Bonus Chapter at 300 PS
Support me at patreon.com/CulturedOne and read 50 Advanced Chapters
_______________________
As the story continued, Initial D introduced a concept that was quite fresh and exhilarating for the readers.
The culture of mountain pass challenges and team rivalries. For instance, the Akagi RedSuns, in their quest to dominate the entire region, traveled from city to city to challenge the local street-racing teams. If the local team lost, they were forced to hand over their team sticker, which the RedSuns would cut in half and stick onto their own cars like a trophy.
It was exactly like a hunter pulling the teeth of their prey to fashion into ornaments. Defeating the opponent wasn't enough; they had to desecrate the remains, displaying the shattered logos on the cars they used for battle so everyone could see exactly who had fallen before them.
Rento felt his blood boil with indignation just reading about it. To make matters worse, the opposing team featured two absolute "kings of arrogance." There was the younger brother, Keisuke, a bleached-blonde hothead with a permanent scowl, and the older brother, Ryosuke, a cool, handsome strategist who radiated an aura of effortless superiority.
If these guys were on the protagonist's side, that kind of charisma would be amazing.
Unfortunately, they were the enemies of the protagonist's mentors, which effectively made them the ultimate obstacles for the hero himself.
Despite his irritation at the villains, Rento still held out hope for Iketani, the protagonist Takumi's senior at the gas station.
After all, Iketani was the leader of the local team. Surely he had some hidden depth.
"When I'm serious about driving, I don't take passengers in the front seat," Iketani declared, flatly rejecting Itsuki's request to ride along during a practice run against Keisuke.
Rento actually let out a short laugh at that. "Wow, Iketani is actually kind of cool. If he's talking like that, he must be the real deal."
Without even realizing it, Rento had become completely hooked.
Even though he knew absolutely nothing about cars or technical driving, he was on the edge of his seat, eagerly anticipating the clash between the Akina SpeedStars and the RedSuns on the dark slopes of Mount Akina.
This was the true genius of Initial D. In terms of building anticipation and executing the "underdog hero" trope, this manga was a pioneer of the genre. The pacing was relentless. Every new enemy introduced in the early stages felt distinct and left a lasting impression on the reader, from the racing experts of distant passes to the legends of other peaks. While their appearances might be brief in the grand scheme of things, these characters would remain burned into the memories of fans forever.
However, Rento's expectations were quickly shattered. Iketani, the man he thought was a master of the pass, was utterly overwhelmed by the RedSuns on his own home turf. He struggled even to keep the taillights of the enemy car in his sight.
"Itsuki... is racing really that much fun?" Takumi asked with a puzzled expression, looking toward the direction where Iketani had vanished into the darkness.
"Don't you feel your blood pumping at all, Takumi?" Itsuki looked at his friend with a face full of disbelief and exasperation.
Then, the narrative focus shifted, and the role of the protagonist, who had seemed like a mere bystander until now, finally began to move forward.
As Keisuke and Iketani battled on the mountain, the perspective switched to Yuichi, the owner of the gas station. During a phone call with Takumi's father, Bunta, a shocking truth was revealed to the reader. For the past five years, every single night, the person driving the family's tofu delivery car, the AE86, at lightning speeds across the dangerous hairpins of Mount Akina was none other than Takumi himself.
Rento felt a jolt of excitement. The protagonist actually knew how to drive? And he had been doing it for five years since he was a young teenager just to deliver tofu for his father?
Rento instinctively ignored the minor detail that Takumi and his father were technically breaking the law with unlicensed driving. Since Takumi had been doing this for five years as a high schooler, he obviously didn't have a license when he started because he wasn't old enough. But that didn't matter right now. Based on the gas station owner's tone, Takumi wasn't just a driver, he was a master.
The perspective shifted again.
The late-night practice session ended with a crushing defeat for the SpeedStars. They had been completely humiliated on their own mountain.
"What do you think, Brother?" Keisuke asked.
