While first year high school student Onoda wants start an anime club, he may find himself becoming a key part of a road racer club instead.
What They Say:
Onoda Sakamichi is a rather timid, anime-loving first-year student at Sohoku High School. Upon entering high school, he tried to join the anime research club, but after meeting Imaizumi Shunsuke, a renowned cyclist since middle school, and Naruko Shoukichi, who swept the Kansai cycling championship, he ended up joining the competitive cycling club. \
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the manga by Wataru Watanabe, Yowamushi Pedal is one of the latest lengthy sports series to debut. The original work is still ongoing in manga form since it began in Weekly Shonen Champion back in 2008 with over thirty volumes in print now and no sign of slowing down. Planned for thirty-nine episodes, Yowamushi Pedal is animated by TMS Entertainment and it hits a lot of familiar marks for a sports series. Every genre has its own particular quirks that it wants to work with and this one is no exception. The difference of course is that this one is about road racing bikes competitively in high school. We’ve seen a lot of different sports series and I love that they can always bring in something new along the way as I can’t recall having seen one in this particular genre before.
Yowamushi Pedal is definitely an ensemble show that works with a few characters more than others while also having a lead character. The primary character is that of Sakamichi Onoda, a first year at Sohoku High School where he has the big dream of starting an anime club since one doesn’t exist. All he wants out of his high school life socially is to have friends with similar interests and he’s a solid anime fan, though not one that comes across creepily at least as there’s only one show that he really talks about. Onoda is your typical small type with glasses with a seemingly eternally happy expression about him that makes him come across well, but you can see the social problems that he’ll have, especially considering what kind of club he wants to run. His main goal at start is to gain new members so they can run it, something he thinks about a lot on his regular bicycle rides to Akihabara, which is a good distance away.
While riding there in itself is an unusual thing, what really separates him is that he uses what they call a mommy bike, a bike that’s primarily used by women who are doing about-town kind of chores and the like. That doesn’t exactly add to his reputation either, especially when it comes to some of the other students that ride road racers themselves. While we get introduced to Onoda, we also get introduced to Shunsuke Imaizumi, a road racer that has been competitively racing for years and is looking to make the team at Sohoku and participate in the upcoming Inter-High competition. Imaizumi has his own issues that we get a few slivers of over the course of the first thirteen episodes as we see what kind of dark child he was that only felt alive when he was racing on his bike. He’s a serious guy who takes it all very seriously, but he’s not a cruel or mean person, even if it is easy to see how he could be perceived that way.
Not surprisingly, the two cross paths and there’s a certain kind of tension that comes from it. While Imaizumi is definitely one of the best of the best up and coming racers out there, he’s shocked when he first encounters Onoda and discovers what kind of bike he has and the absolutely terrible way he handles the thing. But what’s even more shocking is that Onoda is able to do things that he can’t quite understand, which stems from the way he’s spent so much time bicycling to Akihabara for special sales and more. It’s not so much that he’s built up any particularly strong kinds of muscles, but he has a certain innate ability that lends him to the sport, even while using a mommy bike. So Imaizumi challenges him to a race in order to try and understand how he rides since he wants to know how it happened and that leads to some comical but good moments that really lets us in on both of these young men. Over the first three episodes it really does make it very accessible to the basics and allows us to connect with both of them really well.
Because of how the two spend time together, it does segue nicely into Imaizumi suggesting that Onoda try out for the school team, which has strong riders in the second and third years. What helps is that while Onoda wants to do the anime club, he’s also realizing that he’s not likely to get the members right now and that when he was racing against Imaizumi, he found himself truly loving it in a way that he hadn’t experienced before. A good part of it was just in how he was making a friend, but it’s the kind of expansiveness that helps to open his eyes. A similar experience comes before the start of the club introductions as he meets another first year racer named Shokichi Naruko, a Kansai native that’s transferred here who has a hill climbing speciality about him and a need to prove himself. Which is really no different from most others on the team with their competitive natures. He’s a fiery redhead who is quite friendly and manages to hit it off well with both Imaizumi and Onoda, though he also sees them both as competition that can help spur him on to new levels.
The racing club itself is something that is taken seriously since it’s a small club overall, especially compared to some of the slicker ones at other schools where the road racing club is the main draw, but it has a solid team of serious young men that are looking to make their final year at Sohoku count. Familiar territory but it works well as we see all the first years coming in and getting to know the club as they get ready to shake them down and see what they’re capable of. This is where the show really starts to move forward in a good way, even if it takes several episodes. Having both Imaizumi and Naruko understanding that Onoda is a real natural at it definitely helps make it clear to at least the team captain that there is something there, but there’s the problem of Onoda only having his mommy bike. That makes the welcome/assessment race that the first years participate in really difficult since out of the six applicants, only a couple of them will make it to the first string team to compete at the Inter-High.
Yowamushi Pedal spends its first thirteen episodes going through these kinds of challenges, largely with Onoda’s point of view but also the others commenting along the way, and we see how he discovers road racing as a real passion. He has the natural talents and basics, but everyone is able to start drawing it out of him without him quite realizing it. This is more where the supporting cast comes in as we see one of the girls that he sort of likes, but is hard pressed to really understand that he does, named Kanzaki is looking to help him because she likes him in a generally friendly way. Luckily, Kanzaki has known Imaizumi for years and her family runs a bike shop in town, which ends up being quite useful as she orchestrates a way for him to get a real road racer during the big assessment test. Having a 40 km race over different terrain is difficult, but more so on a mommy bike. But we see how Onoda deals with that adversity and his first experiences with a road racing bike, which opens up the world even more to him in a way that he could never have imagined.
Add in some training camp material and small bits of exploration of some of the third years with what they’re facing when it comes to the upcoming Inter-High. That starts to bring in a bit more of the other teams out there as we get to see tidbits of them and what they’re capable of, but more so about their personalities. It’s all a part of what will be coming in the next arc with the Inter-High itself. But it’s nicely seeded early on here, even in the first episode when it comes to a rival of Imaizumi’s that we don’t even see till about ten episodes later, so it’s not something that comes out of the blue. Providing this kind of background in small ways along the way helps to make it feel more realized and full rather than just plot point and then showing it. And because everyone gets their small seeds as it goes on, it doesn’t make a particular episode focsed on a single character but rather keeps to the whole ensemble aspect.
In Summary:
Before the series began, I was amused by some of the promos but the animation didn’t reach out and grab me and the story was something that I figured would be fairly predictable. This isn’t high art, though it works for what it does here, and the show hits a number of familiar sports tropes along the way along with structural elements, but it’s also done with a lot of polish that really makes it work. I’ve seen a lot of sports shows over the years so there’s plenty familiar material here, but it’s well paced and the fact that it does it more as an ensemble show definitely helps it a lot. It also doesn’t linger too long on things as it works through the various challenges that are faced. Some of it may feel a touch drawn out, but it’s helped by some solid characters that leaves me wanting to see more of where they’ll go and what they’re capable of it. Yowamushi Pedal surprised me and definitely does the school competitive sports side right.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.