If you're a fan of both car culture and Japanese anime, then odds are you know of the hit series Initial D. Originally a manga first released in 1995, it received its first anime adaptation four years later, plus four additional seasons, multiple OVAs and a film. It is the story of young Takumi Fujiwara being thrust into the street racing world by his friends, navigating challenge after challenge as he decides whether or not his love of driving means something far more.You could say that Takumi is our series protagonist. He first joins the Akina Speed Stars, a local group that races downhill and uphill duels on Mt. Akina. They represent a medium-skill team, while at the very top of the skill/performance ladder is the Akagi Red Suns team. The most skilled drivers on the course, the Red Suns consists of the "White Comet" Ryosuke Takahashi, his younger brother Keisuke, and the energetic Kenta Nakamura.
These three represent the primary rivals to Takumi in First Stage, the first season of the anime. It is through the defeat of these three that Takumi can advance to the "next stage," taking on more powerful opponents. It is through the introduction of these new, more powerful foes that something interesting begins to happen. First, it is the Day in the Limelight Keisuke has at the end of First Stage. And later, things get even more fascinating when we witness that our protagonist, Takumi Fujiwara, is not strong enough to carry the legacy of Mt. Akina on his own.
For a short while in Second Stage, our focus on who we consider the protagonist shifts to both Ryosuke and Keisuke, the two big bad villains of the first season. The two drivers who we wanted to see lose so badly not long before are now the ones carrying our hopes and dreams. This sets things up well for the Third Stage movie, in which Takumi ultimately joins Ryosuke and Keisuke to form an entirely new racing team: Project D.
Fourth Stage onward then is the legacy not of Takumi Fujiwara, but of the entirety of Mt. Akina's drivers as represented by these three. This gives the series a much more global context, further complicated by the fact that the character relationships themselves remain rather constant. Keisuke never loses his desire to defeat Takumi, while Ryosuke only continues to become more and more of a master manipulator of the sport.
So... what exactly does all of this tell us? My theory is that this is the joining of conflicting agendas united not by a common enemy or a common goal, but by a common context. The greater cultural issue at work here is not simply the struggle to become the best at the sport, but to become arbiters of the racing world. The focus changes from being about how the characters change to how the characters change racing.
In conclusion, the truth about Initial D is that there is no true protagonist; the series is driven by the collective advancement of the sport, which will only continue to build as the geographic area does. It's not about winning; it's about reinventing the wheel.
