The episode opens with Doubashi and Kaburagi trying to be the first to lead their team into the mountains. During this segment, we get to see a flashback of Doubashi when he and Manami are chosen for this year’s inter-high team, and how the two of them are like oil and water. But during this flashback, Doubashi asks Manami what it’s like to be in the inter-high. After a couple of stumbles, Manami finally gives Doubashi the answer he’s looking for… although Doubashi still doesn’t entirely understand what Manami means. But he takes what he does pick up on from Manami to heart, and that is what pushes Doubashi forward in this race. Even though the episode is titled, “Doubashi Masakiyo’s Inter-High,” this is only the focus for a small part of the episode. We see Doubashi and Kaburagi launch their teams forward, and Doubashi and Kaburagi fall back, both exhausted. But it was nice to see after how much they clashed with each other prior to this point, that Doubashi allows Kaburagi to lean against him for support and the two actually sharing encouraging words with each other.

A lot of the episode focuses on Hakone Academy and Sohoku as they start their way through the mountains. Yuto quickly attacks, which starts to throw Sohoku off guard. Teshima sends Onoda and Imaizumi ahead, and they quickly pass by Yuto. But then, Hakone Academy launches two more attacks with their remaining team members, while Sohoku is down to just Teshima and Naruko against the remaining members of Hakone Academy.

We get a brief scene of Sohoku’s support team in the vehicle, as Miki and Koga describe the remainder of the final day’s course. But more importantly than that, we finally see the remainder of Kyoto Fushimi’s team (Mizuta, Midousuji, and Kishigami). Mizuta is stewing over having to pull the other two, since he’s a third-year and the team captain. He finally snaps and starts telling Midousuji off. While it was nice to see Mizuta finally showing some backbone, it was just “too little, too late” from him. Of course, Midousuji shuts him down, especially on the accusations that Midousuji became drunk with power after the previous day’s win and hadn’t thought through his strategy. No, it turns out that Midousuji does have a strategy… which he reveals, includes treating Mizuta as expendable. This was right near the end, so we’re being set up for Midousuji and Kishigami to move ahead to catch up with Hakone Academy and Sohoku.

It was a little frustrating to have the unexpected week off due to the rugby broadcast, because it did take some of the momentum out from the beginning of the episode. Fortunately, the momentum was able to rebuild over the course of the it.

With the way the race is going, will Yowamushi Pedal: Limit Break end up being a one cour season to finish up the second Inter-High? They’re already in the final stretch (although it was made clear in the episode that there’s a lot of hill to climb before reaching the finish line), and we’re only six episodes into the cour. I can’t really see how this race can be stretched out to not only cover six or seven more episodes, but to also cover another full cour as well. It’s going to be interesting to see how the final day of the Inter-High progresses as this season continues.

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