Long Riders!

TV (12 eps)
2016 - 2017
Fall 2016
3.317 out of 5 from 682 votes
Rank #10,311
Long Riders!

For first-year college student Ami Kurata, it was love at first sight when she laid her eyes on a folding bike. She saves up money to buy one of her own, then pedals right into the exciting world of long-distance bicycling. After forming a cycling team on campus, Ami and her four new bike mates prepare for the ride of their lives in an upcoming long-distance race.

Source: Sentai Filmworks

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Reviews

JVAnimeReviews
6.1

Positive *It can’t be a surprise that I enjoyed this anime. I love cycling and LR! really focussed on the fun of cycling. Unlike its big brother YP, who focusses on the competitive side of cycling, LR! showed how fun cycling can be. Cruising the roads with your friends, getting to places you would otherwise never reach and setting and reaching goals. This anime created a step-up to cycling that was less steep than the one from YP, it made cycling reachable and I hope that people will be inspired to try it out after watching this anime. Because, as you know, in my opinion cycling is still the most beautiful sport in the world, it being competitive or recreative. For a video review, check out my Youtube channel. Link on my profile page.  *Another thing where LR! differed from YP was in the amount of information it gave about cycling and the type of information. As I said, YP focusses on competitive cycling so it gives us a lot of information that has to do with competitive cycling like wind resistance. But LR! gave us more standard information that YP didn’t. LR! talks about nutrition, bike maintenance and how to ride safely at night and in rain. All things that YP didn’t touch since it doesn’t really apply to competitive cycling. So also here, LR! created that less steep step up to actually try cycling. Negative But LR! definitely also had its problems, the release of new episodes was delayed at several occasions and the final 2 episodes were delayed till February. *And the episodes themselves weren’t perfect either. First of all I have to tell something about the animation and more specifically about the cycling animation. With that I mean how the characters and specifically the legs were animated when they were riding their bikes. It looked super robotic and everything but natural. Other cycling anime’s like YP and this season’s Minami Kamakura Cycling Club make the legs move in a way more natural way. *Another thing about the animation. I think this anime wasn’t checked by someone who actually knows a thing or two about cycling. I can see that by the posture that the girls had on their bikes. It was most apparent with the smallest of them, Hinako. If you sit on a bike like that, you will break your back, her reach from the saddle to the handlebars was way to big. It was almost hysterical to look at. *My final negative point is that the ultimate goal of this story being Ami riding the flèche is far from completed at the end. Ami still has a long way to go before she will be able to ride such a tour. I know because I’m currently training for my first flèche in September and that’s not something a newbie can do after just a few months of training. Most likely the original manga will go farther than this since it’s still ongoing today. Conclusion So as a conclusion, I really enjoyed LR! but it is a niche anime. People that aren’t into cycling or sports anime in general won’t feel the urge to watch this anime. But if you like sports anime I definitely recommend to give LR! a watch and maybe you’ll get bitten by the cycling microbe. So enough about me trying to promote cycling. LR! wasn't perfect, there are better cycling anime’s out there when it comes to story telling and animation. So I’m going to rate Long Riders! at 3 stars. But as I said, give this anime a watch if your a fan of lighter sports anime.

