AnimeTalk Weekly: Initial D Final Stage

On the gamertologist zone, we talk about various gaming topics, but one day per week is going to be dedicated to anime, as most of the time games and anime go side by side on many gamer minds. This section is going to be called "Anime Talk Weekly" and as the name says, it will feature a different anime topic every week. Now this week, we are throwing one for all of the Initial D fans out there as Initial D: Final Stage has already been released with the first two episodes.

*Spoiler Alert*
Up until now, this final stage focuses on the final showdown that Takumi will have with the suspicious kid from the fifth stage that also happens to own an AE86 (coupe version). This is the race that defines victory or defeat for Project D as their downhill ace Takumi, faces his greatest challenge. Up until now everything has been peachy for the Project D team, as Ryosuke technically defeated his lifelong rival and Keisuke wins the uphill race starting the night, so it is now Takumi that must prove himself against this new opponent, a mysterious boy named Shinji and show if he can win it all for the team or lose for the first time in his life.
*Spoiler Alert ends*

The Series

For those of you that haven't seen the series yet, it is recommended that you start watching from the very beginning in order to understand the events of both Stage 5 and this Final Stage as this series is a little more than just cars and racing. Initial D is an anime series about a young man named Takumi Fujiwara that discovers that he has a great talent for drifting while delivering tofu for his father (who was a legendary drift racer). Later on he decides to give it a try on the streets of his region and starts an impressive string of victories which earns him enough respect for him to be noticed by many other racers that you will see as the series progresses.

As mentioned before, this isn't only about racing, as Takumi (and many other characters) live their lives and experience different situations that steer the series off the races a little and into other things like romance, comedy, normal life, learning about oneself, making decisions and so on. On the other hand, if you are an automobile enthusiast or at least a race/drift fan, you will be delighted to see a great variety of different models from different brands and you may even learn a little bit about how these machines work and how this affects their performance on a race (especially considering the driver).

The Games

Initial D has spawn some video game titles made by Sega, ranging from the arcades to home consoles.The arcade titles did reach America and were one of the first arcade games that made use of smart cards as means of saving your game progress on an arcade, but sadly all of the console games (PS3, PSP) stayed at the other side of the world and can only be played as imports. In case you are wondering, the games go as follows:

• Initial D Arcade Stage
• Initial D Arcade Stage 4
• Initial D Extreme Stage (PS3 import)
• Initial D Street Stage (PSP import)

If you people are interested in playing the imports you could try online game import stores like Play Asia.

Here's the awesome opening for Initial D Extreme Stage (PS3)

Wrapping it up

For all time fans, there is the Final Stage, for newcomers there is a complete series to watch that will take some time and for gamers Sega has you covered (on imports at least). Initial D is a great series which features good games so give it chance.