[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/5958f338b8190d4e47a6861128882fb81463426301_full.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Meet the Okanoue Girls High School Motorcycle club!]]

''Bakuon!!'' (ばくおん!!) is a {{Seinen}} manga about girls and their motorcycles. It was written and drawn by Mimana Orimoto and serialized in the ''Young Champion Retsu'' magazine since 2011. As of 2022 it had fifteen volumes published. An [[AnimatedAdaptation anime adaptation]] produced by Creator/TMSEntertainment started airing in the spring of 2016, while an OAD was released along the seventh volume. The series is available for streaming on [[http://www.crunchyroll.com/bakuon Crunchyroll.]]

Hane Sakura has to ride her bicycle up several steep hills just to get to her new high school. As she is desperately pedaling, she sees and hears a motorcycle zoom past her and instantly falls in love with it. It turns out that bike was driven by her new classmate Onsa Amano, who decided to attend this school because there is no policy against motorcycles. Not only that, there is apparently a motorcycle club on campus. Hane and Onsa instantly become friends and she is able to convince Hane to start riding a bike. Now the only thing Hane has to do is get a license...
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!!Tropes appearing in ''Bakuon!!'':

* TwoDVisualsThreeDEffects: The motorcycles in the anime. Done by [[Creator/AsahiProduction the same guys]] who did the CGI in ''Manga/YowamushiPedal'', too.
* AdaptationInducedPlothole: Episode 3, which adapts chapter 7 of the manga. In manga, Hane takes out her new Su-Four for its maiden drive in the middle of rush hour, and as a result vehicular traffic was at a standstill. Hane goes at full-throttle anyway, as if the traffic wasn't there, (and in Hane's POV, there really aren't any vehicles on the road) which fits with Hane's theme about how she sees motorbiking as freedom. In the anime however she starts up on an [[ThrivingGhostTown empty thoroughfare]] (likely due to the studio saving costs as far as background movement goes), which makes the choice of ''still'' using the grayed-out "Hane vision" odd, as there's not much difference between reality and Hane's idealized vision at all.
* AdaptedOut:
** Rin talking to herself about how [[FantasticArousal hot and bothered she was while riding her Katana]], as well as how she [[IllBeInMyBunk couldn't wait to get to the toilet as a result]], and [[TooMuchInformation unknowingly transmitting all of this via radio to her friends' headsets]], was cut out of episode 03.
** Likewise, the interview of the girls by the bike magazine, and its aftermath (described in the SpookyPhotographs and {{Unperson}} entries) was also not adapted.
** The small detail that one of the teams that Raimu-sempai was racing against twenty years ago [[spoiler:was made up of Onsa and Rin's dads]] didn't make it to episode 03 either.
** Episode 04 cuts out a lot of the Ducati bike trivia Hayakawa likes to spout in the manga, like when the trio of parked Ducatis spontaneously tip over after expelling their oil, and his excuse why the engine on his bike exploded after the trip to the open-air hot spring.
** Episode 05 takes out the group's visit to the penitentiary tourist spot, as well as the part where they get to compare their sunburns, culminating in Onsa heckling Rin's "visor" sunburn due to her closed-faced racing helmet. Also when they ''finally'' realize (thanks to some quizzing by their classmates) that they visited virtually ''none'' of the famous tourist spots in Hokkaido, as they spent most of their time there on the road.
** The anime cuts out the kooky road safety chapter, where Saruyama-sensei forces them to watch an old-school movie about the do's and don'ts of riding motorcyles, and instead skips to the School Festival preparation.
* ArtisticLicenseBiology: [[spoiler:Rin's saliva carries a virus that forces anybody afflicted with it to start loving Suzuki bikes regardless of their previous disposition. She accidentally infects Onsa with it in episode 11]]
* BadassBiker:
** Raimu, Onsa, and Rin already have their licenses at the beginning. Hane (studying for license exam) and Hijiri (waiting to be of age to take the exam) get their during the series.
