10 Second Anime - Minami Kamakura Koukou Joshi Jitensha-bu - Episode 4

The girls ask Mori-sensei to be their club's advisor. The swim team captain Hiroko challenges Hiromi over Natsumi's membership.

Episode 4 - "I Won't Let You Take Natsumi-chan!"

Heh.

I'll just spoil you right now because this is cute girls doing cute things slice of life anime: nobody is a bad guy and there is no real drama bad enough to cause hurt feelings and grudges. Everybody will become friends but hard edges to personalities are just fodder for jokes and plot set-up for those jokes. So relax. Natsumi was never going anywhere and the swim team is not the mean girls club.

Club Recruitment.

Man, these girls go for the hard sell! They should be selling gym memberships...

The first thing the girls decided to do was get Mori as their cycling club advisor. Makes sense. But wow, they were gung-ho. Balloons, confetti, a huge sign just for Mori-sensei and Natsumi's Okinawa gourmet cooking. How could she say no?

I've watched two all girl cycling anime so far and each of them have turned into Koufuku Graffiti for a little bit each episode.

Teachers are required to advise a club too, just like the students are required to join a club.

Hiromi is the typical genki girl who eats rice so fast she leaves some all over her face.

So, now they have a cycling club, what kind of cycling club do they want? Racing, touring or "pottering?" To potter is how the Brits say putter as in putter around. It will always be fascinating to me which English words the Japanese will appropriate for their hobbies.

Competitive Hiroko.

What I found funny about this hill climbing contest (which was just like Yowamushi Pedal's 3rd episode) was that there ended up being no stakes involved. Hiroko just said that she wasn't going to make it easy for the cycling club to take Natsumi. Going up a hill without ever having ridden a road bike is definitely not easy. So, that was it. It was just a little mischievous revenge on the swim team captain's part.

I liked how the low bike seat on Hiromi's mamachari (mommy bike) turned into a key plot point. Even better was how Hiroko countered it by sitting on the rear rack to get fuller leg extension and power. She really is competitive.

Hiroko knew she had to give all these handicaps to Hiromi because she saw her practicing riding a bike in the parking lot on the first day of school. Embarrassing!

And then they were all friends by taking in the beautiful ocean view at the top of the hill. That was probably the real goal for Hiroko, anyway.

Hiromi's leggings can't hide those beautiful legs of hers. Nicely toned without even being some kind of an athlete. Well, genki girls use up a lot of energy bouncing around and eating too fast...

Official Cycling Club...?

Yay! Tomoe's little sister formally introduced herself to Hiromi. I'm looking forward to Grandma showing up now too.

Look at those uniforms. Pink! Hearts! Angel wings! They're like an official club now.

Except not. At least according to the epilogue cliffhanger. I can guess that they need 5 members to start a new club and this is how blond foreigner girl will finally join the show. I always get a kick at how mangled English-speaking accents sound in anime, so I'd like to be surprised at real sounding English. It's only happened once in all my anime watching that I heard an actual American accent saying English words. It was in Shugo Chara, of all shows, with its English language prologue. Let's see what Minakama gives us.

Cycling Porn.

This week we saw lots of Natsumi's Cannondale and Hiromi's Bridgestone cruiser, the index shifter and brake lever, Shimano clipless pedals versus flat, how proper seat height maximizes leg power and jersey designs.

They showed Mori-sensei finish installing flat pedals on Natsumi's cranks while holding an allen-wrench set, but she would have needed a crank arm wrench which can be pretty big. Maybe she was finishing up adjusting the seat post on that Cannondale, which would only need an allen wrench.

Shifting and pedaling and diagrams. This is totally feminine Yowamushi Pedal! I'm really impressed with Hiroko: climbing a hill in Crocs. That's someone strong and without a sense of shame.

The omake had the voice actresses getting way more excited than I've seen them before choosing "must-buy" accessories like a smartphone case and a cycle "computer." That rearview mirror thing is pretty kitschy, though. 

Next time, Tomoe and Fuyune buy bikes from a cat-eared girl. The alpaca character was already used up with one of the cycle bros. Oh, and they need to get that blondie to fill up the club roster.

These guest artists really like including the train with the cycling girls. Whoa, Natsumi!

10 Second Anime - Minami Kamakura Koukou Joshi Jitensha-bu - Episode 3

The girls take a tour of the student clubs at school and discover the old cycling club's headquarters.

Episode 3 - "Let's Start a Girls' Cycling Club!"

Heh.

There wasn't as much cycling on screen as the first two episodes, but we had to see the Girl's Cycling Club get started at some point and it was a good device to see new students visit other clubs. This was definitely more in the vein of the cute-girls-do-cute-things slice-of-life than a bicycle procedural.

