Series Review – Long Riders!

Long Riders! (hereafter referred to without the exclamation point) is a series which follows first year university student Kurata Ami as she becomes interested in cycling and embarks on a number of cycling-related activities with her friends. I wrote up episodic posts for the series which you can find here, so you can see my views on the series in more detail if you were interested.

As the typical ‘protagonist who has no hobbies or strong passions prior to the commencement of the series’, Ami sees someone riding a cute folding bike one day and decides to take up cycling. Together with her childhood friend Aoi, and new friends Hinako, Yayoi, and Saki, she transforms from a beginner into an experienced cyclist, participating in different activities and also building friendships. Long Riders is packed with cute cycling and cute food, two things which I find enjoyable.

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Piacevole 05 – Sangria

Hello everyone and sorry for the lack of posts last week. We’ve been having a run of extremely hot weather, which makes me feel really ill and exhausted and makes it hard to write. I’m going to have to see if I can be a bit more proactive about scheduling posts if I want to keep up a reasonable rate of content on my blog until summer is over (and as it’s Australia, sometimes very hot weather can run well into March). I’m hoping to get some thoughts on the final episodes of Long Riders as well as some overall thoughts on the series posted this week, although this is a bit dependent on the weather.

This episode is a continuation of the events of the previous episode, where Sara talks about how much she dislikes Italian food. Morina asks about the differences between Italian and Japanese food and is told that both types of cuisines were developed using the different locally available ingredients in order for people to have a healthy lifestyle. I think that this is slightly odd because as an Australian we barely use natively available ingredients at all, but I also think it rings true. While it’s fairly easy these days to get all kinds of different foods, regional cuisine was just meals made with the sorts of ingredients that were available to people locally.

Piacevole 04 – Spring Roll Caponata

In this episode, the staff of Festa are thrown into a panic because of an important customer; Teiri Niza. He is the owner of a high-class Japanese restaurant but likes to come to Festa to eat sometimes. It seems like owing to the easy-going way the restaurant is run, Morina wasn’t aware of his coming or his importance until she arrives at work that day, but she gets caught up in the bustle.

Piacevole 03 – Tiramisu

This week, Morina talks to a man who she sees in the restaurant frequently, but it turns out that this man, Oreki Ei is actually the dessert chef for Festa. I’m not sure why he wasn’t introduced earlier, but it seems like the Festa is an unconventional business in many senses, and if Ei isn’t in the kitchen when Morina is working, it is possible that they may have not been introduced. He’s shown to be fond of spending time with ladies and that’s why he likes being in charge of desserts; he can prepare his dishes for the day and then spend time interacting with the customers.

Piacevole 02 – Penne Arrabbiata

It seems like a little time must have passed since the last episode since Morina appears to have settled into her job somewhat. The episode opens with Morina studying some information about the different cuts of meat which can be obtained from a pig. It seems that she’s trying to learn as much as she can about food preparation in order to do her job better.

Piacevole 01 – Iberico Ham

I’m thinking that my episodic posts for this show will generally be late in the week as the show airs mid-week, but I was waiting to check out all the shows I was interested in to see what I was excited about and would like to write about. So my episode 2 post will probably out later this week! Or it might not, there is a major heat wave where I live at present and it makes it quite hard for me to blog. If my posts disappear, they’ve probably evaporated into some kind of weird heat haze.

In this episode, we meet Nanase Morina a high school student who is looking for a summer job when she stumbles across the help wanted sign at the Trattoria Festa. She’s taken with the restaurant as it’s cute and close to home so she decides to apply.

Long Riders 10 – Finishing what you start

This week’s episode is a continuation of the Azumi Autumn Ride. Because the girls have been told that they’re running close to the time limit, Ami is really worried that they’re not going to be able to make it in time so she won’t be able to officially finish the event, but fortunately Hinako has a plan.

Long Riders 09- The Azumi Autumn Munch

This episode’s official title (not just the dumb ones I make up each week) is ‘The Azumi Autumn Ride Part 1’, so it’s obvious the girls are not going to finish their ride this week. It also means that the last episode that will be aired at this time will be the conclusion of the ride, as the final two episodes are going to be DVD only.

The episode begins with Ami ending up separated from the rest of the group because the riders are being started in small batches. I think that this sort of thing happening is pretty improbable; usually in events like this, or anywhere else where there’s people allowed to do something in small batches (e.g. theme parks), the staff will take groups into consideration and maybe ask if the other girls wanted to stay back for the next group and let a few riders from a smaller group go in front. They’re all wearing the same custom jersey and everything, it’s pretty clear they’re part of a group or team! Even if for some reason the rules were really strict like this, why didn’t a more experienced cyclist offer to drop behind in Ami’s place because they could easily catch up? Hinako, is this part of your weird hazing that I suspect that you’re carrying on? It just feels like weird soap-opera level drama injection.

Long Riders 08 – Ride on!

At the start of the episode, we’re introduced to the mysterious new girl in the OP, Saeki. She spotted Ami riding her bike and is curious about it. We don’t really know anything about her except that she is in one of Ami’s classes (what is Ami studying anyway?), and is a little interested in cycling. Hopefully she doesn’t make Ami’s mistake of buying a cheap folding bike as a starter if she’s going to get serious about cycling. Maybe in the future we’ll get to see Saeki make beginners mistakes and Ami can teach her about them? This seems par for the course for this show.

Long Riders 07 – Care and Curry

After briefly showing Ami ordering new jerseys, the episode starts out with Ami giving her bike a clean. Things don’t exactly go as planned with Ami getting a drenching (it’s pretty much like when I wash the car, some of us probably shouldn’t be given hose responsibilities).