While a car can be everything from a necessity to a symbol of status, a motorcycle often has a more universal representation – freedom.
The motorcycle, widely known as “the coolest way to travel,” is often a representation of independence, rebellion, and gives the rider that air of danger. In media, at least. It is hard to look cool and dangerous while straddling a moped in real life.
While you see a motorcycle in anime every now and then when they need to quickly create a badass, there aren’t actually a lot of motorcycle anime that have a big focus on the bikes themselves.
However, if you are looking for anime about motorcycles or at least sporting prominent motorcycle riders, then give these anime recommendations a try.
Motorcycle Anime
Kino’s Journey
There are only a small handful of truly iconic motorcycle anime, and Kino’s Journey sits among them.
The story follow the titular character as they travel on their talking motorcycle to various cities. They have a set amount of time that they spend in these cities where they explore a number of moral and philosophy-laced tales of the human experience.
As Kino’s Journey is about the journey with no end destination, the long, lonely road shots of motorcycle travel work perfectly with the occasionally melancholy tales that they are telling.
Super Cub
Although no one can call the content of Super Cub “cool” or even particularly exciting, this series about mopeds actually really captures the feeling of freedom that comes with, not just motorcycles, but that first time you have independent transportation all your own.
The main character, after getting her titular Super Cub moped, suddenly finds that if she wants to go somewhere, even in the middle of the night, she can. Her ride affords her not just freedom and ease of travel, but it also serves as a catalyst to opening up this lonely girls’ social circle as well.
As it presents all this with such detail, it makes it easy to forgive that Super Cub is, very obviously, trying to sell Japanese audiences a motorbike.
Rideback
In truth, Rideback isn’t a traditional motorcycle anime. In fact, you would be completely justified in calling it more mecha than motorcycles.
Rideback follows a ballet dancer forced to give up her passion after an injury. One day, while visiting her old club room, she becomes interested in a motorcycle-like transforming robotic vehicle called Rideback.
From there, she finds her ballet skills help her thrive on a Rideback and her skill attracts dubious government attention.
While a Rideback is indeed more like a transforming set of mech legs on wheels, the series often portrays it as riding a motorcycle. Furthermore, Rideback also puts the emphasis on independence and freedom, themes that are very common in motorcycle anime.
Bakuon
Bakuon has a familiar set up with an uncommon object. Like many a “cute girls doing cute things in a club” anime, Bakuon follows a schoolgirl that learns the joys of motorcycles after seeing one while struggling up a big hill on the bicycle. So, she joins her school’s motorcycle club that is filled with only other cute anime girls.
While Bakuon is really just the standard cute girls doing cute club things anime, but with motorcycles, it does cover every range of bikes. Members ride everything from mopeds to sport racers, providing a nice range of representation if not a particularly interesting plot.
Two Car
While sports anime is a niche genre, it is actually quite curious that there is not more sports anime about racing motorcycles. Really, make an Initial D, but with motorcycles. It’d be great.
Two Car is a sports anime about motorcycle sidecar racing. It provides an interesting glimpse into this more obscure sport, but really the sidecar racing feels more like a hook than a focus.
The focus in Two Car is not just cute girls doing cute sidecar motorcycle racing things, but is also rather fond of yuri-baiting the relationships between the partners.
Michiko and Hatchin
If you are going to have a series about a lady outlaw that kidnaps a neglected, all-to-willing-to-be-kidnapped child in order to use her as bait to find her father, she better be rolling up on a ride with outlaw style like a motorcycle.
Michiko and Hatchin has one of those meandering plots where there is an overall goal, but no known destination. As such, the pair travel around the gritty criminal underworlds of fictionalized South America on a motorcycle and get pulled into all sorts of stories.
The Rolling Girls
As an anime about a Japan that crumbled and now 10 independent nations wage what is effectively gang warfare, The Rolling Girls seems like a solid premise for some interesting motorcycle action.
It instead leans more towards motorcycle travel as a group of girls travel the different nations as messengers for their leader, but wastes even that.
While The Rolling Girls does indeed have girls traveling around on motorcycles, that is about all it has. It doesn’t follow any sort of plot very far and often focuses on the moe interactions between the girls.
While cute girls doing cute things on motorcycles has an appeal in its own right, this is perhaps not what someone drawn in by the premise of gang warfare was looking for.
Yugioh 5Ds and Yugioh Arc-V
Yugioh may be about a children’s card game where people actually sometimes die if they lose, but apparently that needed to be kept innovative and fresh. So in subsequent Yugioh seasons, you find quirky innovative things like them playing the card game on motorcycles.
The motorcycles, called Duel Runners, are used in Turbo Duels where players play their game astride a moving bike. Being able to adjust speed, dodge attacks, and formulate all-new tactics to the duels supposedly, according to KaibaCorp, adds a whole new layer of complexity to the game.
The Duel Runners were the keystone of the 5Ds series, but were shelved for a bit until they make a comeback in Arc-V.
Blassreiter
The biggest flaw of Blassreiter is that it is a series that is kind of difficult to understand at times. The series has a very approachable premise of being about cybernetic entities that meld with flesh and often attach themselves to machinery like motorcycles.
However, it is initially hard to grasp even basic things, like who is the main character or what the actual plot is.
While it explores the sci-fi intrigue and action in a world that is dark, both metaphorically and literally, you enjoy the characters often doing so on the most well designed sci-fi motorcycles in anime. So while flawed in a few crucial ways, the bike designs are at least very solid.
Akira
I don’t usually include movies in my lists or general recommendations, but when it comes to motorcycles in anime, Akira is nothing short of iconic. You can see that motorcycle slide scene lovingly references in dozens of series, and when fans see it, they immediately know it.
Like many other series on here, Akira places motorcycles in a gritty sci-fi setting where a motorcycle gang leader attempts to save his friend from government experimentation all on his faithful, memorable bike.
Do you know more anime that prominently features motorcycles? Let fans know in the comments section below.