Hey, any excuse to get girls into swimsuits is a good excuse.

Hiromi trotted out another English word, "Gorgeous!" to describe the indoor pool facility. It certainly was and they certainly were!

I cringed at Hiromi scraping her toe on the pool bottom. That little cloud of blood was done pretty well.

Hiromi remembered how to swim as well as she remembered how to ride a bike...

Of course the tan girl Natsumi is an excellent swimmer. And of course a tan Japanese girl is from Okinawa.

Judging from the preview card, Natsumi is going to be the first kind of light drama this show will have. Cycling Club and Swimming Club Fight!

Ha! The first thing Hiromi asked Natsumi was about champloo, which is Okinawa stir-fry meaning "blend."

Fuyune was at the Nurse's Office being a crybaby over her soreness. Natsumi called her "dainty" for having to give up on such a short ride to Enoshima Island.

As an athletic tan girl swimmer, Natsumi should know how to deal with cramps.

The first hint that Fuyune may be a "special" student was how the nurse called her Fuyune-chan instead of by her family name. When we met the principal at the old cycling clubhouse, it became clear why: she's the principal's granddaughter! Everyone is connected to each other somehow through Minami Kamakura High School.

Ah. That wasn't a dead old lady. She just fell asleep with headphones on. It looks like Fuyune has had to deal with this kind of thing before.

And now we get the title of the show through the Girls' Cycling Club revival.

Yes, Hiromi. Bicycles have been around longer than 40 years... The modern bicycle, using two wheels with rubber tires of the same size, came into being in 1885. Before then, velocipedes of different designs using pedal power had been around since 1817.

Principal Kamikura reminisced well about the "Touring Boom" of the 1970's before everything in Japan was paved over, bullet trains were developed and planes flew around all the different islands.

Fuyune actually had a deeper reason for taking pictures around Kamakura with her butler than messing around with her camera. Her wheelchair bound older sister wants her to find a view she got to with her own two feet. That's why Fuyune muttered to herself that a bicycle counts as under the power of her own feet.

How convenient. The new Cycling Club already has a huge clubhouse with a kitchen and retro furniture.

Interesting that Principal Kamikura gave the clubhouse key to Hiromi instead of Fuyune. I suppose everyone knows who the main character is supposed to be...

Cycling Porn.

There wasn't much riding around this week as the girls visited other clubs, but we did get a flashback to Fuyune cramping out of a short bike ride and struggling to climb stairs. Principal Kamikura's pictures of her high school days showed off the touring bike, aka randonneuring bike.

A randonneur in French means "hiker," which was borrowed for the long distance riding events known as randonées. If you've been following my Long Riders! posts, you would be familiar with the event those college girls want to do called a Brevet. That's short for Brevet des Randonneur, which literally means Hikers Certificate, but amongst cyclists means you've successfully ridden a randonnée of at least 200 kms under a certain time limit.

We can see how much bikes have changed from the 1970's when even the steel touring bikes of today are much lighter. I doubt very much the new Girls' Cycling Club is going to be doing a randonée on their carbon bikes, which they haven't bought yet, but we'll see what kind of club they make of themselves.

The live action omake talked about buying helmets and gloves. Cycle bro made the important point that the proper fit of a helmet has the front of the helmet resting right above a cyclist's brow. I also wear a stylish cap most of the time to keep my forehead from getting helmet tan lines. Caps not hats, for cyclists!

When I first started riding, I wore padded gloves all the time. They're usually called attack gloves, because you only wear them in racing conditions where you might fall. Otherwise, I don't wear gloves at all anymore. Cycle bro's advice was good for beginners to take.

As for long fingered gloves, I only wear them when it's really cold or raining. I have some thick ones for almost freezing conditions and neoprene ones for the rain. Neoprene is what divers' wetsuits are made out of, so what keeps the hands warm is the thin layer of sweat that develops between the skin and the glove. Kind of gross if you think about it too closely, but it really works. It's not good enough for colder than 40° F, however. That's when you need to use thick gloves with a waterproof hard shell.

Uh oh. The swimming club president, not the "Light Swimming Club" president, looks like she's going to fight hard to keep Natsumi away from the Cycling Club.

The End Card shows Tomoe and Hiromi riding their Liv and Anchor bikes they haven't bought yet. Man, they better buy those bikes pretty soon...

10 Second Anime - Minami Kamakura Koukou Joshi Jitensha-bu - Episode 2

Tomoe takes Hiromi and Mori-sensei on a bike tour of Kamakura. They meet new friends and relatives along the way.

Episode 2 - "Go Explore Kamakura"

Heh.

