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‘Initial D’ proves a wild ride
with substance and styleThere's something about gigantic machines duking it out that makes many people's hearts throb. Heck, we just love epic battles, period. Hence the immense popularity of anime such as "Dragonball Z" and "Gundam" and all its spinoffs.
Now let's get back to Earth. In the regular world, people love their machines. Pilots baby their planes and racers baby their cars.
It's the latter that is the premise of "Initial D" by Shuichi Shigeno, a 20-plus-volume Japanese comic whose first translated volume made its way stateside late this summer.
Takumi Fujiwara, 18, has been driving since he was 13 (albeit illegally) to make deliveries for the family tofu shop. His best friend, Iggy, loves racing and dreams of the day he can join the Akina Speed Stars, a local racing group.
Enter the Red Suns, a group from a neighboring city led by the famed Takahashi brothers, intent on spreading their name throughout Japan. Chance leads Tak to challenge the Red Suns' second-best, Keisuke Takahashi, on the steep downhill pass through Mount Akina.
Tak's car is an Eight Six -- a 1980s-era Toyota Corolla -- which the experienced racers scorn as an antique lacking the horsepower to take on their souped-up cars. But Tak's years of driving -- and subtle training by his racing-legend father have made him develop a technique that allows him to navigate the hairpin mountain curves at top speed, and he emerges victorious.
Things shift into high gear when word of his unlikely victory spreads, leading other top racers to challenge this unknown.
The beginning of "Initial D" moves as slow as the H-1 on a Friday rush hour, but the pace definitely gets ripping by the end of the first volume. Shigeno has translated the races well into still drawings. His rather dirty style accentuates the dizzying speed and power of the cars and gets your heart pumping at the excitement.
Although "Initial D" is full of racing jargon, it's easy enough for a non-devotee to understand. The racers' obvious passion about the sport touches the wilder side of us, and it's hard not to get an adrenaline rush when the enthusiasts extol the virtues of various cars with distinct awe in their words.
On the other end is Tak, whose quiet, unaffected driving style makes him more impressive and commands a kind of respect. He slowly gets revved up by his victories, and Tak changes from an indifferent delivery boy to a racer bent on maintaining his pride.
Serious underpinnings keep "Initial D" from being a simple crash-and-bash story. There's Red Suns leader Ryosuke Takahashi's calculating analyses of drivers' racing styles and his vast knowledge of cars. And there's Tak's budding romance with a classmate, Natsuki, who in turn has her own secret.
This avoids the characters being upstaged by their larger-than-life cars, which are as much stars of story as are the people.
The translated "Initial D," published by TokyoPop, is in its third volume and is in the original right-to-left format, which might be hard to grasp at first.
Another thing that may throw off some readers is the frequent onomatopoeias in huge Japanese characters splashed across the panels during the races. All you need to know is they're meant to imitate engine sounds and speeding cars, the equivalent of "screeech" and "vrooom!"
Some typos may trip up your enjoyment, but those are only slight speed bumps as you'll probably be eagerly blazing through the manga too fast to really notice.
The manga's next volume is scheduled to be released in January 2003. Fans will just have keep their engines idling until then.
Wilma Jandoc covers the universe
of video games, anime, and manga for
the Star-Bulletin. She can be emailed at
wjandoc@starbulletin.com
