Hello and welcome to another episode of Movie Mastery, a podcast where we watch the movies that you have told us to do. We do them. We watch them. And I'm John. I'm your host. With me, as always, forever. Yep. My companion. Not going anywhere. My rock. Yep. Boone companions to the end. My wind beneath my wings. Yeah. The Watson to your other guy. Watson to. You know, Watson to the other Watson.
Yeah, we're Watson and Watson. I think that's the way the original theme song to that went. That's how that went. Yeah, because it was originally a thing that had a theme song. Yeah. Watson and Watson was a TV show before it became a series of famous TV novels. Yeah. The first TV show, I believe. I believe. Yeah, the very first. I'll have to look it up. I'm pretty sure. Don't look it up on our behalf, but I guarantee you that the first TV show ever broadcast in the 1840s, Watson and Watson. The inspiring media for the Sherlock Holmes series. Yep. That's us. Watson and Watson 2. That's us. In spirit. Watson is a robot. Watson 2 is a human.
But it turns out Watson 2 was also a robot. Well, you gotta do something for sweeps. Yeah. 1840 sweeps were rough. People weren't sure if they were going to cancel the one show or not. Yeah. People were still like, I don't know about this TV. Well, I mean, it is only one show in existence, so it's watched pretty much universally by everyone. But there is only one TV in existence. And it's hosted by Netflix, so it's probably gone.
Anyway, we watched Initial D, the live-action movie version of the manga and anime of Initial D. So the very, the first D. Well, that's like the third D, right? Because it's like it's based on the anime that itself is based on a manga? No, but it is the Initial D. Oh, okay, yeah. The initial, the first D is, the manga was the Initial D, and then this is like a copy of a copy. The Tertiary D. Yeah. Tertiary D, usually banned unless consent granted.
Aw, tertiary D. So yeah, initial D, a... It's kind of the early example of sports anime. Yeah, I was going to say, it's definitely the same concept as a lot of the sports anime and manga that are out there, in that it's very much someone does a activity and is very good at it, and other people stand around and go, look at how good at this activity this guy is. I've got lots of thoughts on this, but I didn't want to put them in the front half. Instead, I just wanted to make sure that people knew that this movie is boring and not worth watching. Oh yeah, no, this... I mean, there is...
There's like a, you know, on the IMDB page, a bunch of reviews. And one is just like a bunch of actors that don't know what they're doing and it goes on too long. The end's all right, though. And I was like, what a great, succinct review of this movie. It's almost as good as that one-star review of Pride and Prejudice. It's just people going to each other's houses. Pride and Prejudice. Who, Mr. Dawsey? Who? But yeah, this is a street racing...
film specifically drift racing yes initial drift racing yeah and so it's got a much like the anime or the manga before it has an extreme focus on drift racing and the mechanics and technicalities of that but again that's something we'll talk about on the other side for the most part for the purposes of the film um it's boring and no it's it's uh it's about street racing and a dude racing in streets it's honestly for as As much as modern day sports manga and anime really get into taking a thing that would be very boring and being like, we're going to hype this shit up and make it so that a dude playing volleyball is the most heart-wrenching, emotional thing you could possibly imagine. And then this takes something that would be very exciting, which is like, oh, it's very dangerous street racing and trying to drift. Something that if you were doing it would be super tense and make it as boring as possible. I would say it's very similar to me to trying to make a tense golf movie.
Boy, howdy. Let me tell you all of the golf manga. I know. I've got lots of thoughts on the sports manga. We can talk about sports manga and sports anime in just a second for sure. But this to me felt a lot like a golf movie in that there's only so much mileage you can get out of people standing on the sidelines and being like, oh, he's trying to hit the golf ball with a golf club. The trick to that is that you use the big end of the golf club to hit the golf ball or else you're likely to miss. And he's like, I get it. Aren't you supposed to be experts at this? But yeah.
The movie has a bare-bones romance plot in it that very much feels like it's taken from the first arc of some manga or something. Oh, it's definitely, everything in this is basically the first arc from the actual initial D content. The only thing that's really weird about this is... I don't know if it's just because they really wanted to stick to only that arc, but the pacing of how things happen in this and when certain events occur are so strange to like a Western storytelling, like this is how you should do things plot wise that you end up getting to the end and you're like, what the fuck just happened? Why did what? Well, it does have a very anticlimactic ending. Like I said, it feels very much like a cliffhanger ending that they were setting up for like another one of these or something.