** Hijiri's image of bikers as devil-may-care miscreants is shaped by movies like ''Film/RebelWithoutACause''. It's for this reason why she joined the bike club, and a major factor why she's usually the first to agree to any situation that would be "exciting" (meaning dangerous).
* BaitAndSwitch: Rin's segment at the start of Episode 2, where the flashback to her childhood makes it seem that her father died from his injuries. Fast forward to the present day, and we see that not only did he survive, but he's smugly riding the very same Katana (a limited run model that you need to write an ''essay'' to even get a chance to buy) that Rin cried her eyes out writing an essay for.
* BlandNameProduct: Thoroughly averted, at least for bikes and related equipment such as helmets.
* CantHoldHisLiquor: Can't Hold Her Liquor: Hane. In the manga, one sip of Saruyama-sensei's beer leaves her unconscious on the floor. Even more exaggerated in the anime, where just smelling the beer is enough to make her pass out.
* ChekhovsGun: The Suzuki Cup (the "Holy Grail") that Hane receives from [[spoiler:Jesus Christ]]. It ends up saving Rin's life a few chapters later.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Hane has shades of this, what's with ''talking to and getting pointers from the driving school's bike'' and stuff.
* ContrivedCoincidence: The team that the previous Motorcycle club went up against during its disastrous final race? It was made up of Onsa and Rin's dads.
** Chisame, who is apparently the daughter of one of Raimu and Tazuko's clubmates.
* CoolBike: Raimu, story-wise. Splash pages from the manga has each of the girls drawn with one, although they have different bikes in-story.
* DrivesLikeCrazy: Raimu. She got to 309 kph (around 190 mph) on her Kawasaki Ninja while taking Hane on a spin.
* EthicalSlut: Onsa tends to give off this impression, especially in episode three where she tries to explain why brand loyalty is a bad thing by saying it's like only ever being with one lover, later calls herself a cheap woman when she fixes Hane's used Su-4, and finally when Hane asks why passing bikers are giving the girls "victory signs" (actually a variant the "biker wave" for left-hand traffic), Onsa says they are actually propositioning them for 20,000 yen, then says that she only goes for 50,000.
* EvolvingCredits: Chisame finally joins the rest of the Bike Club in the opening animation in episode 9.
* {{Expy}}:
** Raimu is basically [[Series/TopGear The Stig]], only female and wearing seifuku. The translating group went further in saying that all three early protagonists beside Raimu has parallel to Top Gear hosts (Onsa to Jeremy Clarkson, Hane to James May, and Rin to Richard Hammond).
** Each member of the Bike Club (barring Raimu) parallels the members of ''Houkago Tea-Time'' in Manga/KOn. Supported by how the color-scheme of the volumes that feature each character on the cover matches their rough equivalent in Manga/KOn:
*** Hane = Yui. Both appear on book one (red background). Both are first-timers who take surprisingly well to their new hobbies. Both are the elder siblings, but have a more responsible younger sister to make sure they stay out of trouble (Yume for Hane, Ui for Yui).
*** Rin = Mio. Both appear on book two (blue background). While not experts, they already have experience in the hobby, and both have foibles that don't really make them "normal" either (Rin's Suzuki fangirling, Mio's shyness). Also they're both the designated source of Fanservice. They also are {{Foil}}s to the yellow background character.
*** Onsa = Ritsu. Both appear on book three (yellow background). Both are tomboys who straddle the middling level of expertise among their friends, and both have a somewhat relaxed perspective to their hobbies, though can get serious when the need arises. They also are {{Foil}}s to the blue background character.
*** Hijiri = Mugi. Both appear on book four (purple background). Both are from privileged families, both joined the clubs because it was a chance to do something different from what they were used to.
*** Chisame = Azusa. Both have the same surname (Nakano), are one year younger than the rest, have cat-like personalities, petite figures, twintails, and occupy the same position as the protagonists, albeit more experienced. (Chisame is an experienced Honda biker unlike first-timer Hane, much like how Asuza has been a guitarist far longer than Yui). She also appears on book five (as Asuza probably would if the K-On! manga had not ended one volume earlier).
