All The Announcements from Anime NYC 2024

MF Ghost Is Still for the Car Tech Superfans

ANN's coverage of Anime NYC 2024 sponsored by Yen Press and Ize Press!

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It's hard to describe the chokehold that Initial D had on some of us '90s kids. It was this… honestly, ugly, goofy show that convinced an entire generation of nerds that street racing was the stuff of legends, that heroes were born in the early-morning hours of tofu delivery, and that drifting old 'Rollas was the pinnacle of cool. It made drifting cool even before Justin Lin reinvigorated the Fast and Furious franchise with Tokyo Drift ("I wonder if you know, how they live in Tokyo?"). It hooked everyone on Eurobeat and introduced a whole new gaggle of fans to the sonic magic of Dave Rogers. But it was a lightning in a bottle. Try as you might, you can't recapture the essence of what made that show so cool. Of course, you can add new cars. Of course, you can update the technology and put drones on the rail of every racer (that's pretty cool). But the more advanced the show becomes, the more you lose that je ne sais quoi of too-shiny CG cars and the scrappy nature of one of anime's best underdogs.

MF Ghost first burst onto the scene in 2017 as a manga from original Initial D creator Shūichi Shigeno. Meant as a sequel, it retains much of the aesthetics seen near the end of Initial D's run but creates a world where these cars and their internal workings are almost whispered stuff of legends. The series, which was adapted to an anime in 2023, takes place in a near-future world where car travel has been replaced by self-driving electric cars. But, of course, nothing will ever replace the beating heart of street racing.

The series imagines an organization called MFG, started by Initial D's Ryosuke Takahashi (the famous leader of the Akagi RedSuns and the driver of the Mazda RX-7 FC3S), which still races with internal combustion cars. The underdog? Another driver with a Toyota 86, of course—Kanata Katagiri/Rivington. He was trained at a UK racing school and learned to drift from the best—the tofu man, Takumi Fujiwara.

It's worth noting that this series has no problem diving straight into the weeds with car talk. The season premiere at Anime NYC is littered with the same detailed car-enthusiast exposition as the first season. The supporting cast of characters, who serve as the Greek chorus of racing analysis, eagerly follow every driver's run through this leg of the race. Ren, the love interest, plays the part of the audience, tossing lay-up questions that her dad can answer about the cars.

If viewers are expecting something big and splashy to mark the season premiere, this won't fit the bill. It's just a direct continuation of the events from season one, which are already paced such that it sometimes feels like one very long race punctuated with engine trivia. This episode starts with Kanata's race through the Lake Ashinoko GT, which includes a segment where the roads are slick from Mt. Fuji's volcanic ash. Immediately following his run, in which he's able to cling onto a qualifying position in his 86, the episode jumps to the next racer, Michael Beckenbauer in his Porsche 718 Cayman GTS. It's still a little laughable that Kanata's 86 GT is meant to hold its own against a stable of supercars. Still, we're meant to believe that the power of drifting, careful driving, and scrappiness will triumph over millions of dollars of precision engineering.

The pacing of MF Ghost can be a little dull at times, and this season opener is no exception. It's better when it can be binged, as many of the races bleed into each other. It also slows down when it focuses on a racer that viewers may not care about. As the episode shifted to Beckenbauer, people in the audience started leaving. It's a hard premiere to watch after the attention-grabbing Yakuza Fiancé that played immediately before MF Ghost. Don't get me wrong—MF Ghost will appeal to exactly the crowd of viewers who already happen to love MF Ghost, but flashy it is not. This season premiere is not much different from a mid-season episode, and asking those potentially unfamiliar with MF Ghost to sit through an episode about horsepower may be a bit much.

As for fans who may be unfamiliar with MF Ghost but grew up loving Initial D, does it spark the same joy? Maybe at times. It's not quite the same, although it still packs a pumping soundtrack and includes plenty of eye-popping racing. It's missing some of the original heart and that small town, tofu shop magic that made the original so lovable. Kanata is cool, but he's no Takumi. His 86 GT is a fun little dark horse in the field of Lamborghinis and Ferraris, but some of that true underdog magic has been lost. There is still a good amount of cheese, though—that much hasn't changed. Beckenbauer's race may have driven attendees out of the room, but those who stayed got a good chuckle out of the absurdity of his fine-tuned machine barely lagging behind the ghost of one of his competitors. There's just less to cheer about this time around, unless you're really, really into cars.