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YMMV / Initial D

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For examples involving the Initial D Arcade Stage games, go here.

Anime/Manga

  • Ass Pull:
    • The series is chock full of these with regards to race results, particularly Takumi Fujiwara's luck randomly bailing him out of Unwinnable situations. Take his race in Fourth Stage against Toshiya "God Arm" Joshima, for example: the AE86's suspension breaks after being strained to the limit following eight rounds of "cat-and-mouse", causing him to fall far behind Toshiya on the last rotation. However, Toshiya is forced to bail out of the race to vomit on the side of the road after exhausting his body in the absurdly long race, giving Takumi a Victory by Endurance. The problem is there are no prior indications in the previous seven rounds of exhaustion seen in Toshiya.
    • Also in Fourth Stage, it looks like Itsuki Takeuchi is going to get a Relationship Upgrade with Kazumi Akiyama. From out of nowhere, Kazumi's older brother Wataru arrives with Kazumi's ex, who begs her forgiveness and asks her to stay with him. To Itsuki's horror, she agrees and takes him back, despite having every reason not to,note  leaving Itsuki heartbroken. This entire sub-plot is so contrived as it specifically makes Itsuki feel miserable and ensures This Loser Is You continues to be in effect for him.
  • Awesome Art: The Manga has tons of beautiful spreads of car designs and races. It comes as no surprise Shuichi Shigeno put a ton of work into research and reference pictures to create the story.
  • Awesome Music: Aside from the opening and ending songs by Japanese band "m.o.v.e.", it's the Eurobeat songs that drive the soundtrack and Animated Adaptation into what it is.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Fans of Takumi see him as a prodigal, down-to-earth street racer with various tricks up his sleeves and who is admired for his levelheadedness in every situation he comes across, but detractors find him a bland, boring Invincible Hero who only loses twice with no strong personality - that his battles are rather formulaic and predictable compared to others is another factor. A third group brushes aside his personality traits and writing fumbles and are just here to see him perform his Signature Moves and fancy tricks.
    • Itsuki is either a loyal Sidekick and friend in need for Takumi, who takes the poorest consequences like a champ, or an obnoxious lecher that doesn't fit with the show's tone and narrative (at least until Second Stage), whose sole purpose is to be yanked-off from any chance of romance when it's given to him. In all fairness, most of the criticism from Itsuki's naysayers is directed not towards his characteristics, but rather how the story treats him.
    • Of all the vehicles seen in the series, the signature Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86: fans were disappointed its Real Life counterpart doesn't live up to its fictional example, claiming Initial D has overblown what's been there, yet ignore variables such as track conditions and the fact that most of the car's spoils comes from Takumi's own driving prowess than the car itself.Note Even with an extensive amount of skill, the AE86 has dated specs and is relatively underpowered, such that most of the ones seen in actual competitions are heavily modified to meet modern standards.
  • Broken Base:
    • The fandom is fractured between those who are completely alienated from the series' writing and only follow it for the races and Eurobeat and those who either don't mind the narrative or enjoy it regardless. Surprisingly, this friction between the bases does not cause many Flame Wars, as the two generally steer clear of each other.
    • Fifth Stage and Final Stage were not received well by some viewers, who consider it an undignified ending, while others greatly admire the vastly-improved CGI and were just happy to see the series continue after the ambiguous ending of Fourth Stage.
    • A minor example in late-Fourth Stage: some fans detest the Mid-Season Upgrade Keisuke Takahashi's FD receives post-Tsuchisaka Lan Evo Team, mostly because the iconic pop-up headlights of the Mazda RX-7 are replaced by after-market fixed headlights, while others don't mind the cosmetic change to the overall vehicle.
  • Cult Soundtrack: The Anime's high energy Eurobeat soundtrack became so famous that the whole genre has a Song Association with the Anime version of Initial D. Songs like Max Coveri's Running in the 90s, Dave Rodgers' Deja Vu and Manuel's Gas Gas Gas became memes in their own right to the point most people know Initial D's soundtrack without even knowing what Initial D is.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: There are implications Shinji has some form of autism spectrum disorder - for example, he seems to be lacking in social skills and understanding of societal norms, while taking an interest in memorizing every little detail of the Tsubaki Line in what is deemed unusual behavior or interest by most people.
  • Die for Our Ship: Predictably towards named female characters of the series, considering the vast male cast, and the greater focus on the races.
  • Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Some of the Stages include a warning at the beginning of each episode telling viewers to follow traffic laws, only to proceed with twenty minutes of dangerous touge racing sequences on the dark roads of Japan.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: In spite of his ruthless and disgusting behavior, Shingo Shoji is among the most well-liked characters of the series even before his Character Development seen in Extra Stage, with many of his fans glossing over his numerous defects.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: The Myogi Night Kids duo, Takeshi Nakazato and Shingo Shoji, are popular among the fandom for all the wrong reasons, but especially Shingo thanks to the Draco in Leather Pants section above. They are also responsible for all the jokes and giggles related to them.
