Pelican Road Club Caroucha / Club "Cockroach" / ペリカンロード クラブ・カルーチャ OVA (1986) [LD AVC AAC]

RAW	https://nyaa.si/view/871928
Translation	Perevodildo
Quality check	None

Video used is Ukyuu’s 2014 rip from this release. Song lyrics are cribbed from redbook’s scan of his LP, except for one insert that’s not in there.
Some alternative titles for the show adapt “kurabbu karuucha” as “club culture,” but I have no idea where that came from, as the explanation Shigeru gives in the show is that “it means ‘cockroach’ in Portuguese,” which has been confirmed by our resident Brazilian girl, though she noted that it’s a rather uncommon word. The JP wiki, however, says that it was derived from the German word for “cockroach” which seems like bullshit. I wasn’t reading manga attentively enough to spot the exact moment where they came up with that name, so I guess we’ll never know for sure. At least the “Pelican Road” part of the title is more straighforward and is derived from the name of “Pelican Express” delivery service in the show.
The OVA adapts the first 5 chapters of the source manga (or, approximately, the first two volumes) with many omissions. It reminded me strongly of Hidari no O’clock we’ve done before: they’re both about the guy getting his first ever bike and driving it to his heart’s content, with similar content and storylines. Hidari still kinda wins out in my heart because it had a deeper message and more originality, while this story focuses more on the bosozoku aspects of a biking. Still, it’s pretty good as far as bosozoku/biking anime goes: it doesn’t waste your time and doesn’t descend into the forced pathos or take itself too seriously—even in this one OVA something in the ballpark of 5 completed storylines are set up, developed, and resolved in the span of 55 minutes of runtime, and that I can’t help but respect. Plus, it’s basically an ode to the “woman on the motorcycle” fetish in the Golden Boy OVA 5 kind of way, which is honestly based.
Apparently, the manga enjoyed a degree of popularity, spanning 14 volumes. It ran alongside Shonan Bosozoku in the same magazine, offering a lighter take on the biking counterculture, and from what I’ve seen of Shobaku, I enjoyed this way more, hands down.
I’m told Proxyman bought an LD for this show, so expect a v2 whenever a DDD capture is available. On that note, if you’re ever actually watching this and find anything wrong with the subs (that I can almost guarantee), do tell, since I once again couldn’t even scout a QC for this.

AniDB | Subs only | Boosty