to conserve his energy with all of his might! How's that work, exactly? Doesn't matter! He's got orders!

Teshima is using Onoda's goal as motivation for the team to reach the front. He's kind of like Midousuji in having a plan, but improvising along to the way to maximize his chances.

It's working. Imaizumi is starting to get his mojo back as Onoda gets fired up to be as lazy as possible. It's a skill!

Manami knows Onoda is coming. He's getting excited. Kuroda doesn't like that, since Hakone's plan is to rest Manami today for fireworks tomorrow. Manami don't care. He's got a bro date!

Kuroda tries bargaining. He'll let him go if Sohoku catches up and if Midousuji doesn't attack.

Welp. Midousuji attacked.

Midousuji respects Manami, though. He'll still try a mind trick to see if there's a weakness. Nah, brah. Manami has totally gone the Toudou route. Individual wins and losses don't matter. He and Onoda are only in the middle of their rivalry. There's lots of fun racing left to go to see who "wins." Even Midousuji accepts that door is closed. Breaking Manami on this climb will be hard.

We've got some foreshadowing. Midousuji tells his ground fodder that he needs the attack to work now, not later. He has "reasons."

Ah. Those cheers were not for Sohoku rejoining the front. Kumamoto was still in the mix. Maybe this is why Midousuji wanted to go? To beat those guys before they reached the front group? Well, he didn't expect them to actually break out of the peloton, but they did it.

It's not Sohoku and Onoda. Manami hardest hit.

Midousuji is like Teshima (see above). He didn't want to have to attack two teams on the climb, but maybe he can play them off each other and sneak away. I'll talk about this a little bit in the next section.

Izumida saw the sneak attack, but can they react in time?

Nice storytelling here. We go back to Sohoku to see them catch what they think is the front, but it's a shattered Kumamoto. Ise and his climber are not there, so there was massive fireworks with Midousuji's move. Onoda's new orders to win the mountain sprint look pretty difficult to follow now.

Hee. Kouga still goes on about his pizza in the omake. Aoyagi knows how to compromise. Curry Pizza!

And we have Junta having some tea time in the end card.

Cycling Porn.

Cameras are smaller than that these days. We've actually got some good shots of the bikes from all the teams. All you have to know for Kyoto is that Midousuji rides De Rosa and everyone else rides Anchor.

Now, let's talk attacking tactics. What Midousuji did is textbook racing. Whenever groups get back together, there's always some confusion and hesitation about who gets placed where in the bunch, which means the cycling rhythm gets broken up. If someone breaks away during this time, there will be some looking around to see who's supposed to work for what, but the timing has to be just at the right moment for maximum hesitation. World Champion Peter Sagan won this year's Paris-Roubaix this way at the 51 km to go mark when his elite group brought back a two-man escape group. He attacked, almost in slow motion, as others looked around to see who's job it was to cover his move, and by the time they got organized, he had gained a 30 second lead, connected with the main breakaway of the day, and rode that group all the way to finish line, ahead of the rest by 57 seconds. This is one of the rare moments Yowapeda gets a racing situation correct.