Not a lot of people know this, but Initial D is one of my all-time favorite anime out there. Easily in my top ten, quite possibly in my top five. I’ll be the first to say that it’s far from high quality in terms of plot, progression or quality of animation, but when the day is over, there isn’t any other anime that I’ve revisited the status of availability over the span of 18 years, to make sure that I’m caught up to all the episodes.
That’s longer than my interest in Ranma 1/2, Rurouni Kenshin, Kare Kano, Kodomo no Omocha or Neon Genesis Evangelion, all other series that I could say would be up in my top ten. Not many of them had nearly the longevity of Initial D, much less a variety of movies, OVA and live-action adaptations made for them, in spite of them probably being considered bigger traditional classics.
I recently finished watching the series after I discovered that the Fifth and the Final Stage seasons were available; after the cheesy way that the Fourth Stage had concluded, I was eager to see if the series could get back some of the gearhead excitement that defined the series as a whole.
To no real surprise, the last two seasons were by no means blockbusters, as the series in general is nothing really complex – dudes who love driving cars and racing, racing against other dudes who love driving cars and racing. The only things that really change are the competitors to the Project D team, and occasionally the course does too. At first blush, it’s hard to imagine the types of cars that are losing to a Toyota Corolla AE86 or an RX-7 FD3S, but the show surprisingly takes the initiative to explain and justify the mechanics to how such can happen.
It’s nice that the show finally takes the time to delve into Ryosuke Takahashi’s backstory, and why he’s almost creepy obsessed with street racers, and that at the end of the day, there is actually an explanation to what significance the letter D has to the series as a whole, regardless of how weak I might have thought it was.
And it never fails to amuse me of the general ages and personas of all the people who are racing throughout the series, because as the series progresses, the competitors all seem to get older and older, and it seems like there are bunch of middle-aged men who are partaking in what’s basically illegal underground street racing, and taking it extremely, extremely seriously in doing so, with high-performance cars with very expensive modifications, and going to trouble to conceptualize and theorizing driving mentalities and simulations for optimal performance. I mean sure, work ethic in Japan is pretty notoriously high, but at some point, it looks silly that so many grown-ass men are so into street racing.
Ultimately, while Keisuke’s last boss is an NSX, Takumi’s final boss is basically himself – as in a very young boy in a mundane car, but with years of knowledge of the course due to him having to drive it on a regular basis in order to help his mom. And almost like a metaphor and reminder of just how superior mechanical skill and course knowledge trump high performance and strong motors, he’s of course the greatest challenge Takumi will ever face, much like the 25 competitors ahead of him once were.
There were more than a few tacky cringe worthy moments throughout the final season, especially as the series evidently begins winding down, and faces from throughout all the rest of the series all starts making rapid fire cameos and appearances to have their last hurrahs. But Initial D was never known for its cleverness or great storytelling, as much as it was always about racing cars, so it gets a pass on that. I will say that much like I was dissatisfied with the conclusions of Fourth Stage, I do kind of feel similarly to how the finish of Final Stage’s final race went. But what’s done is done, and now the series is officially over.
Initial D sparked a general interest in cars for me, to where I learned a considerable amount of basic car knowledge and maintenance starting from nothing that I still retain to this very day, even long past when the general enthusiasm for them has long passed. The simplicity in the plot, and the fact that I never really had to think that hard made the show enjoyable regardless of if it was 2002, 2010 or 2018, whenever I realized that there were more episodes that I needed to catch up on. And naturally, there comes a point where I realize how much time and care I’d invested into a single series that I hit a point where I have to finish it all out in order to get closure on the series, but I can say with pure honesty that it wasn’t a chore watching the last few episodes, but more like the satisfaction of approaching the end of a long journey.
It’s hard to believe that it’s literally been basically 18 years for me from when I started watching Initial D to when I actually finished it. Given the fact that lots of anime loses steam, loses interest, or simply never finishes, or the fact that I’d kind of grown out of anime nearly a decade ago, it’s almost kind of funny that of all the classic titles that have come and gone throughout the history of anime, for me, it’s Initial D that managed to last the longest among them all.
