I love a new season of anime: I’m checking out new anime series left and right, combing through title after title to see which shows will be worth introducing to you in these blog posts. While it’s obvious that certain well-known series — Please Don’t Bully Me, Miss Nagatoro! or season two of How Not to Summon a Demon Lord — will get lots of attention because of how popular they are on social media, it’s great when a show we’ve never heard of can capture our attention. One show that did so for me was the Super Cub anime, a show about a girl who finds meaning in her life thanks to a humble 50cc Honda motorcycle. Let’s learn more about the show!
Want a Relaxing “Cute Girl Gets a New Hobby” Anime? Watch Super Cub!
Within the “cute girls doing cute things” genre of anime, which is known as nichijou-kei in Japanese, one that seems to be rising is “cute girls start a new hobby.” This genre of shows follows anime girls as they discover some new hobby, thrilling as they learn many new things. Some examples of this rising category of anime include:
- The outstanding Yuru Camp🏕, which made all otakus want to experience the joy of solo camping at the base of Mt. Fuji in the winter.
- Encouragement of Climb was a highly influential anime about girls learning to get past social anxiety through the medium of mountain climbing together.
- Asteroid in Love, about girls discovering the joys of astronomy and geology.
- Rifle is Beautiful, about the world of competitive rifle shooting.
- How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift? introduced many otakus to the benefits of picking up heavy things and putting them down again.
- K-On!, which made us all want to stop what we were doing and start a band. Back in high school, my son begged me to buy him a Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar, and he got quite good at playing it before moving on to other hobbies.
- Yowamushi Pedal, about organizing cycle racing. My son (who is apparently easily influenced by anime) joined his university cycling team and cycled all over Hokkaido with his teammates.
In many cases, the anime in question is partially funded by companies eager to promote interest in purchasing Vixen telescopes or whatever other products can be introduced to fans through the medium of anime. And that’s the case with the Super Cub anime, which has received funding from Honda in part as an advertisement for the company’s products, although the story based on an original manga.
A Lonely Girl’s Life is Changed by a Honda Motorcycle
Koguma is a second-year high school student leading an unremarkable life. She has no parents, no friends, and no hobbies to speak of. One day while pedaling up the hill to school, she sees another student whizzing by on a scooter and wonders if she could ever get one for herself. Unfortunately, all the scooters at the dealer are well above her budget. Happily, the owner has a motorcycle that’s in her price range: a used Honda Super Cub he’ll sell her for just $100.
While learning to ride a motorcycle is exciting, they’re also very dangerous, and we learn this in the first episode when the motorcycle dealer explains why he’s selling Koguma the bike so cheaply. “Some people died. Three of them.” While it’s unlikely that the motorcycle she’s buying has been directly involved in an accident, we wonder what the man is talking about. I’m sure we’ll get more details as the story unfolds.
The #SuperCub #SuperCubAnime takes such care to recreate the sounds of riding a Honda Cub, it’s worth watching with headphones on. When Kogura can’t get her bike started because she didn’t know about the spare tank, the sounds really heighten the drama. pic.twitter.com/qQUUuAVXbd
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) April 12, 2021
Super Cub is an ASMR Anime
I love the great detail the animators took to recreate the feel of getting on a Honda Super Cub for the first time, the sound of switching on the ignition and using the kick-starter to fire up the engine for the first time, as well as the sounds the motorcycle makes as you finally get it up to speed on a road. Someone on the J-List discord suggested the sounds were so well-done it qualified as an ASMR anime if you watched it with good headphones on. So naturally, I re-watched the show with headphones, and sure enough, it really put me inside the experience of riding a Honda Super Cub.
Honda Wants to Sell you a Super Cub
Honda is unique among Japan’s automakers in that it was the only company to be formed in the postwar era, with all the others — Toyota, Mazda, Nissan, Subaru — all having much longer histories. Souichiro Honda founded his auto company in 1946 and, and one of the company’s unparalleled successes has been the Cub series, with more than 100 million sold worldwide.
The Honda Super Cub has become a huge icon of postwar life across Asia, powering the economic freedom of individuals… and whole families. I’ll never forget visiting Bangkok in 1994 and seeing a family of six — father, mother, and four kids — balanced precariously on top of the tiny motorcycle while out for a Sunday drive. But the iconic small motorcycle hadn’t been available in the U.S. since 1978, until it got a re-release in 2018, with a bigger engine, modern features like an electric starter with keyless ignition, and ABS brakes.
Thanks for reading this post about the cute and slow-paced Super Cub anime! Will you be checking it out? Tell us in the comments below!
J-List’s sister company JAST USA has really used the past year in the best way possible, working hard to clear their backlog of titles that fans have been waiting to get their hands on. We’re happy to announce that the most popular BL game in the history of the boy’s love visual novel genre is finally here: DRAMAtical Murder. Get the digital version from JAST USA’s website, or the limited physical version from J-List. Remember: all physical package games are going to receive limited LE editions, and when these sell out the games will be digital sales only!