  • Fan Nickname: "Golf Takumi" for Takumi's girlfriend Mika Uehara from the later stages of the series due to being raised by her father to play golf in a similar manner to how Bunta raised Takumi to race.
  • Fanon Discontinuity: Fans who disliked Fifth Stage and Final Stage outright refuse to acknowledge them as Canon, claiming the Animated Adaptation ended at Fourth Stage.
  • First Installment Wins:
    • While many of the Stages have wildly divided opinions, often skewered towards the negative, there is one constant: (almost) everyone loves First Stage. The only other Stage to have such a high amount of fans compared to detractors is Fourth Stage.
    • If there's ever going to be a Shout-Out to Initial D, chances are it's going to be an Affectionate Parody of the first race in the series between Takumi and Keisuke.
  • Gateway Series: To drift racing, touge, or even racing in general, for Anime. Also serves as a pretty good gateway to Eurobeat.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Any scene where Bunta is seen smoking also falls into this as his voice actor, Unshō Ishizuka died from esophagus cancer. Smoking is also one of the causes of said illness.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • The Reveal in Final Stage of the meaning behind the "D" for both Initial D and Project D being the word "dream" was unintentionally unveiled almost eight years prior thanks to "Initialize", the Title Theme Tune of Tokyopop's English localization of the Anime, which featured backup hype vocals shouting out the phrases "Initial Drive, Initial Dream!".
    • In Second Stage, when Team Emperor starts their Gunma Prefecture campaign, Keisuke expresses disgust about the incredibly large spoiler on one of the team's Lancer Evolutions. Fast forward to Fourth Stage where Keisuke's RX-7 FD gets a new aerodynamic upgrade, complete with a larger, after-market spoiler in comparison to the stock spoiler on a Lancer Evolution.note 
    • Second Stage has everyone from Gunma in a panic, as Team Emperor, a team from an outside prefecture, starts Curbstomping their opponents with little resistance, including the main characters from First Stage. Cut to Fourth Stage where Takumi and some former RedSuns crew members - the only ones who managed to make a stand against Emperor - do the exact same thing with Project D.
    • After the animated film remakes decided to ditch the Eurobeat soundtrack, Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, the primary competitor to Initial D Arcade Stage, introduced a Eurobeat track in Maximum Tune 6.
  • Hype Backlash:
    • As mentioned in Just Here for Godzilla, some don't take kindly to the series popularizing a car that they consider So Okay, It's Average at best, especially by today's standards.
    • There are fans of Eurobeat who don't like how this series and Eurobeat are so tightly intertwined in popular culture, which results in people not knowing that Eurobeat exists outside of a street racing context or that slower, more disco-styled forms of Eurobeat exists.
  • Just Here for Godzilla:
    • The series has caused this in the American automotive scene, with hundreds of American fans trying to buy AE86s from shady importers,note  specifically because the car is the "main character" of the series rather than on the merits of the car itself. Regular Car Reviews made a rant about this when he covered the AE86 Trueno.
      Mr. Regular: "SHUT UP! You don't like this car! You like a cartoon! A boring cartoon!"
    • A large amount of people are only into the series for the races and Eurobeat, either disliking or being uninterested in the side-plots.
  • Macekre: The Tokyopop English dub of the anime, which in an attempt to appeal to a younger audience, Americanized the names, censored out the suggestive themes, and attempted to be hip by inserting street slang in the dialogue and replacing the iconic Eurobeat soundtrack with rap and hip-hop. Some strange visual effects and cuts weren't there originally. It's telling that fans strongly prefer the more faithful Funimation redub over Tokyo Pop's, thanks to retaining the original Japanese soundtrack and script.
  • Memetic Badass: This series propelled the AE86 Trueno's reputation into "divinity in machine form" territory, with many fans making it out to be a badass at drift and mountain racing, even though it's long since been outdated and in real life would require heavy modifications to go toe-to-toe with the matchups seen in the series.
  • Memetic Mutation: Now has its own page.
  • Memetic Loser: Whenever Takeshi Nakazato is brought up, someone will make a joke about him understeering and crashing his R32 or explicitly call him a terrible driver. Made worse by the fact that Shingo also feels this way about him - in the loosest sense of the term - a "colleague", and Shingo is a fan-favourite of the series.
  • Memetic Troll: Due to his Ensemble Dark Horse status, Shingo has become this when involved in certain memes featuring car crashes including in online games. Double crash jokes aside, here's an example.
  • Narm Charm: Almost all vehicular scenes throughout all Stages are animated in 3D. In First Stage, it's made more apparent as each racing segment looks like a video game from the early 2000s (compared to Second Stage and beyond, where the 3D work is done much better). However, despite its egregious use for the Anime, many fans enjoy the racing scenes due to (or because) of its Narmy appearance. It does help races are very well choreographed with exciting and interesting angles.
  • The Scrappy:
    • With the exception of Mako Sato and Mika, pick any female Love Interest: they are easily one of the most contested or downright despised character archetypes by the fandom for this series, and not just for the aforementioned Die for Our Ship reasons, either.