Etue
6.2

This show is a bicycle themed ''slice of life'' without a compettive element. It shows the up and downs of an unsportive plain but quirky college girl named Ami. Ami starts her new long distance cycling hobby beside her more experienced and level-headed friend Aoi. Quickly encountering girls of similar age with interest in the same hobby with more experience to guide her along her way. The series is mostly experienced through Ami's perspective teaching the audience a few things about bicycles along the way. Ami struggles physically and mentally in this series at times however the series is mostly a happy go lucky one without any long lasting drama.  The series has a few comedic moments but isn't a comedy either. It is definitely a slice of life show at heart. It is however very average and quite forgetable for a slice of life.  Animation wise this show is at best good enough and sometimes a bit mediocre. While the animation never got truly bad it had it's moments were you could pause the anime and shake your head. The bicycles are often CGI but overal the CGI in this show blends in well and isn't overabundant. It is generally avoided when making close ups of characters even while they are riding their bikes. However in shots were all girls are riding over and area and the background doesn't pan you can expect it obviously.  However the character designs aren't that unique or very cute. Ami is a rather plain but youthful looking ordinary every girl who outside of her personality could be thought as a self insert character by appearance.  Saki and Aoi have very similar "Yamato Nadeshiko" character designs being tall, developed and black haired. While Saki is goofy her goofy aspect is limited to her food intake which is a one note joke, surely. Hinako and Yayoi's character designs stand out as being completely out there by contrast. Both possessing unnatural hair colours, their entire character designs play off each other with Hinako being a ''twin-tail legal loli'' and Yayoi being a ''tall busty babe'' which gives us a two or three scenes of breast envy in this show for comedy. Sound wise the music track is quite forgetable the ending theme is high spirited and fits the show but isn't anything amazing while the opening is very much what you'd expect from a slice of life show. The voice acting in this show is good for what it is with an experienced voice cast.  While some might argue with the voices of some characters they all were believable and got the general atmosphere that this series seemed to be going for over. From Ami's dramatic overreactions to Aoi's (fake) down to earthness, Hinako tsundere attitude, Yayoi's ''big sisterness'' and Saki's  sprotiveness and gluttony there aren't really any complaints there. Overall, While a bicycle themed girls doing cute things show isn't an amazing concept theycould have done more with it. Simply put it was ''a little too slice of life'' for the most part with no real competitive element you have to use humour and ''cuteness'' or ''moe'' to keep things interesting. After watching this you can think it was fun but on the other hand personally I couldn't shake the feeling that it could have been so much more. Most of the shows drama and comedy is completely reliant on  Ami's  frequent silly expressions and dramatized emotional highs and lows. As amusing it is to see Ami make silly faces and how dramatic it is to face her own limits the entertainment element is stretched really thin due to the lack of variance. At some point Ami's facial expressions and her overreactions just aren't enough for comedy and what else there is to this series is limited and that is why this show just isn't all it coud have been which is quite sad in some ways as there was no bicycle show like it before it aired. 

lasthavenmedia
5.2

What to say about this show, this is part 2 of my deep dive into the random subgenre of "Cute Girls Riding Bikes," a genre I didn't know exist and might argue shouldn't, but what made me decide to check this one out second was that the story took place with college-aged characters in university. If you are a regular follower of anime you know that most of the shows follow high school kids so what I was hoping for was a fresher and more mature take on the genre. That's not what I got though, these characters that are in this bicycle club are the typical archetypes from the short snaggletooth character, to the big eater, to the overly excited main character that you would find in this genre.The college aspect is almost nonexistent, you see them walk around campus a few times and maybe spend a total of 3 minutes in a classroom and we know zero of their college life from studying, how they balance bike riding with school as they spend a lot of their free time riding. If you took this story and placed it in a high school it would change nothing of the story.The main character, the lynchpin of the story is where most of the problems come from. She has no character, she wants to learn bikeriding and she does. The only difference between her at episode 1 and episode 12 is that she goes from liking riding her bike to really liking riding her bike. We see her family but learn nothing of the dynamics or why her dad isn't in the picture.The first glimpse we get of the character backstory is in the last episode in the final minutes as she is monologuing to herself as the characters stand behind her just listening. It's almost like the show was laughing at you expecting any type of character.There will be times where the story flirts with doing more and presenting opportunities for the main character to grow but always runs as far as possible from any type of depth. One example is in an early episode, she wants to go riding but all of her friends are busy so she has to go by herself. Going by herself could present some type of self-reflection but instead she just decides that she doesn't like riding by herself and would rather ride with the group.When all else fails the one thing that should've brought the story up a notch was the riding scenes. Showcasing the scenery of the town and the characters riding could've helped in setting this show apart from others in the genre but a lot of the riding scenes are done in stills and shy away from scenery shots for only a few times and those times don't do enough to make the show worth it."Long Riders!" is a painfully average show,

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