In an excerpt for a manga review for the Daily Yomiuri by Hiroshi Hirai, the review is for the title “Yowamushi Pedal”:
Otaku boy Sakamichi Onoda has just entered high school in the Chiba Prefecture suburbs of Tokyo, and he 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.
Although this club is mentioned in the school’s club handbook for freshmen, Onoda learns that it has been disbanded due to a decline in membership. A note on a bulletin board says the club will be reestablished if five members can be recruited, so he starts trying to find out if there are any other students who might join the club.
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. (The word mamachari comes from “mama,” for mom, and “chari,” a slang term meaning bicycle.)
Meanwhile, Shunsuke Imaizumi, another freshman at the high school, has been competing in bicycle road racing and joins the bicycle club.
While Imaizumi is training on a steep hill road behind the school, he sees a boy riding along on a mamachari, singing an anime song. For Imaizumi, pedaling his road racer, it is surprising to see a mamachari also going up such a steep road. The boy on the clunky bike is Onoda, and the sight sticks in Imaizumi’s mind.
A third key player in this manga is Shokichi Naruko, also a freshman and road racing cyclist, who has just moved from the Kansai region. One day, Naruko visits Akihabara, the famous otaku district in Tokyo, to get some Gundam plastic models for his younger brothers. There, he meets an interesting boy who catches his attention because of the boy’s cycling skill on mamachari.
Again, the boy is Onoda. He and Naruko later find out they have entered the same school.