Anime TV Online - Initial D Review

^{Initial D} is a street racing anime that made it's debut in 1998 and it's so successful it already goes on four seasons, several OVA and even a live action film. It's production changed hands from several companies - started with Studio Gallop, then Pastel, Frontline and OB Planning - but it's core is the same: the great Initial D manga by Shuichi Sigeno!

Now, watching this anime really had an interesting effect in me. Visually Initial D is an ugly anime. I mean, the drawings of everything but the cars (and specially the character designs) are... well, ugly! (to put it more gently, we could say it's a unique drawing style which will take some time for the viewer to get used to ^_^')

So I frowned a little at this show when I started watching it. Yes, the Cars where superbly realistic. But I'm not that much of a car lover, I don't feel the 'Need for Speed' every time I'm driving and the goddamn characters were plain horrible!

However... there is something about Initial D. It has a special energy of it's own... I saw an episode and aesthetically I was not impressed, but something inside me made me want to watch another episode... and another... and another... And I ended up viewing the whole show! Feverishly!

Why? Well, after thinking a little about it I guess what really hooked me was the speed of the action, the amazing EuroBeat soudtrack of Initial D and the interesting story that really makes you feel the rush of adrenaline in virtually all the episodes you watch.

Initial D deals about the illegal street racing scene in Japan. It follows a young genius of driving - Takumi Fujiwara - as he begins his first drifts with an old but incredibly charismatic (yes, cars can have charisma, believe me) Toyota AE86 and eventually steps up to being a recognized king of the mountain roads.

What really caught my interest as viewer is seeing how Takumi changes through time in his relationship with his car and driving. From an apathic twerp at first Takumi, carefully induced by his father Bunta (also an awesome driver), starts to feel the passion for road racing and begins loving and learning all about cars.

He (and us by the way) start learning really a lot about all the intricacies of cars and it's tuning (so it's educational, folks!), but what's absolutely awesome is the amazing stunts that you see Takumi pulling with a really old Toyota and how he can go against the odds and win to better and more powerful vehicles!

Besides that, Takumi is 18 years old teenager, just as his friends and Initial D doesn't just focus on cars. Smartly it delivers a lot of sub-plots where it approaches several things that trouble your average teen - especially girls. You'll get hooked on some of the drama I guarantee you, because this isn't the normal easy going romance. You'll notice a lot of complex reactions to love in this anime which also adds to it's uniqueness.

And, suprise, suprise, when the show reaches fourth stage you'll notice that the overall graphics improves tenfold, which makes it even a more pleasurable viewing. Along with it's hardcore music I'm sure it will put your heart beating faster!

TokyoPop, the original owner of Initial D license, due to the anime success decided to release an "americanized" version of it. It changed some character names to make it sound more 'cool'. Like, Takumi became Tak O.O Also they changed all the superb Eurotrack tunes for Hip-Hop and Rap tracks (I guess they wanted it to be more similar to movies like Fast and Furious).

So it got cooler right? W R O N G! I hate that version and it's not gonna be the one I'll share with you down below. I'm sure you can find it on your own, but trust me, the original japanese version is way better!