PixlBit

BaD#20

Hiya everyone, how are you? Raise up your volume (I'm serious, do it) because today I'm gonna talk about one of my favorite anime series of all time; Initial D

I remember watching it when I was a kid. Not sure if it was on Toonami, but I remember I saw it on tv. Years later I managed to catch up with it again thanks to streaming services. The anime is basically about drift racing down mountain passes at night. Or touge. Well that's a simple description of it. In reality it is an anime about a high school student named Takumi Fujiwara who delivers tofu at night to a hotel in Mt. Akina in a car, an AE86 Sprinter Trueno, owned by his dad, who was secretly a real great racer back in his day.

In reality, Takumi's dad, Bunta, has secretly been molding Takumi into a great race car driver, by letting Takumi do these deliveries. Unfortunately for this, rumors start circling around about the fastest car in the mountain pass, a Sprinter Trueno. Many can't believe that a Trueno is the fastest car in the downhill because it is a very underpowered car. Suddenly, racers from all over start coming to Mt. Akina to challenge the car in a race. It's funny because Takumi has no interest in cars or racing, but it eventually grows on him and opens a new world to him.

                           

There's 5 seasons, one of them is a movie and well there's 6 called Stages, like season one is First Stage. But the last one only has 4 episodes which I'll talk about later on. As well as various movie spin-offs that focuses on other characters, a live-action movie, and various arcade games. The series was originally a manga series. It's really popular in Japan. Keiichi Tsuchiya known as the Drift King even helped supervise the manga/anime. He even has a cameo in the series too.

The cgi for the cars got better as each stage progressed. The cgi on First Stage looked like an early PS2 era game but still a great watch.

First Stage, well I pretty much described it above. Basically racers learn about the fastest racer on Mt. Akina which is the Sprinter Trueno and they all come to Akina to challenge it.

Second Stage takes place after the events of First Stage Stage. This time around, a new team named Emperor is racing and defeating teams around the area and it seems like Mt. Akina is next on their list.

Third Stage is a movie that takes place after Second Stage and this time, Takumi has to face the son of his father's rival who is also rumored to be a skilled racer in his own right. Not only that, but Takumi must also face with some really important decisions in his life. The girl he loves and the prospect of joining an up and coming racing team lead by one of the most talented racers around.

Fourth Stage takes place after Third Stage and here we see Takumi in Project D along with Keisuke Takahashi, a former opponent that Takumi raced in First Stage as well as the younger brother of Ryosuke Takahasi, leader of Project D. Here the bar is set high as the competition is tougher than what Takumi was used to back in Akina.

Without giving too much away, Fifth Stage takes place after Fourth Stage obviously, with Takumi having progressed on a much bigger stage racing with Project D racing against other teams in different areas of Japan. The stakes are higher too as the racers they are up against are far more tougher than any of their past opponents. Everyone on the team has a role to play as well as a demon of Ryosuke's past comes back to haunt him. Fifth Stage was one of the few, if not, the only time I had to watch it as a sub because it never got a dub.

           

I freaking love this series. I think First Stage had the best episodes in my opinion, but Fifth Stage comes close. The music is fantastic, obviously second to First Stage, but the music is so good. If you don't know, besides the cars, this anime is famous for its music as the music is chosen to help set up what's currently going on in certain parts of the race. Or feeling of the race if you will. Yes the music is licensed music but it's not popular chart topping music. The music is known as Eurobeat but it's really good and helps you get pumped. And obviously the look of the cars. They simply look amazing. I thought the look peaked in Fourth Stage, but they surpassed it with Fifth Stage.

                        

Should you watch the series? Well of course, I highly recommend it. If you're interested, Funimation has First Stage, both as a dub and sub on their youtube page. Various people have also uploaded the rest too. Just a warning, once you watch one episode, you'll be hooked and you keep want to watch more and more. And yes, there's more story than just racing in the series, but I can't give too much away. I used gifs because still images don't do the post justice. All the first 4 gifs are from First Stage, everything else is from Fifth, except that last one. Hope you also enjoyed the music I got working on the post which is from the anime itself and it's 14 minutes long :P

So that's it for now, so thanks for reading and...