"They're all garbage," Ryosuke replied, his expression cold and indifferent. "Even the backups of our team could win here easily. I won't even bother coming for the official race next week."
The casual, dismissive way the brothers spoke about Iketani and the local team made Rento's teeth ache with frustration.
Those two villains were far too arrogant.
However, the plot had established that tonight was just a friendly practice; the official battle between the two teams was set for the following Saturday. Given how poorly the SpeedStars had performed, next week looked like it was going to be a slaughter.
By this point, Rento was fully immersed in the story. He felt like he was a member of the SpeedStars himself, and the thought of being humiliated on his home turf the following Saturday filled him with a bitter sense of resentment.
Across Japan, many readers of Weekly Prime were likely grinding their teeth in the exact same way.
The RedSuns weren't just looking to win; they were planning to set a record so high that the locals would never be able to dream of breaking it. Rento took a deep breath to calm his racing heart. He didn't know how other people felt, but as someone who had always been prone to getting swept up in fictional worlds, his fingers were gripping the edges of the magazine so hard his knuckles turned white.
He kept reading.
After the humiliating practice session, some of the SpeedStars stayed at the summit to try and familiarize themselves further with the road.
Among those still on the mountain was Keisuke Takahashi, the arrogant younger brother. He was driving his high-performance yellow FD down the mountain pass, enjoying a leisurely run.
Then, in his rearview mirror, a faint pair of headlights appeared. At first, Keisuke assumed the car keeping pace with his FD was a common sports car. But as the vehicle drew closer...
"An AE86? Are you kidding me?"
The look of shock and insult on Keisuke's face was priceless. Rento froze for a second, and then a surge of pure satisfaction rushed through him.
He flipped back a few pages to re-read the conversation between the station owner and Takumi's father, Bunta. The person who had been driving that 86 for five years was Takumi. The manga didn't show the driver's face yet, but there was no need to guess.
"Don't make me laugh! I'll make you disappear in two corners!" Keisuke snarled, slamming his foot on the accelerator.
The artwork in this sequence was breathtaking. The mechanical beast that was the FD was depicted with incredible intensity.
Through masterful storyboarding and linework, the static images transformed into a fluid, high-octane sequence in Rento's mind.
However, Keisuke's rage was destined to be futile.
His high-performance FD was being relentlessly pursued by the "garbage" 86. As they approached a sharp hairpin turn, Keisuke's nerves failed him. He didn't dare take the corner at full speed, fearing he would fly over the guardrail and into the ravine below.
But the 86 behind him didn't slow down.
It charged into the curve at a terrifying speed. First, the tail swung left, then the wheels snapped back to center before swinging right. The car entered a slide, its body carving a smooth, perfect arc at the absolute limit of physics, grazing the edge of the road as it exited the turn at maximum velocity. The 86 vanished into the distance, leaving Keisuke in its dust.
"That's impossible! An inertial drift!" Keisuke slammed on his brakes, staring in shock at the spot where the 86 had disappeared.
Rento was equally stunned. In his mind, his brain had automatically animated the static panels into a vivid sequence of that high-speed drift. How can a car look that cool? he wondered. That old 86 was suddenly the most stylish thing he had ever seen.
In a manga like this, a good plot is essential, but the visual execution is equally vital. In the hands of an inexperienced artist, conveying the dynamic motion of an inertial drift through still images would be nearly impossible.
But the version of Initial D created by Haruto and Shizuru was a masterclass in visual storytelling. Any reader with a shred of spatial imagination could reconstruct the entire sequence in their head. This was the pinnacle of an artist's skill. This was why words alone could never truly capture the essence of a racing masterpiece.
Rento felt his skin crawl with excitement.
He was a guy who didn't even have a driver's license, someone who thought driving was dangerous and had never even wanted to learn, yet at this moment, he was utterly captivated by the dignity and thrill of the mountain pass battles in Initial D.
How can the first chapter be this good?
He gripped the page and flipped it over, eager for more. Then, his entire body went stiff. Written on the final page were the words.
Initial D, Chapter 1: End.