Why Shunsuke Imaizumi Couldn’t Ignore Sakamichi Onoda

Spoiler scope: This essay discusses Yowamushi Pedal season 1, episodes 1–3, including the rear gate slope race. It does not discuss later race results or major character developments.

Shunsuke Imaizumi’s first real reaction to Sakamichi Onoda is not admiration. It is disbelief.

That makes sense. Imaizumi has trained seriously, rides a proper road bike, understands technique, and carries himself like someone who expects effort to produce a readable result. Then Onoda passes through his field of vision on an ordinary mommy bike, climbing Sohoku’s brutally steep rear gate slope while singing an anime song.

Onoda looks completely wrong for what he is doing. That is exactly why Imaizumi cannot leave him alone.

I do not think their first meeting shows Imaizumi becoming warm all at once. He is still proud, sharp, and much more interested in testing Onoda than befriending him. But Onoda puts the first crack in his cool certainty. Before Imaizumi can care about him, he has to look at him properly—and once he does, he cannot reduce him to a strange little boy on the wrong bicycle again.

Onoda does not fit Imaizumi’s calculation

Imaizumi’s confidence is built on knowledge. He has the equipment, the technique, and the discipline. He practices because he wants to win, and he knows enough about cycling to judge what another rider should be capable of.

Onoda should be easy to judge.

He is small, awkward, and riding a heavy city bicycle that has no business moving quickly up that slope. He is not wearing cycling gear. He is not even treating the climb like training. He is humming to himself on the way to school.

And yet he climbs.

The contradiction hits Imaizumi immediately. Onoda’s appearance says beginner; his movement says something else. Imaizumi is too knowledgeable to miss the evidence and too competitive to shrug it off.

My slightly mean shorthand for Imaizumi here is a hothouse flower. Not because he is weak or lazy—he trains constantly—but because he has grown inside a world where serious effort has proper tools, expert knowledge, and strong support around it. He knows exactly what a talented cyclist is supposed to look like. Onoda turns up looking like none of it.

What gets me is that Imaizumi still recognizes the result. Someone less serious might simply call Onoda weird and move on. His pride makes him severe, but it also makes him attentive. He cannot pretend not to see ability just because it arrived in a form he did not expect.

The challenge comes from pride, not kindness

Imaizumi does not respond by gently encouraging Onoda. Of course he does not. He challenges him to a race.

It is a very Imaizumi solution: if the evidence does not make sense, test it under controlled conditions. He wants to know whether the climb was a fluke, whether Onoda is hiding experience, and how far that strange ability actually goes.

There is also a bruised edge to his curiosity. Imaizumi has worked hard to become good at cycling. Onoda has no road-racing vocabulary, no specialized bicycle, and apparently no idea that his own cadence is unusual. Seeing him perform that well does more than surprise Imaizumi. It pokes directly at the part of him that wants skill to follow a clear order.

Most people can admit that nobody finishes first every time. Sometimes another person is better. Sometimes the day goes badly. That is life.

Imaizumi is not very good at leaving it there.

When a result threatens the way he understands his own ability, it becomes much larger than one bad moment. He has to explain it. He has to race it. He has to prove that the world still makes sense.

So no, the challenge is not an early act of friendship. It is pride with a stopwatch. But that pride forces Imaizumi to take Onoda seriously, and taking him seriously is the first step toward everything that comes later.

They enter the same race wanting completely different things

The wager makes the emotional difference between them almost painfully clear. Imaizumi wants to measure Onoda’s strength. Onoda agrees because Imaizumi promises to join the anime club if he loses.

Imaizumi is racing for an answer. Onoda is racing for the possibility of a friend.

That difference could have made the scene feel cruel. Onoda’s wish is so earnest, while Imaizumi approaches the race with the cool concentration of someone conducting a test. But it also explains why Onoda unsettles him so much. Onoda does not fit neatly into the hierarchy Imaizumi knows because beating Imaizumi is not even the thing he wants most.

For Onoda, riding harder becomes exciting when it might connect him to another person. His body responds to a hope he barely knows how to say aloud. Imaizumi expects competitive ambition and finds something much softer powering the rider beside him.