Maybe. I mean, it's weird. We'll get into the ending on the other side. You know what? We are going to go ahead, play a little music, we're going to come back, and then we are going to dive into all the spoilers. Racing, yeah? The spoilers? It has like three cars in it anyway. And you hear their names constantly. Anyway, it's 2005's Initial D.
And we're back. So sports animes. Okay, let's really, right off the bat, get into this. Now, have you actually watched or read any of these sports-based stuff? I have. Okay, so here's my full list of bona fides for this. I wanted to start with this because when I was just out of high school, I had a friend who was obsessed with Initial D, like the anime series. Yeah, the only thing I ever knew was working at Radio Shack and we sold some Initial D cars, and I was like, nice. No, I had a friend who was way into Initial D. He would try and get us all to watch it, and it was...
Boring. Very, very boring. Unless you were very specifically into drift racing and you knew all these characters already. It was just a bunch of samey characters being like, ah, he is trying to drift the race. And then the other person would be like, ah, he's doing it by turning hard against the way he should be turning. And he's like, don't they all know this? And I have also watched a lot of cooking animes, which are basically sports animes with food porn shots in them. They work exactly the same. And I watched some swimming anime with a friend once. I have not watched the entire series. I forget the name of it, but it was like...
you know like six sexy dudes and they all are on a swim team great she was super into it she had like a giant beach towel that was like a whole wall that was like clamber shots of these dudes fabulous so i've watched enough sports anime that i can kind of describe it conceptually although there are levels that i mean there's like skeet shooting animes and and uh it's just the the level of sports that they're willing to go into is insane i mean there are very famous ones that are like actual like sports that would be The kind of thing you would imagine. You know, there's baseball ones. There's obviously the volleyball one that's super huge right now. No doubt there's soccer ones. I mean, I saw one once, and I don't know if you'll count this as a sports anime or not, but I saw one once about women who had to beat each other off of a platform. Oh, they had to beat each other off? Let me finish. They had to beat each other off of a platform using only their breasts and butts. Great. And also, they would lose a little bit every time. They'd lose a little bit of breast or butt? Well, no, they'd lose a little coverage on their breast or butts. And that was like, they'd have to go, ah! Every time they'd hit each other with their boobs really hard, and a little bit of their shirt would come loose. And they'd be like, oh, no! And it was like, I don't see how that...
unless you get like armor up in there. Like again, I have a friend who was like, I've talked about her on a number of occasions over the years of the show. I have a friend who's an anime distributor and a toy collector distributor. So she watches a lot of very weird anime and sometimes I'm there. Yeah.
Plus, she's an unremitting anime horndog, so a lot of the stuff I watch with her is like, oh boy. Oh, oh boy, no. Things do not work like that. Yeah, I would say I don't really have any bona fides talking about it as much as it's just sort of osmosis of seeing a lot of that around. Yeah. But I gotta say, of the clips and bits from books and things like that that I've seen of various different sports anime things, like...
This definitely felt way less exciting because everyone else is like, we need to get into the deep personal drama and what it means. Like, what does winning or losing mean to this person? And like, how is this affecting their relationships? Whereas our main character in this. Oh, he doesn't care. He doesn't give a shit and looks bored while driving. And I think that's actually supposed to be part of his character trait. Oh, I know. It's supposed to be like, oh, he's so good at this that doing ridiculous like 150 kilometer an hour.
drift racing is just real boring, and so he, you know, is slumped on his fist. I get that. Part of that I like. Part of that as being like, yeah, but if all you present is your main character being bored, then that's the only thing we have as an audience to be bored with. I agree with you there. I was going to say the reason I kind of like that is because the one thing about this anime, or I'm sorry, this movie, I don't know if the anime had the same rule, because again, I tried watching this with a friend 30, 20 years ago, and it was garbage and I couldn't do it, is that at least he's not a prodigy. It's not that he's like a born genius race car driver. It kind of is. It's a little bit, but also he's been driving that exact same route, trying to improve his own time for like...
10 years or something like for just for like his dad assigned. I mean, he basically has five years of doing this because I think we get him at 18 or 19 and he's been doing it since he was 13. Right. And the other thing that's worth noting there is when we say five years of doing this, we mean five years of driving the only racetrack in this movie. Yes. So there is a windy track on Mount Akina. And so this is the only place that a street race will happen. Yeah. They will go to the top of Mount Akina and then drive down it.
