Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Fast Cars, Anime, and Eurobeat
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2546 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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A bit of a shame that there's never been an official English release for Wangan Midnight, i.e. OB Planning's other illegal car racing anime based on an iconic manga from the 90s & 00s (it even ran in the same exact magazine as Initial D!) that was made after Initial D: Fourth Stage, even featuring some of the staff, including the director.
The main difference there is that it's about highway racing instead of mountain drift racing, i.e. it's "Tokyo Xtreme Racer: The Anime"; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if TXR was inspired by the Wangan manga. The Wangan anime got fansubbed back in the day, but otherwise has been completely ignored over time, but it would have fit in perfectly with this topic, I feel. |
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Joe Mello
 Posts: 2261 Location: Online Terminal |
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Having started to watch F1 racing over the past couple years (ESPN simulcasts the British coverage) it makes sense that Overtake is much more personality-driven. Every team has approximately the same cars and resources, so the personnel and their personalities play a more outsized role.
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Rogueywon
Posts: 251 |
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MF Ghost really is a disappointment. Some of the racing scenes are ok, though their pacing is erratic and I'm not a fan of the frequent switches of perspective. Flipping betwen fifteen cars on the circuit is just less exciting than the one-on-one duels of Initial D.
But the biggest problem for me is the dialogue, which is honestly toe-curlingly bad at times. How many times do they need to tell us that their made-up sport has 30 million fans? The characters feel like bland, one-dimensional cutouts. It's a pity, because the early seasons of Initial D had some good, under-stated character writing (albeit this got buried as the show went on). It was a fairly rare depiction of working-class small-town Japan, with characters who (to begin with) attended high school, but whose lives didn't revolve around it. Takumi's relationship with his father was also well portrayed - two introverted, withdrawn people (possibly with some difficulties in their past) who form a tentative relationship through a car. MF Ghost doesn't have any of that, at all. |
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murgleis1
Posts: 44 |
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Contrary to some of the opinions here, I actually like MF Ghost a lot. It goes out of its way to contrast how Kanata is different from Takumi and has a bit of a fish-out-of-water thing going on in reverse. It is fairly rare in anime to have a half Japanese / half white main character to begin with: normally "hafu" characters are used as sideshows in other kinds of stories or the butt of a joke or something if its a comedy.
That being said, I think MF Ghost will come into its own with a bit more time. I don't think enough is out to really judge it one way or the other. |
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The_Daytona_500
 Posts: 75 |
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MF Ghost also has a problem with trying to cram a ton of awful eurobeat down our throats. Eurobeat is all about memes, so back when we had the 90s CG of the early Initial D seasons it worked well, but with MF Ghost using proper models and serious racing, using real music like in the Legend movies would have been a vast improvement. |
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BalmungHHQ
Posts: 393 |
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This is the worst take I have ever heard. Eurobeat music is not "all about memes", it's a great stylistic soundtrack choice for a series like this, and I think it works very well, just as it did in Initial D. |
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MPAndonee
 Posts: 23 |
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Personally, I agree with the assessment that Overtake does a better job of explaining what is going on and in building its characters. I absolutely love the character moments in this show. Easily, for me Overtake is one of the anime of the season.
On the other hand, I personally, don't think that MF Ghost is that bad. Don't get me wrong... I absolutely abhore the fan service in this show. It's completely unnecessary and jarring. But, the show has started to do something that if it continues will be good for it. It took an episode to explain how a few changes on the car can make such a huge difference. If they also took the time to explain the advantages and disadvantages of the other cars. Speed (derived from power) is not always the answer to going faster Initial D had this concept in spades. If MF Ghost does this then it will almost succeed. |
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Takkun4343
 Posts: 1502 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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I haven't seen Overtake!, but based on the positive reception its story and animation has gotten, I'm convinced it's TROYCA's official apology for letting Shinobi no Ittoki make it past the drafting stage.
On the other hand, I am digging MF Ghost, but even I have my issues with it. On-brand for me, it's not the fanservice or the lacking substance to its predecessor in Initial D that I have issue with, but the fact that the first race took five whole episodes to get through, which is kind of sluggish for a one-cour, even if it felt like time was flying with each passing episode of it. Also, how hilarious is it that the Lonely Driver Trio were listed as having cameos in the cast announcements, but one episode remaining and there's still no sign of them? 
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Dark Mac
Posts: 313 |
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Overtake has a truly awful cast, particularly Haruka and Kouya. I hate every moment they're on screen. It takes a lot to make an orphan as unsympathetic as Haruka is, but he truly has zero interesting character traits. Kouya's "traumatized by twitter" backstory is one of the lamest I've seen. The racing animation is pretty crummy too. Probably the worst anime I'm watching this season.
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Takkun4343
Posts: 1502 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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Or maybe TROYCA learned nothing from Ittoki's failures after all! Besides the whole spoiler["inflicting ambiguously fatal wounds on characters then having them die offscreen"] thing, which is pretty hard to do on the regular in an F1 anime. |
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bassgs435
 Posts: 273 |
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Why not watch the show itself instead of trusting some random weirdo on the ANN forums? It's not like this place is new to people hating shows for stupid reasons. I still remember the weirdo yuri puritan who complains about any kind of males in shows Seriosuly, you're changing your opinion because you saw a single person spew (imo baseless) hate? |
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MPAndonee
Posts: 23 |
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Completely agree with this, They should not have taken 5 episodes to finish one race. |
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Takkun4343
Posts: 1502 Location: Englewood, Ohio |
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That's the thing. I don't have an opinion on Overtake!. It could be the one way, like I said. It could be the other way, like I also said. Point is, I won't know until I see it, whenever that may be. (Also, sarcasm. Hard to convey online to total strangers.) |
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WatcherZer
Posts: 274 |
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I found the two series extremely complementary rather than rivalling.
Overtake has a softer tone focussing more on the pit lane action and off track elements (partly due to budget I imagine) while MF Ghost is the reverse and like Initial D before it is almost pure racing action with only a couple of episodes of plot development between races. Like with the music in a club you build the energy with Overtake and then switch to the higher beat Ghost for the pumping. I think the worst take I've seen on MF Ghost is people asking why the races last longer than realtime, well thats quite obvious as you have a dozen drivers to cover usually revolving around three head-to-head rivalries taking place during the race (e.g. the race for 1-3, 4-7 placeing and then the drivers at the back of the pack) and these events are happening concurrently, you couldnt cover it all in realtime without split screen. |
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