Initial D
The car anime: tofu runs at 4 a.m. turn Takumi into the touge legend nobody asked for. The AE86, the four links, 82 episodes in rotation on anime services. The most respected machine in any medium.
Cast & Key People
Our Review
One of the most influential anime ever made, and the best car property in any medium. A quiet high school kid named Takumi Fujiwara has been running the same mountain pass at 4 a.m. since he was thirteen, delivering tofu for his old man, and he has unknowingly become the fastest driver on the touge because he never learned to drive slow. That premise sounds like a joke and plays like a sports epic.
The AE86 Trueno, the four links, the gutter run, the milk bottle on the dash: Initial D turned driving physics into mythology and made a generation of racers. The racing is all tension rather than noise, inside voices counting gears, mirror reads, the rival’s tail lights shrinking, and the rival crews, the RedSuns, the Emperors, NightKids, each one a better study of ego than most racing movies manage. The first two seasons run on a 1998 budget, so expect static shots and panning stills between the great moments; Fourth Stage and onward look like the modern version of the dream.
Eighty two episodes across First Stage to Final Stage. Legal streaming for this one is in constant flux, it has rotated through Hulu and Funimation over the years and surfaces on the smaller anime services, so check your usual anime app first before reaching for a DVD box set. If you love cars, and the /DRIVE addiction on this very site proves the taste exists, this is the anime that respects the machine more than any live action film ever has. Eight out of ten, and First Stage’s dated animation costs it the ninth.
