Mar 9, 2019
As a car guy who both love cars and watch anime, this is probably the most realistic a car anime could get. I'm probably gonna get a lot of hate towards this, but I would definitely watch this over Initial D any day, and I love Initial D. The determining factor?
Realism.
Without giving too many spoilers, the story is about a young boy named Akio Asakura. One night, him and his friend were out on the Wangan Highway with two girls when suddenly, a black Porsche pulls up from behind and completely leaves him in the dust. Baffled by how fast the car was going,
...
he tried to keep up the pace and tried to race the Porsche. Little did he know, he found out that the black Porsche was titled the "King of Wangan".
We follow through Akio's life as he finds an S30 (240z) in the junkyard and immediately falling in love with it. though there was one downside about the car. Disregarding everyone's warnings of not rebuilding the car, Akio realizes what a devil of the car was, thus rebirthing "Devil Z".
The characters in this anime were overall very amusing and fun to watch, as everyone seems to be fascinated by this demon of a car. Since everyone's so interested by the car, we also get to see the reasoning behind their fascination of the car, and all the characters just end up being very tight-knit to Akio.
In the beginning of this review, I said that I would get a lot of hate for writing this due to the fact that I preferred this over Initial D, but let me explain. Though some people would argue and say that the two anime are very different, with one being revolved around drifting and this anime revolving around speed and tuning cars. That's why I like it so much. It not only shows racing culture at a premature-mature level, it also showcases tuning culture and having/wanting the need to go fast to outrun the opponent on what seems to be a never ending highway. Initial D just seemed too unrealistic for me as it felt like Takumi had some bullshit wins along the way. Takumi being undefeated, or almost undefeated, just makes it seem that there was no realism involved behind the show. It was always get into a downhill/uphill battle, and win. Simple as that. But in Wangan Midnight, their strong point was that when somebody knew they couldn't keep up, they would tune their cars and try to reach their dream goal of roaring through the highways at 300km/h, and thats where it got me.
Sidenote: If you ever have a chance, go through your local arcade or mini golf place and try to look for this game. This game is absolutely fantastic, and such a fun game to play, as racing with your friends at 300km/h in Japan seems like a never-ending time of joy. I've spent at least damn over $100 for a car card in this game, and I hold 3 maxed out cars (R32, AE86, and RX7 for anybody wondering. Probably not).
Hope this review helped! If you have any doubts, just give it a shot. If you enjoy the tuner/racing culture, you'll definitely enjoy this anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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