Reviews

This is the best Sci-Fi show this season if judging only by its daring answer to how the Japanese car and drifting subculture popularized globally by Initial D could remain relevant in the social-industrial disruption of electric and self-driving car technologies. What shocked me about Initial D as a late fan is its masterful storytelling evident from the very first episode, breaking my preconceptions about the 1998 anime as a Eurobeat meme reference and nothing more. Initial D loses grip after the fourth official race, going downhill into a long stretch of repetition and melodramatic fluff, until it explodes in the final race which, with the narration from the manga absent from the anime, makes the ending one of the greatest finales to a story ever written. Without this context of Initial D, I doubt the average anime fan would find MF Ghost watchable. The original motif of an "obsolete" AE86 manufactured in the '80s destroying shiny '90s cars is mirrored in MF Ghost as a Japanese gas car underdog--a modern version of the AE86--battling modern Lambos (that the author undoubtedly has had plenty of experience with, with how many supercars Initial D sales could afford him). For fans of Initial D, especially fans and enthusiasts of the "ricer" global subculture established by the show, MF Ghost is a low-hanging nostalgic bait to see how the old Initial D characters are doing now.