Overtake!

This racing-themed anime in 2023, I'm really looking forward to this anime, because I'm bored with anime with Isekai themes or similar.

But unfortunately when I saw each of the characters, I was very disappointed, especially for the characters named Harunaga and Komaki It makes me disgusted to see him, starting from his style of speaking and body movements that resemble a woman.
This also applies to other characters, like Asahina whose style is cool, and there are many more characters that make me lazy to watch.

More or less like that, I can't express much about this anime, so I decided to Mix feelings for this anime, ... You can watch it if you really like racing, but don't get your hopes up, because the racing is just for decoration, and mostly filled with conversation.

This isn't a particularly bad anime, but it's so uninteresting that if I continued watching it, I would get bored out of my mind, and that's why I'm dropping on episode 7.

While this anime doesn't do anything particularly bad, it also doesn't exceed any expectations, it always stay on the safe zone doing just the minimum in all regards without taking any risks.
For example, the drama doesn't put anything on risk, everything is about how characters personally feel in the immediate moment. So the drama never goes beyond something that a character could easily work with and solve without much of a problem. Sometimes the ... show tries to present a threat that could evolve into a tangible drama, like a race the protagonist knows can be very dangerous and all, but in the end nothing happens and the show returns to the safe zone. Because of all this safe playing, there isn't much impact overall and even what is good about this show seems intentionally handicapped.

I'll be short. This isn't a racing anime. There is no motosport or racing moment.

This anime is categorized as Racing Anime, but there is no race in this story, the point is: someone that generally want to watch a racing anime, is because he/she is a car lover, and want to see real or fantasy racing, depend on the theme of the anime, but generally want to hear stuff related to motosport, engine or driving technique and skill. Take Initial D for example, for sure there is love and other things involve, to create more emphasis, but 9 episodes on 10, are people racing on ... the street, with different animation of people driving, and a lot of talking about engine technicalities or about driver's skill.

This isn't a Racing Anime, this is a Drama anime, a good one, no doubt; the story is actually nice, a solid 6, drawing and audio are fine, CGI not that much, but it's a low series anime; a lot of drama, but not racing involved. If it was categorized as Drama only, it would be a solid 6 for me.

But, the fact is, i couldn't care less for the photographer, yes, bad things append, but where are the car's moment, engine take apart, driving situation etc? Engine parts lying around on the shop, Haruka and Koutarou taking things apart and setting up, Futoshi talking about driving tactics and planning tires to use, watching weather for conditions, etc.
If my desire was to see a drama anime, i would choose a drama anime! Like anyone.

I'm not giving a 4, because i actually see worse stuff this season, and this one is watchable and nice, but not in point with the theme.
There is no problem with people giving a higher vote, they just need to understand that this isn't a racing anime, because if someone is watching for new stuff and searching for a racing anime, something like Initial D, Wangan Midnight and came across this one, he/she would be a lot disappointed after few episodes, thinking it would be similar, reading good stuff on the review or seeing a high number vote.

Baited by car racing. Show turned into BL.

While there are racing elements, it's minimal, there are multiple episodes you never even see a race car, instead you get listen to the bitching of a photographer. The car parts are not bad, but it's not worth it as the rest is garbage, and unfortunately the non car related episodes are the majority, there are like 3 short races.

I've tried to give this one a chance but it just keeps missing, I should have dropped it when it was clear they don't want to focus on races.

The CGI is not bad, but I wouldn't call it ... good either, though it's probably more to do with directing, Initial D early seasons had absolutely horrible visuals, but still managed to look good. The art is ok, though I personally dislike this style.

I don't think I would have picked this up at all if not for it pretending to be about racing.

Aims for the stars, misses and shoots itself in the eye. I respect this show for trying. I judge it by how it actually performs, and it performs poorly.

Obviously, this series exists because someone behind it is passionate about motor racing. If you want to see some car racing... go watch actual cаr racing competitions. Stories about sports can’t just be about sports, they have to be actual stories to justify their existence. There are multiple ways to achieve that. It can be Cute Girls Doing Sports. It can be sports-themed battle shounen about Friendship, Effort, Victory. It can be over-the-top camp where the fate ... of the universe is decided by a match of children’s card game. The way Overtake! chooses to go about it is human drama about people involved with car racing. And the drama writing of this show is a failure. In a rather unique way, too – every character is a sociopath, but the story has no self-awareness about this and doesn’t consistently write them as sociopaths. It’s the lack of self-awareness and consistency that is the actual problem, I can’t care about characters whose actions and motivations are lolrandom without being meant as such.

Examples:

One of the two protagonists is a photojournalist. His backstory (revealed in the first episode in a decent showing of indirect storytelling) is that he published a photo of people dying in front of him, got canceled on Twitter for it, and now has PTSD over it, literally shaking and sweating if he as much as points a camera at a person. And this is gibberish. It looks fine if you don’t think about it because all the individual parts make sense on their own, but altogether it’s bullshit.
First, the character didn’t get traumatized by someone dying in front of his eyes. He only got traumatized by people disapproving of the photo on social media. So he’s a sociopath (go watch the Nightcrawler movie, it’s exactly about this premise). I mean, I get what they were going for - publishing an insensitive photo was a shameful display, making the entire profession of photojournalism lose face, so he atoned by committing honorable [career] sudoku via not taking photos of people anymore. He’s still a sociopath who only cares whether the public thinks he did something wrong rather than whether he actually did something wrong.
The real issue is the wanton and tasteless tacking of PTSD onto this mess. PTSD isn’t a magic wand that generates free drama for scriptwriters. It’s an actual thing that happens to actual people. If the character couldn’t film people because he was haunted by the dead he saw through a lens that one time, that would make sense. If he couldn’t use social media because he was haunted by people telling him to KYS there, it would also make sense. Cyber-bullying PTSD triggered by an act of filming people does not make sense. It’s not how it works. It’s bullshit. Just don’t make it PTSD, there is no reason why it can’t just be the guy doesn’t want to film people anymore because he had fucked up by filming people. PTSD here is a frivolous attempt to get free drama points.

Another character is the previous guy’s ex-wife/editor-in-chief. The guy fell apart due to that canceling incident, and that’s why she left him. Over the course of the show, the protagonist gets his groove back, and she seemingly starts falling for him again. So, she divorced the guy when he was at his lowest and needed support, and wants to get him back now he’s successful again. Yeah, she’s a sociopath. And once again, this is not the issue, the issue is that after the divorce she maintained the same emotionally, physically, and professionally close relationship with him. Basically, she didn’t actually divorce him. What is even the point? It’s like the authors wanted the get back together with an ex-wife plot, but didn’t have the balls to have the ex-wife be antagonistic to the main character at any point, lest the audience would deem her evil.

The second male protagonist is a racer, his subplot is a generic “dead parent’s footsteps” cliche. This is not about him, it’s about his rival/foil character from a different team. That rival crashed into the protagonist during try-out races, tanking his career prospects, it was entirely his own fault, yet he can’t stop seething at the protagonist, blaming him for it. For the third time, this guy is a sociopath. And for the third time, this is not the issue, the issue is that he isn’t written like one and doesn’t act like one in other situations. It’s like watching some kind grandma from a slice-of-life show start screaming about Jewish conspiracies, it’s bafflingly out-of-character.

Even the minor side characters can’t stop being sociopaths for at least 5 minutes. Like a “playboy” whose entire shtick is a passive-aggressive assertion of how much better than everyone he is, or an advertiser who is like, “Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t take this job, so I tricked you to come here under a false pretense, and I already paid your boss, so you have to do it.”

4/10 for “this show belongs in DSM-5 or something.”