Initial D is a wildly popular series in Japan and has recently become popular in America. What started as a cult classic manga comic led to a widely successful anime series, and later a blockbuster live action movie. The movie stars very well known Hong Kong movie stars being Anthony Wong, Edison Chen, Shawn Yue, Chapman To, Jay Chou and Kenny Bee. Rounding up the cast is Japanese Anne Suzuki (from The Returner) and Taiwanese R&B prince; Jay Chou.
Set in the late 1990s in Japan's Gunma Prefecture, Initial D focuses on the world of illegal Japanese street racing, where all the action is concentrated in the mountain passes (called Tōge) and never in cities nor urban areas, and the drift racing style is emphasized in particular.The story is centered around the Japanese prefecture of Gunma, more specifically on several mountains in the prefecture and in and their surrounding cities and towns. Although some of the names of the locations the characters race in have been fictionalized all of the locations in the series are based on actual locations in Gunma Prefecture.
The series follows the adventures of Takumi Fujiwara (Tak), an eighteen year old who helps his father run a tofu shop by making deliveries every morning to a hotel on Akina with his father's Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-APEX. or "Hachi-Roku" (AE-86). It is revealed that Tak has been driving on Mt. Akina every morning to deliver tofu to the summit 5 years before he even had his license. As a result his skills as a driver are unsurpassed even in adverse weather conditions.
Initial D can be credited to bringing awareness to the motorsport called drifting where people perform controlled slides with their cars to get them through corners quicker. You want drifting? You get loads of it and they are a sight to behold. The drifts were executed by stuntmen from Hong Kong and Japan.
Chapman To did a great job in the movie despite playing what amounts to the same characters that he's played in countless Hong Kong movies. His character Itsuki Tachibana is the jester of the movie. I neglected to mention this earlier but this movie is a hell of a funny movie and Chapman To provides most of the laughs.
It would be a sin for me not to mention Anthony Wong's acting in the movie. He is an amazing actor. Sometimes you wonder why the world is so unfair because if it was fair he would be an international movie star by now. Anthony is known to be very serious with his craft. So much so he got himself perpetually drunk while acting because that's the state his character is in for the whole movie. Lastly if anyone can sell cigarettes, Anthony Wong is the man... the way he smokes in the movie... coolness personified :)
Please, Please, Please do yourself a favor and watch Initial D.
