Impression:

There is a time and a place to be different. Do you want to dress in a way that would make fashion critics cringe at a party? Go ahead and do that. Do you want to watch the foreign film rather than the new feature from Marvel? Spend your money on whatever you want. Do you want to use a casual bicycle in a race against road racers? You might want to rethink that one. There is competitive level equipment for a reason. It is just that much better for this particular thing.

The race is on.

The first-years are starting their race and Onoda is at a clear disadvantage. This is not the early part of Initial D and Onoda needs to be on a road racer. Unfortunately, Miki’s brother got stuck in traffic and they couldn’t get a real bicycle to the little guy. He didn’t seem too upset because he thinks that he can continue to race with the others with his current equipment. The difference between this race and the others is the fact that this one isn’t short enough to allow Onoda to go all out for its entirety. One of the other first-years is about to experience the issue with that as he decided to disobey the rules and blaze through the warm up section. After the warm up, everyone passed Onoda because a road racer allows for optimal racing. Onoda pushes it so hard that he messes up his chain. He thinks that the recovery van is there to take him back, but it is actually there to drop off his road racer. Onoda was given five minutes to get ready for the race and he got right to it. The race has only just begun.

Onoda needs to calm the fuck down.

Current Opinion of the Show:

I like this series, but we never seem to get anywhere. I know that we are getting a technical explanation of the difference between road racers and other bicycles, but it just wasn’t doing it for me this time around. Was it my fault for being a bit tired while watching this episode? I am going to say “no” because I wasn’t exhausted and this was obviously a slow episode. The group is only on the second stretch of the race and it feels like this is going to take three more episodes to get resolved. I can see the next episode featuring Onoda passing the unimportant characters and the tennis guy getting picked up by the recovery van. At best, we see Onoda starting to make up ground at the uphill portion of the race. That is where Onoda will catch up and catch the attention of the senior members of the club. Everything else may be resolved in the two episodes after that one if we are lucky.

The animation is starting to get to me.

Are there issues with this series? Of course there are and I think that pacing can be a very obvious issue. I know that I am a broken record at this point, but it is really bugging me. On a side note, that is a pretty old figure of speech at this point in time. How long will it be until people don’t understand what I mea when I talk about broken records? When you think about broken music players nowadays, broken phones and dubstep come to mind. Back to the anime, I think that Onoda is starting to get to me. He needs to stop crying so much. I know that he cares a lot, but being frustrated and breaking down twice an episode are two completely different things. I am going to get a bunch of people who point out the character development down the road when he no longer does that, but I have a problem with a protagonist starting this far down in the composure department. Oh well, the short stuff with Imaizumi and the anime life at the end of episodes will always lift my spirits.

Onoda tries really hard.