Shelf Life

Initial D Legend 3: Dream

As the title suggests, Initial D Legend 3: Dream is the third entry in the trilogy of theatrical remakes of the original Initial D series. It continues the trilogy's overall trends of vastly improved visuals and slightly abbreviated storylines. It also does a nice job of wrapping up the big-picture story arc of these three films; Takumi is presented with his most challenging opponent to date, and that showdown forces him to think about his future beyond schooling street racers around the curves of Mt. Akina. It does just about all you could ask for from the conclusion of this new iteration of the franchise.

Takumi comes into the movie fresh off of victories against Takeshi and Shingo from the NightKids racing team, only to receive a new challenge. Ryosuke, the leader of the RedSuns, has been following Takukmi's sudden rise to street racing fame and has decided to take him on personally. Ryosuke's reputation as a smart and fast racer precedes him, and the previously apathetic Takumi finds himself excited to compete against a strong opponent. At the same time, Takumi is still trying to sort out his relationship with Natsuki, who he's been getting along with despite their somewhat contentious history. For our tofu-delivering hero, it's time to make some big decisions in and out of the car.

Before I get too deep into this film, I should briefly address the second part of the trilogy, which I didn't get a chance to review when it came out on disc earlier this year. I watched it before taking on this third movie, and it's arguably the weakest of the three, if only by a small margin. The issue is not so much one of execution as it is of story structure. Both of the NightKids drivers bring some interesting new tactics to their races against Takumi, but they simply don't carry the same narrative significance as Keisuke or Ryosuke. Takeshi and Shingo are more episodic antagonists, which works fine in a long-running manga or anime series but makes for a less consequential standalone film. It's still entertaining, but it's arguably the least important of the three movies in terms of Takumi's personal growth.

That brings us up to the third and final part of the trilogy, which avoids its predecessor's problem by skipping straight over a couple “battle of the week” storylines and jumping straight to the showdown with Ryosuke. This story arc served as the conclusion of the old anime's first season, and it's easy to see why it makes for a good ending. Ryosuke is arguably the most compelling of Takumi's early opponents, both in terms of his own characterization and in terms of the challenge he presents to our protagonist. Previously, people just challenged Takumi because they had something to prove: Keisuke wanted to avenge his unofficial defeat, Takeshi wanted to prove that his car and driving style were superior, and Shingo wanted to gain power within the NightKids by one-upping Takeshi. Where these were all small-scale goals, Ryosuke has a much bigger plan in mind, and he has more to lose if he's unable to beat Takumi. At the same time, his talent and technique are strong enough that Takumi can't easily win by busting out a gimmicky special move; this is a direct competition between skilled drivers, and that makes for a more exciting premise.

Another upside here is that Takumi shows signs of growing into an actual character, rather than a blank-faced driving machine. This is something I griped about in my review of the first movie, and part of the issue there was that Takumi's initial disinterest in racing meant that the emotional and material stakes were simply too low for him. That changes for the better in a couple of ways in this installment: Takumi has discovered that he enjoys racing and is excited to take on a strong opponent like Ryosuke, and that desire to continue driving means that winning or losing now matters to him on a personal level. There are still some notable weaknesses in the writing (Natsuki in particular continues to exist in her own little bubble of a side plot with minimal connection to the main story), but overall this is a step in the right direction.

The final showdown between Takumi and Ryosuke makes for an appropriately thrilling end to the films' story. Momentum swings back and forth between the two drivers, the visuals do a good job of conveying a sense of speed, and there's genuine emotional investment on the part of both the guys racing and the people watching them. Of course, the appeal of the racing sequences continues to depend largely on the viewer's level of interest in car racing in general, and in this particular vintage of Japanese cars in particular. If you can spot the product placement of a modern sports car in a couple of scenes and are genuinely annoyed that said vehicle is from the wrong decade, then Initial D is very much your franchise. Otherwise, all the technical jargon about understeer and horsepower will just serve as a distraction from the plausibly entertaining action of cars doing sweet drift turns.

This release from Sentai Filmworks will look familiar to anyone who picked up the previous two movies. These theatrical remakes continue to look infinitely better than the old TV series, and the music remains effective but can't quite replicate the thumping electronic charms of the old soundtrack. There's still an English dub if that was your preferred audio option in the previous movies, and the extras are fairly sparse apart from a summary video of the second film.

My overall opinion of this new incarnation of Initial D remains more or less the same as it was after watching the first movie: the vastly improved visuals and snappier pacing make this trilogy a far more accessible point of entry for new viewers, and I'm glad that we now have an adaptation that looks good enough to successfully bring the manga's visuals to life. At the same time, I still feel like part of the fun of the old TV series was knowing that it was kind of crappy, openly admitting that it was kind of crappy, and enjoying it anyway. While any reasonable person would likely prefer this newer adaptation, I'm perfectly happy to keep running in the nineties.
-Paul[TOP]