Image from: http://myanimelist.net/anime/18179/Yowamushi_Pedal
Name: Yowamushi Pedal 弱虫ペダル
Sequel: Yowamushi Pedal: Grande Road
Side-Story: Yowamushi Pedal: Special Ride
Status: Completed
Episode: 38 + 24 (grande road)
Release Date (for eng subs): -
Summary:
Otaku Sakamichi Onoda has just entered high school and plans to join the anime club. In middle school, Onoda didn’t have any friends with whom he could talk about anime, games, Akihabara and other otaku things, and he is hoping he can make such friends in the anime club, but he finds out it's been disbanded. In order to reestablish the club he tries to find 4 other people who would like to join.
Since he was a little boy, Onoda has ridden his mamachari—a bulky bicycle with a step-through frame mainly used for short rides, such as for casual fun or to pick up groceries—to go to Akihabara every week to check out or buy otaku things. Fellow freshman Shunsuke Imaizumi and bicyclist, while training, notices a boy (Onoda) riding his mamchari up a steep road.
Freshman and road racing cyclist, Shokichi Naruko visits Akihabara to get some Gundam plastic models for his younger brothers and meets Onoda who catches his attention because of the his cycling skill on the mamachari and later find out they go to the same school. Later on, both Naruko and Imaizumi try to convince him to join the bicycle racing club, but will he?
Personal Ratings: 3.5
Idea: 4 / 5
Yes, sports animes are really mainstream and cliche in the anime world, but I have never come across a cycling sports anime. But I guess the recent trend for bikes and wheels have been increasing, thus giving birth to this anime and manga.
The starting of this anime was pretty unique - unlike a lot of other sports anime out there - yet there is still that little bit of cliché in it. It’s a very intense sports anime, but at the same time it incorporates that slice of life genre into the anime.
Overall, when I compare this anime with other sports anime out there, it follows the cliché path down to the little details, yet adding in other elements into the anime to help it go that one step further.
Execution:
Development: 4.5 / 5
This anime slowly introduces the sports cycling to the viewers. Unlike most sports anime; like baseball, soccer, tennis, etc. Cycling, in Japan (and maybe some other countries), is not known as a sport, but more of a mode of transport. So introducing cycling as a sport from the point of view of a normal typical high school Japanese student, who – like many others – uses a bicycle as a typical mode of transport, and slowly explaining to us the difference between the two, really guides the viewers along. Many other sports anime out there lack this thorough explanation, simply because they just assume that viewers already know the rules of the game because it’s so popular. But this foundation actually sets a firm ground for the understanding of the whole anime. Competitions, and basically anytime they cycle on a road racer, are made even more captivating just by this.
This anime has a slow build up, and takes each stage and each step in chronological order. Partly due to cycling’s competition nature, which allows them to do this. They are able to take a step into the different stages of training, and then into the competition itself. In most sports anime, there are a lot of times where competition (matches) and trainings are alternate. However, because cycling only has that one competition, at allows the anime to have that chronological progress.
Emotions: 2.5 / 5
I guess the emotional part for this anime is quite ok. There were parts where u feel the hype and the tension of the characters, but I feel that it still pales in comparison to the better emotional sports anime out there like Ace of Diamonds and Haiykuu. I think that there were many parts which could have had better expressiveness.
Especially the emotional scenes during the race. I think the main reason why they don't have that emotional impact is because of the pace of the anime and the tension of the characters. The pace of the anime is kept fairly constant, which causes viewers to lose their focus on the anime. The tension of the characters are kept relatively the same, and mainly follows the cliche paths from the mainstream style. So, viewers are already expecting whats to come next, thus the level of emotion goes down.
Planning: 2.5 / 5
Of course, like any other sports anime out there, there is that lack of the flow of proper logic throughout the whole race. Things like stamina didn’t really add up at the end of the race, and each race was a close match, despite all the huge problems and large gaps.
For the first sprinting checkpoint in the first stage, I really didn’t think that they should make Izumida that strong - after all beating Tadokoro despite not being the best sprinter doesn’t make sense as to how anyone else could have beat Shinkai.
Then there is this thing with Midousuji. Logically speaking, he should have been just a little better than Imaizumi, judging from their past races results. But in the race the whole time, Midousuji was like some kind of god - he never get tired despite having race by himself in many checkpoints.
For the enemies in the race is also another problem. Apart from Midousuji, I do not believe that there isn’t any other contestant who are not able to compete with Hakogakou. Certainly there would be other good school from the past contest that had a close match with the campaigns - like the mystery school that won 2nd the last competition.