Yeah, it's just that. The only racing that's in this is Mount of Kina driving. By the way, if you're wondering, I was just looking up what the anime was that I watched. It was called Free Dive to the Future. That was the swim anime. Excellent. At least that might have been the title of one of the mangas of it or something, but I think it was just called Free. Free manga. So that's the swim anime. I just looked it up so I could see it. It turns out it's very, very popular. Great. I'm sure it is because it's a bunch of shirtless swimmer body dudes. It's a bunch of dudes. A bunch of hot dudes learning to swim. Anyway.
So yeah, main character, his name is Takumi, or Takumi. But here's a fun thing about this movie. It is China for Japan. Yes, this is a Hong Kong movie filmed in Hong Kong. From a Japanese property. Pretending to be a Japanese property, but only for us. So the subtitles call him Takumi, but that's not his name. And I think his name is like Sanfua or something like that, or Hanfua. And they just keep saying that, and then the subtitles will say Takumi. And you're like, yeah, you gotta give him a name that has a T in it or something. Or just rename him.
Yeah, because I was like, oh, ain't nobody saying that here. Nothing even close to that is being said. I mean, you can tell right away they're speaking a Chinese language and not Japanese from the jump. And it's fine. It's just that it's funny that the subtitles, I think, try and make some attempts to up the Japanese-ness of this.
Anyway, yeah, our main character is Takumi and he is a sad sack son of a tofu distributor who has spent, since the age of 13, has been driving the route going up the windy trail of Mount Akina to deliver tofu to the people who live up on the top of it. But the thing is, he's making these deliveries at like three in the morning. So he, of course, is also a high school student during this and is like, I want to get back and sleep. So he starts pushing himself to go make these deliveries faster and faster because he wants to do it and go home and go to sleep. Yes, now he's got...
A father that's under the collection of weird stereotypes. Yeah, Bunta is his dad, and he is an alcoholic asshole that is abusive and anarcho-leptic, I think. I don't think it's just he's passing out from drinking. Because sometimes he passes out immediately after waking up, and I'm like, I don't know. One time he calls a guy and passes out mid-phone call, and he was not drinking before he makes the phone. He's just like, so anyway, the bar tab that we had from the other night is... No, that was after he passed out from drinking. He passed out, was still on the phone with the guy, and then went, oh, hey, anyway, and then passed out again. Yeah, I'm just saying he passes out a lot. But he is...
An abusive alcoholic, but also, back in the day, he used to be a supreme, super badass racer. And so we have Takumi and his shitty little friend. This is such a Chinese movie stereotype, the shitty, boastful, fat friend. Yeah, who is Itsuki, who is just like, hey, I'm a racing god. Have you ever done any racing? No, but how hard could it be? Well, he thinks he's legacy, because it turns out that his father, this guy who runs a gas station. Well, yeah, it's the legacy thing, because both him and his shitty friend are like, oh, yeah, he thinks he's going to be a racing god, and, you know.
Takumi actually is, but both of their dads used to be street racers back in the day, and it's sort of the same thing of Itsuki's dad was good, but Takumi's dad was amazing. The best, yes. So it's that whole it's in my blood thing. Yeah, and Itsuki is, again, a very standard character in this kind of movie, and then he's like the chubby... sort of mean one who's a little more privileged than the others. He was rich, fat, and boastful. He gets the opening speech of the movie where he's like, do you know what a god is? I'm like, yeah, thanks, Ghostbusters. A god starts as a human, but they can do things other humans cannot. I will be a god because of my race driving skills. But it turns out he sucks. He can't drive. He gets car sick real easily, which feels like it's an automatic, you can't do this. Well, I mean...
When the first point when he tries to race a guy, he just sucks. Like, he can't drive very fast. As soon as he tries to go fast, he just crashes the car into the side of, like, the guardrail for this mountain. Exactly. But then when he actually lets Takumi take over at one point and is like, hey, man, let me drive. Yeah. He...
You know, Takumi goes so fast and whips around all of these ridiculous turns so quickly, it just makes him throw up for two days. Yeah, which is honestly useful to have some kind of an after effect for the driving sequences, because here's the problem with drift racing. Drift racing is just like street racing, except that the only thing that's interesting about it is the special kind of turning that you do. Yes. You do the special kind of turning where you oversteer into the turn, so you kind of catch a little drifty slidiness that you don't lose so much speed, and you can line yourself up to do the next turn, and you're supposed to do, like, lots of hairpins. I don't know how to do it. I don't know the first fucking thing about drift racing. I just know it's only interesting because of the turning. But the problem is, that means the only way to make street...
drift racing interesting is if our hero is behind another car and needs to magically super turn so he's in front of it, which means every race in this movie is just him being behind someone for a while and being like, can he pass them? Not on this turn, not on this turn, perhaps this next turn. Yeah, well, I mean, at least within the narrative of the movie, there is a reason for that because the other big conceit of this, outside of, like, Takumi just sort of not realizing that he's the best ever, is he is driving what is an 87 Toyota Corolla. Yeah, he's driving an AE86, so an old sport version of a Toyota Corolla. Yeah, and so...
