OverDrive Episode 1 Review
Episode Summary
We start off with a brief history of the bike race called the Tour de France, then a reporter tells us that a Japanese person is in first place of that race at this very moment - it’s Shinozaki Mikoto.
Flashback to before he became a bicyclist, and we learn that Shinozaki Mikoto is clumsy and a bit of a dorky pushover when we see that he has trouble riding a motor scooter and has been sent by a group of guys to buy them all lunch. He ends up eating lunch by himself afterwards and reflects that though he is in high school now, he doesn’t really know anything about what he should do.
He stays after class to work on a painting of the girl he likes, Fukuzawa Yuki, when she walks into the room. After some awkward conversation she figures out he likes her, and puts him off by saying that she has a boyfriend in college with a car, though she is stretched out on his desk while she’s saying this. She tells him that rumor has it she likes more than one guy at a time, and if he changed himself a little she’d think about dating him.
As she’s about to walk off, Shinozaki gets the courage to ask if she would model for a painting. She agrees and while he’s painting her, he gets really caught up in the moment, painting wildly and standing on the desk. She’s amazed at his seriousness and his expression reminds her of someone named Yousuke. She ends up throwing the painting out the window because he drew her in a bikini.
Before she leaves, Yuki asks Shinozaki if he wants to join the bicycling club. He has no idea what she’s talking about, but then follows her out to a shed where she wheels out a bicycle. She starts saying all these things about how it’s a passionate heart that makes you a good rider, trying to convince him to join the club. Embarrassed, he tells her he can’t ride a bike and runs away.
That night, after waking up from a strange dream in which he was riding a bike perfectly and Yuki was riding on the back of it in a bikini, he gets up and goes to the school even though it’s still dark out. There he finds the bike, and for some reason it looks a lot more appealing to his eyes than it did before.
Characters
Shinozaki Makoto
Mikoto is definitely too clumsy for his own good. He thinks he isn’t good at anything but he isn’t so bad at painting and almost seems to overcome his clumsy shyness when he becomes passionate about something. It sort of reminds me of the Kenshin/Battousai switch. It’s only a matter of time before his self esteem rises some. His crush on Yuki is cute, and I’d be surprised if he could ever spend time with her properly in serious-mode and win her over.
Fukuzawa Yuki
Yuki seems like she’s sort of, well, a bitch. However, even though she blatantly puts off Mikoto and still teases him afterwards, she does blush when she realizes he likes her and when he draws her in a bikini, showing she isn’t truly a man-manipulator type. She’ll probably soften up on him as days go by, but something probably happened to her to make her seem a little mean, and she’ll have to overcome that eventually.
Storyline Thoughts
Storyline…meh, I don’t know how long I can stick with it on storyline alone. Then again I said the same thing about Initial D. That makes two racing anime for me so far, and I don’t even care about real racing. I’m interested in what sort of shape Mikoto’s path will follow and how much of an influence Yuki will have on him, though. And, why she wants random people to join the bicycling club to begin with.
Final Verdict
This makes the cut into my 6 episode test. Like I said i don’t know how long I can stick with it, but if there’s enough character development happening and they manage to make the actual racing interesting like in Initial D, it’ll probably pass the test - though still not on a priority watching schedule like some of the others.
