Review: YOWAMUSHI PEDAL

It's once again time for the Summer Olympics, so in turn I'm going to be looking at some sports manga (and in particular those featuring sports you're likely to see at the Olympics), and that includes bike racing.

YOWAMUSHI PEDAL (Yowamushi Pedaru), by Wataru Watanabe.  First published in 2008 and first published in North America in 2015.

PLOT:

Sakamichi Onoda is an otaku who loves nothing more than his regular trips to Akibahara.  It doesn't matter that he lives in the hilly countryside nearly 50km away from the heart of Tokyo - he's happy to bike his way there and back if it lets him save that much more money for another vending machine toy.  Eventually Sakamichi's endurance is noticed by a couple of classmates who are part of the school's biking team.  They eventually convince Sakamichi to give them a chance, but the transition from casual trips to Tokyo on an everyday bike to serious races on sporting models is a rough, even perilous one.

STORY:

For all of the focus on bikes and otaku, Yowamushi Pedal sticks pretty closely to the basics for both shonen manga storytelling and sports manga storytelling.  You've got an underdog protagonist with an unrecognized skillset, a mentor-type person who recognizes and nurtures that talent, a motley crew of teammates and disposable opponents, and a token girl or two to keep the whole thing from turning into a sausage fest.  It's telling that this didn't get published in the US until well after the anime adaptation began, and looking at it now one has to wonder if it would have ever amassed such a fervent fandom from the manga alone.

It certainly helps that Sakamichi is a good-natured (if somewhat lonely and oblivious) dork.  He's definitely a bit of an otaku stereotype, but Watanabe doesn't lean into that so hard as to make Sakamichi irritating.  He definitely works as a good contrast to Imaizumi, who is so serious and obsessed with his performance that it's somewhat frightening, especially for someone who is still in high school.  Honestly, the character I found most endearing was the aforementioned Token Girl Miki.  She's a nice enough girl who is one of the few people willing to reach out to Onoda despite his shyness and awkwardness, but she turns out to be as knowledgeable about professional biking and the technical side of bikes as any of the athletes.  This is normally the type of character who is used like a carrot on a stick for the protagonist and shunted into the role of team manager, so any bit of eccentricity is welcome to help give her some definition as a character.

Of course, most of the focus here is on the racing itself, and I confess that this is where I started to skim the book instead of reading it.  I know that drawn-out, elaborate action sequences full of dramatic twists and turns are just part and parcel of the genre, but after a few pages I find myself yearning for them to wrap up.  It doesn't help that the races we see here becoming increasingly chaotic as we are subjected not just to the internal monologue of the competitors but also the commentary from those on the sidelines.  It didn't take long for me to wish it would just stop so things could calm down and I could actually follow the story again.  Sadly, I know all too well that this is something that's only going to increase in frequency and length as Sakamichi dives deeper into the world of biking and encounters so many more people.

ART:

I've always been kind of surprised that this has such an intense fujoshi fanbase because you couldn't exactly call these characters 'handsome.'  They tend to either be scrawny and angular or oddly melon-headed with weirdly wide-set eyes.  It works with the sort of big facial expressions and intense angles that Watanabe tends to favor, but it does make everyone look at least a little odd.  Those crazy faces and extreme perspectives are at their peak during the bike races, where seemingly every panel is at 200% energy.  Maybe this is why I started skimming those parts - when everything is maximum intensity, it gets exhausting just to read.

RATING:

Yowamushi Pedal just did nothing for me.  It's not badly made in any sense, but everything from the looks to the vibes did nothing to win me over.  It's possible that the anime were able to fix these issues or that some of the ideas and visuals work better in motion, which is why the anime was so successful here while the manga just came and went.

This series is published by Yen Press. This series is ongoing in Japan with 90 volumes available.  48 volumes have been released and are currently in print.