      • Natsuki is detested by most fans for basically being a Hypocrite; Kyoko as well - not to the same hypocritical extent as Natsuki, but largely for being one-dimensional.
      • Kazumi Akiyama was pretty much left under the radar by fans despite being a typical Love Interest for Itsuki in Second Stage. Although the romance is left on a bittersweet note at the end of Second Stage, most fans wanted to give them a second chance, but once the Ass Pull in Fourth Stage happened, Kazumi was suddenly subjected to a lot of hate by the fandom for essentially writing off all the meaningful things she did with Itsuki.
    • It's difficult to find anyone who's fond of Shinji Inui, Takumi's last opponent from Final Stage: this character is often accused of being a Creator's Pet due to their match-up being a tailor-made 1:1 race against Takumi, being disproportionately challenging, and causing Takumi to use a dangerous technique in a bid to win that causes the AE86's second engine to explode.
  • So Bad, It's Good: "Initialize" is as bad and unrelated to the show's theme as it sounds, yet there are some who state they can't stop hearing it.
  • Song Association: Thanks to Memetic Mutation, every Eurobeat song sounds like a great Initial D soundtrack (at least for people outside Japan and Italy, where this music genre is hugely popular outside of this anime).
    • "Deja Vu" especially seems to get this treatment, to the point where if you just knew the series based on the memes you'd be forgiven for thinking this was the only song in the show's entire soundtrack.
  • Special Effect Failure: In Final Stage, Takumi blows out the AE86's engine when he fails to see that he's accidentally revving it well past its limits because executing the "blind attack", leaves the tachometer dark and therefore unreadable. However, a scene is shown from his perspective in the car while performing the blind attack, and the tachometer is visibly lit.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • During the battle with Kyouichi Sudo in Second Stage, Takumi's AE86 has an engine breakdown and he's forced to make an emergency stop, with Kyouichi declaring him the loser of the match. Takumi's father Bunta subsequently has the car towed while Takumi's in tears, thinking he's the one at fault. Yes, Bunta knew beforehand it was going to happen, and so did the audience. Yes, Bunta was going to replace the engine and allowed the breakdown to happen, just so Takumi will have a better appreciation of the new engine; otherwise, Takumi would either protest to having the engine replaced or get angry for having the engine replaced under his nose. Yet, think of it from Takumi's point of view - the car in which he had made a name for himself in just a few short months has made its literal last revolutions. For all he knows, his racing career is effectively over. It gets worse as in Final Stage, where the car itself breaks down again (beyond repair) while performing a blind attack against Shinji Inui, putting a final nail in the coffin for the AE86 Trueno.
    • The scene where Itsuki gets dumped by Kazumi for an older man she used to love in Fourth Stage, ending with him alone and sobbing. Even Koichiro Iketani and Kenji sympathize with him, with the former saying that he has also felt the same pain with Mako Sato back in First Stage. However, Mood Whiplash ensues when Itsuki runs into Iketani's and Kenji's hiding place, prompting a hilarious Oh, Crap! from the two of them, and Itsuki shares this reaction when he sees them.
    • Kyoko in Episode 18 of Fourth Stage: getting to spend a whole day with Keisuke after helping him out with his latest race is all she could wish for. The catch is despite his understanding (and, in a way, reciprocating) her affections for him, he can't focus on anything else but racing - his passion. The last scene between them as he goes into full attack mode on Mount Akagi (per Kyoko's request, with her riding shotgun) is enough to bring her to tears, realizing she will never love anyone else as fiercely as him ever again.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The Legends trilogy isn't nearly as positively received as the original First Stage that it rebooted due to the change of voice actors, lack of Eurobeat, and not getting Tsuchiya Keiichi back on board as the supervisor.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Bunta is repeatedly stated to be a racing legend, better than even his son Takumi, yet the most we ever see of his abilities are his "drift while lighting up a cigarette" technique and a brief impromptu race against Takumi's Trueno in his new Impreza; there are no full scenes or arcs that show him doing a full race. While you can race against him in Arcade Stage, either as an extra boss in Legend of the Streets Mode or in a dedicated mode in Arcade Stage Ver. 2 and 3, the way he races in the games is not necessarily indicative of his abilties due to the use of Rubber-Band A.I. and the limitations of the game engines and video game artificial intelligence.
  • The Woobie:
    • Depending on your prespective, it's very hard to not feel sorry for Itsuki, who gets dumped twice, both in First Stage (thanks to Shingo's shenanigans) and Fourth Stage (as Kazumi goes back to a relationship with her ex-boyfriend, with the courtesy of her brother Wataru). Hence why he and Iketani are both self-proclaimed as "Lonely Drivers".
    • Aside from her reputation as The Scrappy among the fanbase, Kyoko also count as this (see Tear Jerker).
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: More apparent from Fourth Stage and onward, thanks to advancements in CG technology, making the details of each car near-accurate to how they look in Real Life, as well as improvements to the races without them feeling static.

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