BEHOLD THE CYCLING ANIME YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED: YOWAMUSHI PEDAL. I’VE WATCHED 100 EPISODES AND A MOVIE AND I’LL NEVER BE THE SAME

Words - James Raison

Welcome to the sheer baffling head-scratching awesomeness of Yowamushi Pedal; a cycling manga, turned a 4-season anime TV series, turned animated movie, turned live action TV series, and soon to be a live action movie due in 2020. It’s a lot to come to grips with so I’m going to focus on the first two seasons and movie because that’s all I could watch on Anime Labs which I subscribed to solely to experience Yowamushi Pedal. Experience is the only appropriate word for it. There’s a lot to cover...

Here’s an tasting plate of what you’ll get during the series to whet your appetite:

A rider conversing with his voiceless but nonetheless communicative pectoral muscles he’s named Andy and Frank. It seems both muscles have individual personalities and help in different situations.
Amazingly accurate renditions of bikes and gear, with very creative skirting around copyright and proper branding. All your favourite brands are there: Specializer, Glant, Scolt, De Rose, Tima, Colmago, Trak, and many others. Many of them are shod with the latest Shimomo Duba Ace groupsets too!
The absolute worst nicknames in the history of sport like: Oxygen Supersonic Muscle Bullet Head and The Snake of the Stony Road.
A sprinter coming to terms with his inability to pass other riders on the left because it brings back the traumatic experience of running over a rabbit.
Plenty of Japanese school girls drawn with uncomfortably short skirts and irresponsibly drawn physiques.
Multiple riders unleashing literal inner demons that turn them into red-eyed and drooling monsters as they battle for the intermediate sprint points.
A rider motivating himself and others by singing lyrics of his favourite anime that finish with the memorable line “Princess I love you, FIGHT!”
One particularly powerful hand massage used as a psychological weapon.
The charging peloton shown as a turbo-charged snake that consumes riders who scream in anguish.
Infinite life lessons and cycling meme potential. It’s hysterical.

THE NARRATIVE… SORT OF

Our main protagonist is Sakamichi Onoda; a friendless nerd with no apparent physical talent who has been accidentally turning himself into a capable cyclist by riding his step-through “Mommy Bike” long distances to buy anime paraphernalia. He starts high school, accidentally gets himself on the radar of the cycling team, and miraculously makes the start list for the “Inter-High” national schools cycling race. Along the way there’s ample hi-jinx, poop jokes, questionable physics, a saxophone heavy soundtrack, and tenuous grasp of cycling strategy.

The first season tracks Onoda’s experience of joining the team, training for, and competing in some the Inter-high across its 38 episodes. Season 2’s 62 episodes (!!!) cover the remaining ⅔ of Inter-High with the final summit finish acting as the crescendo. It’s no small time commitment to get through this avalanche of physically fast-moving but narratively glacial series. That’s right folks I watched all 100, 23-minute episodes to make this article. YOU’RE WELCOME!

Onoda is something of a proxy for the cycling novice audience and we follow his Hero’s Journey from “nerd” to “nerd who can ride a bike well”. The other characters imbue him with cycling wisdom as his abilities progress. It starts with the basics like saddle height, pedalling styles, and gradually advances to learn about equipment, race strategy, and riding tactics. In a few short weeks he goes on a super-condensed Harry Potter-esque journey into the strange road cycling world and turns into a shorter version of Chris Froome. He even has a stem-staring-super-cadence riding style. He finds hidden depths of ability in his desire to help his friends, and infinite inspiration from his favourite anime series “Love Princess”.

Watching as a knowledgeable cycling fan is gut-bustingly funny and face-palmingly ridiculous in equal measure. They’ve clearly got a cycling expert guiding the creative direction but there’s liberal artistic license taken to enhance the drama. Some of the instructions Onoda is given, and the explanations of what road cycling is about, have a base of truth but are explained bafflingly. It’s a true joy watching them explain saddle height, cadence, and how changing gears works.

THE VILLAINS(?)

Yowamushi Pedal is a bog-standard star team versus team of stars setup. Our heroes from Suhoku are your mixed bag of oddballs taking on the powerhouse Hakone Academy who have superior gear and a larger talent pool to dip into. Every Hakone Academy member is an “Ace” whereas the Sohoku squad use their individual nuances to drive strong cycling performances and succeed through the wholesome power of teamwork.

Things rapidly decline into the borderline supernatural and shouldn’t someone be doing something? territory when other schools get involved. Keep in mind, these are children maybe 15-18 years old waging some brutal psychological warfare and treating each other horrendously.

One character, Akira Midousuji, is some kind of Joker-esque agent of chaos. You’ll see him tell an opponent their mother might have died to make them drop out of a race, bully and demean his own team, call everyone “gross”, and gradually unveil his 7-foot-ish physique to dominate climbs and sprints throughout the race.

The drama of real world cycling has nothing on the battles fought between the titans of Japanese high school cycling.

A CYCLING ANIME?

I’ve watched 3 anime series in my lifetime (the others being Neon Genesis Evangelion and Parasite because they were on Netflix) so I’ve got no expertise in the field. I asked a friend/nerd who loves anime and apparently there’s a long history of high school sports glorification as central plots. Such animes can be cultural phenomena among Japanese youth, and Yowamushi Pedal is no different.

I reached out to a Japanese chap I know who works in the cycling industry for some insight on what impact the show had on cycling. It was fascinating.

“There are many people influenced by Yowamushi Pedal and ended up buying high end bike as they want the same as the bikes that are ridden by the characters. Not all, but unfortunately that’s as far as they got as once they started cycling they came to realisation that it’s not easy, it can hurt and you need to move your body (not just sit in a room). Those who continue on tend to be people who have done sports in the past and are used to pushing themselves to reach that satisfaction or sense of achievement. One of my colleagues mentioned that his university friend has a bike with Di2 just left in the shed to rust. Costume play is a big deal in Japan so even if they do not ride they still enjoy having the whole kit including the bike.

In manga there’s levels of achievement within the story as well which you don’t get in real life for most of us. So some people didn’t get the rush they thought they would get.”

SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

It’s a hard question to answer. The giggles come thick and fast as the bizarre interpretation of cycling via Japanese youth-oriented anime bombards you with strange and hilarious moments. The biggest barrier is the show’s interminable pacing. I’ve watched some boring bike races before but the added layer of anime drama and outright hostility to reasonable passage of time makes the show an absolute slog sometimes.

A few hundred metres of a race can fill multiple 20-minute episodes as the characters, at sustained full-effort, have lengthy chats to exchange sassy remarks and try to undermine the other’s confidence. When they pass a 5km to-go sign you better buckle up for several episodes of grunting, sweating, and ever-more ridiculous heightening of drama as characters grapple with various traumas and the show flashes back to personal tales of tragedy and overcoming. You better believe there’s mid-race back stories for everyone as new villains come, are shown to have been wronged in their past which explains their behaviour, fail to achieve their goals, and somewhat slide into the background again.

The movie, by contrast, is much tighter as it contains the race and associated plots into roughly 90 minutes. It’s refreshingly brief but I did feel the charm was reduced with the edges smoothed off the TV series’s bizarreness.

WRAPPING UP

Go on, take a trip into Yowamushi Pedal! I mean, 2020 isn’t serving up a lot of joy so you might as well. You can watch the first two seasons and first movie at Anime Lab which is ostensibly Netflix for Anime. My fingers are crossed that the other seasons come to Anime Lab so I can see more of the gang from Sohoku Academy.

Then again, the live action movie certainly looks like… it’ll be… interesting?