* TheFaceless[=/=]OneWayVisor: Both Raimu and Rin's father wear their motorcycle helmets 24-7, with the latter going as far as doing so while at home and in his undies. Oddly enough, the latter wasn't that way when Rin was a child, but seemed to have started doing so in the wake of his accident.
* {{Fangirl}}: Rin is a Suzuki fangirl.
* FanserviceCarWash: After coming back from their road trip to Hokkaido the girls all put on bikinis and wash their motorcycles together. The group's resident airhead Hane then decides it's easier to soap hers down with her own body instead of using a sponge
* GameOfChicken: Chapter 5[=/=]the second half of Episode 2 revolves around this. [[spoiler:Hijiri proposes it. All of the Bike Club gets on with it at a riverbank, but Onsa and Rin dropped out due to them thinking that it's stupid. Raimu (with Hane riding shotgun) wins, and Hijiri took a plunge to the river (uninjured save for a broken glasses). All this also doubles as a big shout-out to Film/RebelWithoutACause.]]
* GirlishPigtails: Rin, and later on, Chisame.
* GodWasMyCopilot: [[spoiler:''Jesus Christ himself'']], who becomes a somewhat recurring character after Hane meets him during the Hokkaido road trip. And ''unlike'' the rest of the cast (and the universe, for that matter), He seems to enjoy the Suzuki brand, and even personally owns a Suzuki Intruder.
* HearingVoices: Hane can apparently hear the voice of the motorbike she rode while she was at riding school. It's interesting to note that she only hears the voice of ''that'' particular bike, and when she's given a brand-new motorcycle to ride for her final proficiency exam, she couldn't hear anything from it at all. [[spoiler:It's later revealed that the bike in question, Baita, is a SentientVehicle, whose eccentricities are known even by the staff of the school.]]
* HeightAngst: Chisame has issues with her petite figure, as while it helps her on the minibike racetrack, it makes her incapable of riding the same sort of motorcyles that Hane and the others use, because her legs can't even reach the pavement (which makes stops at traffic lights problematic).
* HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood: Rin's father never seemed to take the safety of his child into consideration when he took her riding with him. Besides the constant wrecking episode 04 shows he also would do stunts that would fling Rin into the air. Though it should be noted that Rin was usually unharmed, physically, from these wrecks while her father was typically on deaths door.
* HonestJohnsDealership: It turns out, Onsa's father runs a shop like this. Onsa is embarrassed to take her friends there as a result, and a brief go-through by Raimu and Rin of the shop's inventory reveal the many, ''many'' problems the bikes supposedly on sale are hiding. Rin is particularly horrified about the place, more so when she finds out [[spoiler:that her own bike, the same one that was used by her father, was bought ''from the very same store'']].
* HypocriticalHumor: During the preparation for the Bike Club's event for the school festival, Onsa heckles Rin for being a sucker for believing how "occult" mods increase bike performance. It turns out she's ''also'' using sketchy and unproven means to increase her Serrow's performance (through engine oil supplements rather than actual attachments).
* IncendiaryExponent: What happened to the final race of the previous Motorcycle club twenty years ago, where the team's rider continued on to the finish line ''despite being set on fire'' due to poor maintenance practices. [[StuffBlowingUp Then her bike exploded before she even got to the goal.]] [[spoiler:Said racer was Raimu, which just goes to show how old she really is.]]
* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Hane, while wearing a bikini, decides to wash her bike by soaping up her whole body and rubbing up against it, with absolutely no idea of the fanservice she's providing.
* JerkAss: Onsa has a mild case of this, especially when faced with Rin's Suzuki fangirling.
* JesusWasWayCool: Jesus shows up riding a Suzuki Intruder motorcycle. He also gives the Holy Grail away and likes to look at the nude centerfolds in biker magazines.
* MagicalRealism: There are definitely some strange things that pop up without much explanation in this series. [[spoiler:Hane's training bike seems to be able to talk, and not only to her. She also shares some gasoline with Jesus Christ on the side of the road; not only does he teleport Hane to her destination ahead of her friends, he also gives her a "Holy Grail" which serendipitously stops Rin from running over some foxes.%speculation and theories belong in WMG%]]
* MessyHair: Onsa's curly mop, more so in the manga than in the anime. It's the reason why Rin gave her the nickname "moja" (or "frizzy").