Interesting. All those beautiful scenes in the opening credits were used in this episode. The animators just plunked Hiromi, Tomoe and Mori-Sensei right into them.

Ha! and Heh. The sign outside the bike rental place said "Let's Go To Cycling," which was the same kind of incorrect English used by the artist main character in Over Drive to recruit for his high school's cycling club. Oh, and he used his classmate's extremely fine butt without her permission...

Hmm...

Maybe things haven't changed that much since 2009.

I'm still not used to the Japanese calling a hybrid bike a "cross" bike. I hear "cross" and think "cyclocross."

Yay! Mori-sensei joined the little bike tour too.

I liked how this episode started out as sight-seeing in the town, but it turned into a meeting of new friends and relatives.

Oh man. Mori-sensei is just like a cat. Exercised a little. Ate a little. Nap a little.

One of my favorite things to do on a bike is to get to the front of a long line of stopped cars because of a bike lane. Glorious.

Hee! Hiromi is so cute to throw in the little English she knows. "Let's go!" and "Delicious!"

Mori-sensei is a cat but Hiromi is a puppy. Chasing squirrels, going down strange alleys and getting lost.

Of course. That grandma and little girl had way too many lines not be part of the ongoing supporting cast. And they apparently live above a fancy liquor store. I like them more already.

Alright! Two episodes in and the cycle bros appear. What's the deal with alpaca, though? Long Riders had the bike shop lady saying "-paca" at the end of everything while working at Alpaca Cycling while wearing an alpaca hoodie. Now we have a cycle bro wearing an alpaca jersey saying "-paca" at the end of everything. He even has the same little alpaca smile. Is there some cultural reference I'm missing?

Back in the '90's every café was combined with something. The only combo that took was chain coffee shop with chain book store. I saw video games and café, comic books and café, souvenir shop and café... Man, I would have lived at a Bakery and Bike Shop.

So, who owns Cycle Flat? Nagisa's husband? Father? Nagisa is Mori's little sister, but they're both transplants to Kamakura, just that Nagisa has been there longer. Well, the Cycle Flat shop will be open next week, so hopefully we find out.

Cycle Bros, you're target is a lost high school girl. Go get her! Eh...

New characters from the OP: rich girl Fuyune and tan athletic girl Natsumi. This cycling club is going to be full of newbies instead of the usual slice of life girls sport club we've been seeing recently.

No modesty skirts in this anime. Too bad for Natsumi she's going to be attracting hip touches from curious ojou-samas.

Fuyune is great. "One bike, please!" Hahaha!

Cycling Porn.

We saw some more bike brands this week, like a Miyaba cruiser and Liv Escape Hybrid. The Cycle Bros rode Neil Pryde, Cannondale and... Liv? Liv's frame geometry is specifically designed for women's hips and leg lengths. They're a subsidiary for Giant, but their bikes don't look like Giant's. That's odd that the portly bro would be riding a Liv. Natsumi rides a Cannondale Six.

I would like to see a cycling anime that just ignores the newbie problem of trying to push off in the wrong gear. It happens to me all the time in traffic because I'm pushing a big gear and then I have to stop suddenly. Pretty hard to pull an emergency braking maneuver while down shifting. It's not that big a deal to use your bodyweight on a heavy gear to push off and then quickly shift to an easier cog.

I find it interesting how Japan figures out how to appropriate English. All across the Anglosphere, we call compression shorts with a padded chamois "bike shorts." Just bike shorts. Japan ended up calling them "racer pants." No, Fuyune, not an Olympic style swim suit.

I liked Nagisa's little PSA on getting home safe. I have a similar aphorism for anyone exercising on wheels. "Go Fast. Have Fun. Be Safe. Most important is to Have Fun!"

The Fun Stuff.

Look at Hiromi being all smug at Tomoe needing help to ride a bike. I could look at Mori-Sensei shift gears all day.

Mori and Nagisa don't look a lot alike, but they both know how to shoot cute looks. Also, Nagisa knows how to bribe young men with fresh pastries.

Tomoe's little sister is going to be popular with the doujinshi crowd. Every new bike owner knows exactly what Natsumi is feeling as she looks at Fuyune on her expensive bike. "Oh, I broke something," is not something she wanted to hear.

Cycle Bros are bros. Emphasis on the "bros." Rescue a lost girl for walnut jam rolls? Bros! It also looks like the cycling club is almost complete. We just need that blonde girl who might be a foreigner. Time for Hiromi to try out her Eigo, "Let's Go!"







It's Tomoe's turn for the Preview Card with the bike she hasn't bought yet.







The End Card makes it look like whoever is in the Cosplay club saw Hiromi and her stylish jacket on Tomoe's borrowed bike.