Initial D (頭文字D, Inisharu Dī?) is a manga by Shuichi Shigeno which has been serialized in Kodansha's Young Magazine since 1995.
The anime and manga focus on the world of illegal Japanese street racing, where all the action is concentrated in the mountain passes and never in cities nor urban areas, and the drift racing style is emphasized in particular. Keiichi Tsuchiya helps with editorial supervision. The story is centered around the Japanese prefecture of Gunma, (mostly Shibukawa where Takumi's home is) more specifically on several mountains in the kanto area and in and their surrounding cities and towns. Although some of the names of the locations the characters race in have been fictionalized, all of the locations in the series are based on actual locations in Japan.
Set in the late 1990s in Japan's Gunma Prefecture, the series follows the adventures of Takumi Fujiwara, an eighteen year old who helps his father run a tofu store by making deliveries every morning to a hotel on Akina with his father's Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-APEX (AE86). It is revealed that Takumi has been driving on Mt. Akina every morning to deliver Tofu to the summit five years before he even had his license. As a result his skills in mountain racing were honed, and is able to drive under adverse weather conditions.
In aditions of history, this manga, and specially the anime becomes very popular in Japan and outside, the reason for the suceess of the serie was the real animation base up on real cars, with the real names, equipment and spec's, original engine sounds, style, features, capabilites and maniobrality ifself on cars, and the use of real driving techniques like leeft foot braking, use on rally competitions and the pride of automovil culture on japan the drifting techniques for the touge roads.
The roads are based on the real touge pass from the mount Haruna, in the series appears under the name "Akina", located at the gunma, eastern Honshu, Japan. The location are exactly like in the anime and are use for the local drifters.
The use of massive JDM cars in the anime show us the greatest cars from Japan like the nissan Skyline gt-r, Mazda rx-7, Mazda miata, Suzuky cappuccino, Subaru impreza, Mitsubishi lancer evolution, Honda civic type r, Honda s2000, Nissan silvia for mentioned a few, but the most popular of that cars was the litlee but powerful toyota corolla sprinter trueno GT-APEX, with the mitic 4A-GEU engine under the hood of the chassis called AE86 for Toyota designation codes, previusly used on Japan for rally races, gt-races, even drag, but its specially used for drifting and the most important Keiichi Tsuchiya has his own achi-roku means "86" on japanese.
Its so popular the AE86, because after 23 years was produced the price for one of this are between 1,000 Us dollars - 5,000 Us dollars in normal conditions with a few bolt-on mods, and they are still used on road races, rally, time attack, and drifting of course.
The anime its very popular too in the world of arcade games, in Ocaido, Japan, on one of the Sega Arcade's saloons had a full cars simulator using a complete corolla, rx-7 and impreza, and front of the cars are 90 inch monitor for living the initial d experience.
The anime its divide in fourth stages, and three special editions, the manga its still publicated, and the team its working on his fifth stage, they have a movie too, call lived action from those anime series becomes to the big screen, Initial D was released on June 23, 2005 in several Asian markets including Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China, where it topped the box office in its first week, was available in the US, in some America regions and European markets.
The funny about the movie its the character are chinesse people not japanese people, the film development in the same places at the anime, the movie take please in Moun Haruna in Japan, uses some of the cars like the Nissan Skyline gt-r R32, the Lancer evolution's, the mazda's rx-7 the FC and FD generations, the Silvia S13 and the corolla, so please enjoy the anime and the movie are really good, and make you dreaming a lot.
And but the way, anyone want a Initial D pic like this, Takumi and his corolla, event the master Tsuchiya had one, me tooo, its a miata but is white, just for funn.
