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© Shuichi Shigeno, Kodansha/MF GHOST Production Committee
It’s hard to describe the feeling of suffocation Initial D Some of us are 90s kids. It was this…honest, ugly, silly show that convinced an entire generation of nerds that street racing was the stuff of legend, that heroes were born in the wee hours of tofu delivery, and that drifting old “rollas” were the pinnacle of racing. Drifting was cool even before Justin Lin’s resurgence fast and Furious franchise tokyo drift (“I wonder if you know, what kind of life do they live in Tokyo?”). It captivated everyone on Eurobeat and introduced a whole new group of fans Dave Rogers. But this is just lightning in a bottle. No matter how hard you try, you can’t recapture the essence of what makes this show so cool. Of course, you can add new cars. Of course, you could update the technology and put a drone on each racer’s track (which would be pretty cool). But the more advanced the show gets, the more you lose that indescribably over-shiny CG car and the fighting spirit of one of the weakest characters in anime.
MF ghost First appeared in the original comic in 2017 Initial D creator Shigeno Shuichi. As a sequel, it retains much of the aesthetic found near the end. Initial Drun, but created a world in which these cars and their inner workings are almost the stuff of legend. The play was adapted into an animation in 2023. The story takes place in a near-future world where car travel has been replaced by self-driving electric vehicles. But, of course, nothing can replace the heartbeat of street racing.
The series imagines an organization called MFG, whose founder is Initial DRyosuke Takahashi (the famous leader of the Akagi Red Suns and the driver of the Akagi Red Suns) Mazda RX-7 FC3S), still racing against internal combustion engine cars. loser? Of course, there’s another driver behind the wheel of a Toyota 86 – Kanata Katagiri/Rivington. He trained at a racing school in the UK and learned drifting techniques from the best tofu man, Fujiwara Takumi.
Remarkably, this series has no problem diving right into car topics. This season premieres on anime new york Like the first season, it’s filled with detailed exposition from car enthusiasts. The supporting cast, the Greek choir of racing analysts, eagerly follow each driver’s performance on this stage. Lover Ren plays the role of an audience member, asking questions about the car that her father can answer.
If viewers were expecting something big and splashy to mark the season premiere, this doesn’t fit the bill. It’s just a direct continuation of the first season’s events, which were already paced so that it sometimes felt like one long race with engine chores peppered in between. The episode begins with Kanata’s race across the Lake Ashi GT, with a section of the road becoming slick due to volcanic ash from Mount Fuji. He retained his qualifying position in the 86 before jumping to the next driver, Michael Beckenbauer, in a Porsche 718 Cayman GTS. It’s still a bit ridiculous that Kanata’s 86 GT is destined to stand out among the crowd of supercars. Still, we’re supposed to believe that the power of drift, careful driving, and fighting spirit will trump millions of dollars of precision engineering.
rhythm MF ghost It can get a little dull at times, and the season opener was no exception. It’s best to gorge yourself, as many races will bleed each other. It also slows things down when it focuses on racers that the audience may not care about. When the episode switches to Beckenbauer, the audience starts to leave. After striking, this is a tough premiere to watch Like a dragon fiancé Played before MF ghost. Don’t get me wrong–MF ghost will attract viewers who have already fallen in love with MF ghostbut not flashy. The season premiere isn’t too different from the mid-season episode, ask those who may not be familiar MF ghost It might be a little too much to sit through an episode about horsepower.
For fans who may not be familiar with MF ghost But grew up in love Initial Dcan it inspire the same joy? Maybe sometimes. It’s not quite the same, although it still has an uplifting soundtrack and features plenty of eye-popping racing. It’s missing some of the heart of the original and that small town, tofu shop magic that made the original so endearing. Kanata is cool, but he’s not Takumi. His 86 GT was an interesting little dark horse in the Lamborghini and Ferrari realm, but some of the real underdog magic had been lost. There’s still plenty of cheese, though – that hasn’t changed. Beckenbauer’s race may have sent attendees out of the room, but those who stayed laughed at the ghost of his finely tuned machine barely lagging behind one of his competitors. There’s not much to cheer about this time around, unless you really, really like cars.
