Enoden Bicycle Bro — Man on small pink bike waving beside green Enoden train at night

Enoden Bicycle Bro

2021viral videoclassic

Published October 25, 2026

A foreign man on a bicycle rode alongside a vintage Enoden train at midnight on August 5, 2021, raising his left arm just as roughly 50 train photographers tried to capture the test run in Fujisawa, Japan. The photographers swarmed him and shouted "die," "move," and "money" on camera, and Japanese Twitter sided with the cyclist. Within days, fan artists on Pixiv and Nico Nico Seiga were redrawing his raised-arm pose and calling him Enoden Jitensha Niki.

japanese internet memes accidental fame memes fan art memes otaku culture memes 2021 memes

Overview

Enoden Bicycle Bro, known in Japanese as Enoden Jitensha Niki (江ノ電自転車ニキ), is the affectionate nickname that Japanese Twitter gave to Dylan, a Mexican restaurant owner caught on video riding beside an Enoshima Electric Railway train with his left arm raised in a salute1. Posts under the hashtags #江ノ電自転車ニキ and #龍の口の騒乱 (The Turmoil at Tatsunokuchi) center on that single arm-raised silhouette, lifted straight from the 45-second confrontation clip and recut over heroic music, pasted into shonen anime panels, or redrawn as original illustrations on Pixiv and Nico Nico Seiga3.

Loading tweet...

The tone across fan work is near-uniformly on the cyclist's side and against the surrounding toritetsu (撮り鉄), the subset of train photographers that Japanese users had already been criticizing for occupying public roads. News coverage by Bengo4 pointed out that the one-handed riding violated road traffic law article 70, while the photographers standing in a crosswalk at midnight arguably violated article 764. That symmetry gave the meme its edge: the man was not blameless, but the mob of toritetsu looked much worse, which is why edits portray him as a folk hero gliding past screaming otaku.

Origin & Background

Platform
Twitter (origin) / Pixiv (fan art spread)
Date
2021

At roughly 10:50 p.m. on August 5, 2021, Enoshima Electric Railway ran a late-night test of its 305 formation, a 300-series car first introduced in 1960 that had just finished a four-year inspection and repaint between Gokurakuji and Fujisawa stations2. Around 50 train fans had assembled at the Tatsunokuchi crossroad in Fujisawa City, Kanagawa, a spot where the Enoden runs down a public road1. Twitter user @fmk_msfea uploaded a 45-second clip in which a T-shirted foreign man on a bicycle rolled alongside the train with his left arm raised, then was quickly encircled by photographers shouting "どけ" (move), "死ね" (die), and "金だろ" (it's money, right?)5. The original tweet gathered over 1,000 likes and 1,300 retweets before being deleted3.

Catalyst event: the midnight confrontation on August 5. Earliest meme-format emergence: August 6, when @mayamakodomo reposted the deleted clip and it climbed past 13,500 likes and 7,500 retweets inside six days3. By 9:30 p.m. that same day, J-Cast reported the video already had more than 16,000 retweets1.

How It Spread

News coverage moved fast. On August 6, 2021, japan-railway.com published a write-up citing the @fmk_msfea video and noted that the photographers had effectively turned a public road into a pedestrian zone at midnight2. J-Cast interviewed a bystander with the handle @Gifu_Hashima who said he had mediated between the mob and the cyclist, and that the two had parted with a fist bump and the word "Peace"1. Legal site Bengo4 followed with an article weighing possible traffic-law violations on both sides, which made the story harder to dismiss as toritetsu-only hysteria4.

The day after the incident, a YouTube comment identified the cyclist as Dylan, owner of Home Taco Bar, a Mexican restaurant near the shooting spot3. Angered train fans tried to review-bomb the shop on Google Reviews, but sympathetic internet users flooded the page with positive ratings, briefly putting it at five stars with more than 7,000 reviewers before Google scrubbed the inflated reviews as invalid3. On August 9, Twitter user @takiren7 posted a photo of the line of new customers outside Home Taco Bar, which collected over 6,800 likes and 2,280 retweets in three days3.

Fan creations spread beyond Twitter to Pixiv, Nico Nico Seiga, Instagram, and TikTok, all tagged with either #江ノ電自転車ニキ or 龍の口の騒乱, a name coined on Nico Nico Pedia riffing on the nearby Tatsunokuchi (Dragon's Mouth) landmark3. Japanese commentators framed the whole thing as the "Reiwa-era Namamugi Incident," nodding to the 1862 clash in which samurai attacked British travelers near Yokohama6.

Timeline

2021-08-05

Around 10:50 p.m., Enoden's 305 formation makes its test run and the cyclist rides alongside at Tatsunokuchi crossroad; @fmk_msfea uploads the 45-second confrontation clip.

2021-08-06

@mayamakodomo reposts the deleted video; japan-railway.com and J-Cast publish coverage, and the repost climbs past 16,000 retweets by 9:30 p.m.

2021-08-06

A YouTube commenter identifies the cyclist as Dylan, owner of Home Taco Bar, triggering a Google Reviews brigade and a counter-brigade of positive ratings.

2021-08-09

Twitter user @takiren7 posts a photo of customers lining up at Home Taco Bar, drawing more than 6,800 likes in three days.

How to Use This Meme

Edits typically isolate the cyclist's left-arm-raised silhouette against the Enoden train and treat him as the protagonist, with the surrounding photographers framed as the antagonists. Common conventions include recutting the clip over triumphant anime openings, pasting the pose into famous shonen fight panels, or redrawing it as original illustrations tagged #江ノ電自転車ニキ on Pixiv and Twitter3. The incident is often referenced in text as "the Reiwa-era Namamugi Incident," a joke comparing it to the 1862 samurai attack on British riders6.

Frequently Asked Questions