Two Car

If I had to describe TwoCar in a word, it would be frustrating.

While I am happy to see a racing anime that isn't just an angst-ridden teenage boy completing the Shonen Hero quest by car, TwoCar never quite lived up to my expectations with mediocre racing and a sloppy plot.

First off, it isn't a racing series the same way Initial D or Capeta is. A lot of the wheel-to-wheel racing was just flat-out mediocre. While the riders made realistic motions, the bike models always looked a size too big for the environments. Initial D figured out how to make decent racing sequences back ... in 2004, so there's no excuse for this in 2017.

TwoCar is really an anime about the riders and it's not successful at that either. The main girls do little more than bicker over a man they can't have, it pretty much hand-waves an abusive relationship, and we know little about the other riders, since the "explore a team's backstory" plot is abruptly dropped halfway through the series.

If you're thinking the series reverts to the status quo within one or two episodes, you would be right. The frustrating thing about TwoCar is that every week with a strong episode would be followed up with one or two mediocre episodes which would undo the progress made in a formulaic manner. We open with the main girls Yuri and Megumi fighting, then switch to a team of the weeks' backstory, then back to the present, then to lesbian power couple Mao & Hitomi, then back to the team of the weeks' backstory, before going back to another Yuri and Megumi fight. Roll credits. That about describes the middle block of episodes up until episode 9.

It's a damn shame, since there's some good human drama. The teams we do get to see each have their own dynamics between members. There's a nice twist involving the man the main girls are chasing and I loved how the Mao & Hitomi skits would subvert our expectations for anime couples "in love".

Still, TwoCar does enough right to justify a >5 score. It respects the craft - it had quite a few clever nods to racing like the twins from Motegi (Twin Ring Motegi circuit) or rolling out the Gulf Racing livery - yet it approached the topic in an accessible manner without being condescending. The engine notes sounded crisp and had the necessary rasp expected from a motorcycle engine. As someone who's well-versed in auto racing but not motorcycle racing, I found it a nice jumping off point to spark my interest in learning more.

Credit must be given for the non-racing art - character models are tasteful and well-drawn, plus the backgrounds are lush and do a good job putting a Japanese twist on the Isle of Man TT environments. Bonus points go to picking an actual place where this could theoretically be held - volcanic activity be damned.

Ultimately, TwoCar is frustrating because it has the basic ingredients to be "good" but it never quite rises to the occasion. Instead, it chooses to be content with spinning its tires in place. It's a high-6/ low-7 series in my book.