* MotorcycleOnTheCoastRoad: Prominent in the OP.
* MsFanservice: Rin, with her exceptionally large bust and skin-tight riding outfit. She's regularly front and center in the magazine spreads for the series as a result.
* MysteriousWaif: Raimu. [[spoiler:Not only is she one of the principals former classmates and her upperclassman, she was already old enough to gamble when she was going to school with the principal. Whether that means she was just held back then or not there's still no reasonable explanation as to why she's still going to school now.]] [[TheFaceless And we still haven't seen her face yet.]]
* TheOjou: Hijiri, complete with butler.
* OlderThanTheyLook: Raimu. [[spoiler:It says a lot when the current ''principal'' of the school was one of your ''juniors''.]]
** [[spoiler:We find out later that she was already at least 20 when she went to school with the principal implying that this might have been going on since before even then.]]
* OldRetainer: Hayakawa, who's apparently old enough to have served Hijiri's family for four generations.
* OneWordTitle
* ParentalAbandonment: In chapter 2, Onsa and Raimu (and the readers) are led to believe that Hane's parents are deceased... only for Hane to blurt out that now she can take her sister on a ride to visit them. ''In America''.
* RootingForTheEmpire: An in-universe example. In chapter 17, the girls watch [[Film/MadMax Mad... er]], [[BlandNameProduct Crazy Max]]. By the end of the movie they're in tears due to Toecutter's death and the destruction of the motorcycles. They even decide to stage it as a play for the SchoolFestival, with Toecutter as the hero.
* RunningGag: Several.
** Rin's flashbacks in which her Dad has a wipeout, ends up in the hospital with a full body cast, and melodramatically tells Rin that he's not going to make it, only to turn out fine afterwards.
** Rin seems to be an accident magnet. Her EstablishingCharacterMoment was when she experienced a particularly bad wipe out at the Motorbike driving center (where she ''slams into a concrete post''), and her childhood flashbacks seem to be a constant string of accidents, no thanks to her absent-minded father.
** Hayakawa waxing poetic about the Ducatis he drives for Hijiri's family, only for said Ducati to suffer a catastrophic explosion shortly after. Which is ''then'' followed by a helicopter flying in a brand-new Ducati for use.
** Raimu can't seem to win a race where she's an actual participant, despite being probably the most skilled and experience biker in the club.
* ScarsAreForever: Rin, again. Due to a childhood accident, she has a burn scar on her left ass cheek shaped like the Suzuki logo. To double the fun, this was something she ''completely forgot about'' until her friends pointed this out to her.
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: Not quite, but the only reason the Bike Club was able to continue existing is because the Principal [[spoiler:used to be Raimu's ''kouhai'', and she was feeling generous]].
* ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney: Hijiri's family motto is this. So she "bought" a motorcycle license in another country and had it transferred to Japan. However, Onsa insists that Hijiri get her license legitimately, and promptly destroys it because Hijiri doesn't even know what a yellow traffic light means!
* SentientVehicle: [[spoiler:Baita, the training bike, is revealed to be this, when one of the maintenance crew at the training school replies to its musings.]]
* ShoutOut:
** In episode 1, the Sohoku team captain from ''Manga/YowamushiPedal'' shows up [[spoiler:and ends up getting literally blown off the road by Raimu.]]
** Raimu's personal profile lists that she's weighs only as much as four apples. [[Franchise/HelloKitty Now who's white, wears a ribbon, has no mouth, and weighs that much, hmm?]]
** Hijiri explains the concept of "Chicken" with references to ''Film/RebelWithoutACause''.
** Hijiri plays ''VideoGame/ExciteBike'' on a UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS. It even inspires her to put an engine-cooling panel on the festival derby track.