That softness is not weakness. It is the reason Onoda keeps reaching beyond what even he thinks he can do.

Imaizumi does not fully understand that yet. Still, he sees the result. The boy who should have fallen far behind keeps coming back.

Winning does not give Imaizumi his certainty back

Imaizumi wins the rear gate race, but the result does not restore the clean order he started with.

Onoda comes close enough to make the victory uncomfortable. Once his saddle is adjusted, he closes a gap that should have been impossible for a complete beginner on a mommy bike. Imaizumi can keep the win, but he cannot keep his first judgment of Onoda.

That is why his reaction matters more than the scoreboard. His pride is clearly irritated. He does not suddenly become sweet, congratulate Onoda with a glowing smile, and learn a tidy lesson about friendship. Frankly, that would not feel like him.

Instead, he does something smaller and more convincing: he continues to acknowledge what he saw.

He suggests that Onoda join the bicycle racing club. Onoda entered the race hoping to pull Imaizumi into his world; Imaizumi ends it by opening a door into his own.

The invitation can still be read competitively. Imaizumi has found an interesting rider and wants to see what he can do with proper equipment and training. But even that reading requires respect. He no longer treats Onoda as an accident to be explained away. He sees potential worth bringing closer.

This is the first crack in Imaizumi’s coldness

Imaizumi does not become a different person because of one race. At this point, he is still controlled, proud, and easily provoked when his ability is questioned. The warmth in their relationship has barely begun.

But I think it begins here.

Before meeting Onoda, Imaizumi can approach cycling as a clean contest: train correctly, understand the mechanics, defeat the rider in front of you. Onoda makes that world messier. He rides for anime goods, friendship, and the simple joy of reaching somewhere he loves. He has built remarkable strength without chasing status, then uses that strength because another person might ride beside him.

Imaizumi cannot explain him using rank alone.

That is what starts changing the emotional temperature around him. Onoda does not melt his coldness through a dramatic speech. He gets under it by being impossible to dismiss. Imaizumi has to watch him, race him, reconsider him, and finally make room for him.

There is something very tender about that progression precisely because Imaizumi is not tender about it. His first version of reaching out is still shaped like a challenge. His interest still sounds like an evaluation. Even so, the direction has changed: instead of pushing the strange boy back outside his understanding, he invites him further in.

Why their first meeting stays with me

I like this first meeting because it does not pretend that a competitive, emotionally guarded boy becomes warm the moment he meets a kind person. Imaizumi’s change starts in the least sentimental place possible: his pride gets bothered.

Onoda threatens his certainty before he earns his affection. That order feels right for Imaizumi.

He first sees an impossible result. Then he sees a rival. Only after that can he begin seeing Onoda as someone he wants beside him. The race does not complete that movement, but it makes the old distance impossible to restore.

Imaizumi thought he was testing Onoda. In the end, Onoda quietly tests the limits of Imaizumi’s world instead.

For Onoda’s side of this encounter, read Sakamichi Onoda’s Hidden Talent Before He Became a Road Racer. For another first meeting that turns recognition into immediate generosity, see Naruko Shoukichi’s Loud Confidence Is Really a Form of Respect. You can also browse the full Archive.

Frequently asked questions

When do Shunsuke Imaizumi and Sakamichi Onoda first meet?

Their first encounter begins in Yowamushi Pedal season 1, episode 1, when Imaizumi notices Onoda near Sohoku High School. Episodes 2 and 3 develop that encounter into the rear gate slope race.

Why does Imaizumi challenge Onoda to a race?

The official episode summary says Imaizumi wants to test Onoda’s ability after seeing him climb the steep rear gate slope on a mommy bike. My reading is that the challenge also protects Imaizumi’s pride: Onoda’s unexplained ability disrupts the clear hierarchy through which Imaizumi understands cycling.

Does Imaizumi join Onoda’s anime club?

The condition is that Imaizumi will join if Onoda wins their race. The more lasting result of the encounter goes in the opposite direction: Imaizumi begins drawing Onoda toward bicycle racing.