I did think that the sudden competition with Hiroshima was quite sudden. It felt like they were such an unknown school with no screen time before that, and all of a sudden they appear and disrupt the whole match at the beginning of the 3rd day. I hope that in the 3rd season of this anime, they would appear again.
Main Character Development: 3 / 5
In my eyes, there wasn't really much character development for Onoda, mainly because there isn't much change since the first episode. The only thing that changed was not his personality, but his cycling knowledge.
Of course, along the way there were some development and slight changes due to the situation and the other club member’s words. I feel that even the other side characters has more development than him. But I’m looking forward to the next season, where I hope they would show us more development in his character.
The development for each character doesn’t follow any order; but it being in a random order makes it a lot more exciting and unexpected. Though I did feel that there was some inconsistent development of characters. They seem to only wait to the character’s episode before developing their characters, but I feel that the constant build up of development would be a lot more suitable for this anime - especially for the characters that matter. Most of the characters are pretty much unheard or go unnoticed for most of the anime before they actually decided to use them a section of the race - e.g. Shinkai. But in the end I still felt that they did make it the right choice to select certain characters to develop along the way.
I realised that in this anime, each and everyone of the characters have their own phrase which they always say. It can be a double edge sword; having them do this really reinforce their personalities, and make it easier for the viewers to understand each character within a short period of time, especially for such sports anime which many different characters. Of course seeing it for the first time, it didn’t really felt like such a huge fault, but after watching it for the second time, I realised that doing such thing can really make the anime a little stale - it becomes boring, because there is very little in depth development of the characters.
Side Character Development: 3 / 5
Their characters were really created well. Each and everyone of them have that charm point, but I did feel that the main characters lacked more in comparison to Hakogakou, which is really ironic. Like how Manami has his beautiful glass wings, etc.
Hakogakou - to me - was much better team than the main team. I really didn’t like how they kept introducing new “problems” with occur within the team. And it didn’t make sense for them to win despite all those problems which they occurred in the race.
I did feel that Hakogakou overall stood out a lot more because of the amazing storyline and development behind it. The main characters just pales in comparison. Especially because Hakogakou’s developments occurs during the race and not before, makes it a lot more impactful.
While I did feel that Manami was a character created just for Onoda, I really like the competition between the two of them at the end of the anime.
As for Midousuji’s character. I did think that they picked the right timing to develop his story. Just when the viewers are getting annoyed with his personality and tactics, suddenly dropping a really touching story about him just really makes it unexpected. But I did think that it had more potential to move people more. Especially about the bike (I noticed it’s the same bike that he first bought).
Seiyuu: 4 / 4
I think one of the best choices for this anime was Naruko's voice actor - Fukushima Jun, Manami's voice actor - Yonaga Tsubasa and Midousuji Akira - Yusa Kouji.
I've known Yonaga and Yusa from many other roles they play in, and I was already loving Yonaga's voice a lot. But yet again in this anime, he surprises me with his voice acting skills. I've never really heard Yonaga use his lower voice in voice acting throughout the whole show. And his voice just matches Manami so well, that it was so natural. Many of the times while I was watching the anime, I find myself getting more and more captivated by Manami because of Yonaga's voice.
Yusa-san on the other hand, I thought I was already very familiar with his voice, because he has a very unique voice, and you can easily identify him. But I've honestly never come across Yusa-san voice acting a psychological character - and a pretty crazy one at that. It was totally different, and it didn't cross my mind that Yusa-san was the one voice acting Midousuji. A very good job indeed; I really love how he was able to portray that level of craziness and creepiness from Midousuji.
Fukushima Jun, on another hand was some one that I didn't know before this. He hasn't really played many roles yet, but he is definitely a natural Naruko. His accent was also pretty clean and powerful.
Art Ratings: 4.5
Anime art is definitely a lot nicer than the manga art for this series. Overall the character's body types and proportions are kept more to the realistic side.
I liked how there is a mixture of different types of character design for this anime. There is the mainstream anime boys design - Onoda, Naruko, Manami, etc. And then there is also the more funky looking characters - Makishima, Toudou, etc.
I can see that for certain scenes they use a 3D (or motion, whichever you call it) animation and most of the scenes in their usual normal format. Like I always say, I really don't like it when they mix the two types of animation together, because there is an obvious difference between the two of them when you mix when together. But for this, the 3D was really kept the the minimum, and there wasn't really much they could do when they want to show the detailed cycling motion.
Recommended for:
Gender: Male & Female
Age: 13 and above
My Ratings: PG
