Anime Review: Wangan Midnight #blogpost

Do you like Initial D? Do you also like Mad Max: Fury Road? Well I have the anime for you! It is called the Wangan Midnight.

Wangan Midnight is more story oriented, deep, and passionate than Initial D. Initial D is calm and analytic. The characters explain to you what just happened during and after the race. Most of the drivers are very chill, and all the rest who aren’t, loses by trying to imitate the main character, brake fading, wasting tires, trying to bump in to the main character and crashing, etc.

Wangan Midnight is quite opposite of this. The main character is obsessed with his car even though it killed the previous owner and tried to kill him twice. You can feel his passion right at the first episode. And all other characters also have a unhealthy amount of obsession with cars, but more on that later. If I could describe Initial D in one line, it would be “exciting drift, boring dialog”. If I could describe Wangan Midnight in one line, it would be “screw having a child, I’m buying a R32 to drive 340kph at Wangan!”. As you can see, the two anime’s target audience is different. Only the diehard car nuts would watch the Wangan Midnight.(someone like us) However, some action fans who aren’t really in to cars might watch Initial D just for the sick drifts.

The manga version of Wangan Midnight was published before Initial D. yes, this predated the Initial D. However, there was no anime version until 2008 because Wangan Midnight is about highway racing, and nobody thought an animated highway race would ever be as exciting as Initial D. Which is very true. Wangan Midnight has way less action than Initial D. But there is one thing Wangan Midnight has that Initial D never dared to have. The Wangan Midnight has a somber aura like the Akira. Initial D always tries to make the story as light as possible. No one knows how all these people got to this place. Wangan Midnight tells you how they got to this place. The main characters have little reason why they race: they are obsessed with the “Devil Z”. (the blue one) The side characters, and this is what I meant by “unhealthy obsession with cars”, they are the reason why I think this anime is better than Initial D. These people are downright pathetic and the anime doesn’t hide that. The Anime will focus on one side character for some episodes and then maybe jump on to another side character or maybe they’ll focus on the main characters. That’s a great idea because watching the same guy racing the same rival will get boring, especially if the race itself happens on a straight line with some occasional bends and traffics. The side characters keep the anime nice and fresh.

One side character ruins his life because he can’t stop buying car parts, something we can relate to, and one side character runs away from loan shark to Wangan every night. A wife left her husband because he wanted to spent their savings on a R32 Skyline. As you can see, these people are very pathetic.

The summary of the main character goes like this. The main finds a nice Datsun 240z. Then he finds out that the car was the legendary “Devil Z”. He meets his rival at the Wangan Highway, and crashes his car during the race. He then later crashes it again, totaling the car. He gets his legendary car fixed by a legendary man who built this car at the first place. He races the fixed car and lived happily ever after. (This is a very brief summary. very.)

read right to left, top to bottom

In conclusion, great anime, great story, but less action. If you watched the Initial D just for the mad skidz then DON’T WATCH THIS. If you liked the Initial D but wished the characters could have expressed their passion more, then you’ll love this.

(I’m really sad because I wrote this yesterday and for some reason the post was not published nor saved. So I had to write it from scratch and I couldn’t remember all the parts. This isn’t as good as what I wrote yesterday and that makes me sad.)
edit: I figured out the problem. I included a banned word.

Future anime reviews: Redline, Porco Rosso, Lupin the third: The Castle of Cagliostro

Should I review Initial D? It is a must watch anime for all car enthusiasts so does it really matter if I review it or not?

Kaede Out