** The Bike Club's presentation is preceded by the [[Manga/KOn Light Music Club]], who performed the song [[http://k-on.wikia.com/wiki/Gohan_wa_Okazu "Staple Potatoes."]]
** In Episode 10, in the arcade seen at the start of the episode, there can be seen expies of Creator/{{SEGA}}'s Hang-On ([[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute Ride-On by "SAGA"]]), [[VideoGame/SpaceInvaders Space Invaders]]; and a [[VideoGame/DanceDanceRevolution Dance Dance Revolution X]] cabinet.
*** Later in the very same episode, the people in the simulator Chisame mows down are clearly based on ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'''s human models. Complete with pickaxes.
*** The ending animation with Raimu bares a resemblance to the ending animation of ''Anime/LupinIIIPart1''.
** The saliva incident is very similar to ''Manga/MysteriousGirlfriendX''.
* SignatureHeadgear: Hane's wing hairclips, Onsa's white hairband, Rin's ribbon-with-bells for her twintails, the massive pink ribbon at the back of Raimu's helmet, and Hijiri's thin ribbon hairband all act as character identifiers.
* SpellMyNameWithAnS: It's either ''Raimu'' or ''Lime''. The anime itself is inconsistent as well, showing "Raimu" on-screen in the opening but "Lime" in episode 7.
* SpookyPhotographs: What the photographers from G+Bike magazine got after they took a picture of the five friends during Hane's debut bike trip. [[spoiler:A dark aura was resonating out of Rin's Katana, and there was an inhuman shadow right above Rin herself. It was disturbing enough that they had to ''[[Main/{{Unperson}} edit Rin out entirely]]'', even in the interview that came with the photo]].
* ThemeNaming: The names of the members of the Bike Club each reflect their bike brand preferences:
** Hane means "wing". Her brand of choice is Honda, which has a wing motif on its logo.
** Rin means "bell". Her brand of choice is Suzuki, which is not only reflected in the syllables of her surname ('''Suzu'''no'''ki'''), but also by how the "suzu" in Suzuki could also be mean bell.
** Onsa means "tuning fork". Her bikes are Yamahas, which use tuning forks in its labels.
** Raimu refers to the color, which is iconic for Kawasaki's bikes. Her surname also refers to the brand itself.
* TakeThat: The series doesn't have a high opinion of bicyclists. With one in Episode 10 bragging about how expensive his bike cost him, much to Onsa's unbridled anger. Doubles as a BitingTheHandHumor moment, given that TMS were also responsible for the ''Manga/YowamushiPedal'' adaption at the same time.
* ThrivingGhostTown: In the anime. While the manga makes it a point to show crowds of people milling about in its city scenes, any scene outside of Okanoue High seems oddly deserted. See AdaptationInducedPlothole as well for more details.
* {{Unperson}}: Rin, but its played [[RuleOfFunny entirely for laughs]]. [[spoiler:The five girls get interviewed by a bike magazine while they were on tour to celebrate Hane getting her license, down to having their picture taken. However, once the photos were brought back for processing, the magazine staff found that the one they had taken of the girls had turned into a SpookyPhoto (see that entry for more details). The magazine's solution? Edit out Rin completely via photoshop, and write the article as if they interviewed four girls instead of five.]] Rin is still noticeably disturbed by what happened though.
* VagueAge: Hayakawa. He remembers being sent to TheGulag in Siberia in the wake of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII (which hints that he was stationed in Manchuria before that point), but one after-chapter extra hints that he might have been born sometime during the ''Main/MeijiRestoration''.
** Raimu. If one uses Tazuko (the Principal) as a point of reference, then at the ''minimum'' Raimu is in her mid-30s. And just to muddle things even ''more'', episode 9 reveals that 15-year-old Chisame [[spoiler:is the daughter of one of Tazuko's clubmates]].
* VitriolicBestBuds: Onsa and Rin have this dynamic.
* VocalDissonance: Baita the Training-school bike [[spoiler:identifies itself as ''male''. And a ''neutered'' male at that.]] Its voiced by Creator/KikukoInoue.
* TheVoiceless: Raimu.
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