He's just got, it's a shitty car that his dad, not so much souped up, but took to the limit of what that could do. Yeah, it's tuned to within an inch of its life. It's the best AE86 that an AE86 can be. And so it's one of those things where you're like, oh yeah, his car kind of sucks. So of course, in the straightaways, these actual race cars will get ahead of him. And so he has to make up distance on the turns because he never slows down because it goes into it to start like, oh, instead of doing like the whole like I parking brake to make the car do the...
hard turn and then undo it and keep going. He's like, no, I do the inertial drifting where I can keep going full speed. Yeah, he does. He does oversteer drifting. And but I mean, ultimately, I understand the reason why he's always behind other cars is because the other guy has a GTR and is out in front from the straightaways and so on. The effect of it is that there's four or five street races in this movie and there might as well be one.
Oh, yeah, no, the problem with it, like, at least at the end of this, when it's three cars racing, you're like, all right, that added something, so it's not the exact same race? It's the only one with any strategy to it at all, beyond just, can you turn around, can you get inside this guy on a turn? Yeah. Otherwise, that is the only question that there's ever answered by racing, or asked by racing in this movie, is, can Takumi get inside this guy on a turn? Oh, yes. Turns out, yes. The third one, the final race, has three cars in it, and there's a guy who's like Takumi's friend, who's one of the other racers, and he's like, hey, I'm gonna take mid and put you in front.
because that way I can block the bad racer who's behind me, but he doesn't tell Takumi. Also, it's because that way I can see how you turn and get inside you later. Yeah, I'm trying to watch your moves to copy them. Exactly. So there's at least a little strategy. The thing I kept expecting him to mention was, I forget the name of it, but when you ride right behind another car, so you get into a vacuum effect. It's not called drifting. Drifting is the turning. It's not drifting. I don't remember. We're bad at race car stuff. Sorry, everybody. It's also in cycling. It's the same thing when you're doing a fucking, like, you know, Tour de France, is if you get behind someone, you get in their little wind thing, so that...
The wind that is breaking around them will not then hit you. It sucks you forward. So you have pull. Yeah, it actually sucks you forward. Whatever the fuck it is called. Yeah, you get sucked forward a little bit. And they never mentioned it in the movie. And I kept expecting them to because it was like, well, yeah, that's the big advantage to being in second position is that you're getting that little speed bonus from having a car out in front of you. Drafting. Not drifting. Drafting. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, race cars. Thanks. I kept thinking it was drifting. And I was like, no, it's not drifting. It's something like that, though. It's drafting, John.
Anyway, so our main character, in addition to being like a 19-year-old lazy prodigy who, that's his whole deal, he's got a little girlfriend. It appears as though, well, he has a childhood friend. I don't even know if he's in school or not. It seems like he might have been kicked out of school. Well, for fighting?
They're on summer break right now. But the whole thing is like, Itsuki got kicked out by the principal because he was being some kind of dumb asshole. And then Takumi got in trouble because he beat up a guy who was talking shit about Natsuki, his childhood friend and will be girlfriend. Yes, and she is laying it on with a thickness that we haven't seen since... We watched another movie recently that was exactly that. It was just laying it on ultra thick. It was just like, yeah, just, oh, it was Jamie Presley in Karate Dog. Yes. Yes, it was literally the last movie. Yeah, no. She was just like, hey, you want to have sex with me? Let's have sex. We should have sex. Hey, I'm real into you. We should do it. And our main character is going, what? I don't know if you like me. This one's got, I've seen this in other Hong Kong movies where she's like, I would like to date you. I have bought a sexy swimsuit. He's like, uh. And she goes, I also heard that your favorite food was sesame rice buns. Here are those now. And then he just starts shoveling them into his mouth until he chokes himself. He's like, I assume that's just their take on what, that's the local cultural take on what teenage dudes are like. It's just.
If you put food in front of them, they'll eat it to death. It's a measure of being nervous, of like, oh, I don't have to talk to this girl with my mouth as well. That makes sense. But that's midway through the movie. We're mostly just at the point now where we're introducing the characters. I mean, again, it's not like we jump around. This movie has three things that happen in it, and it happens several times, so it doesn't matter. It's very light on plot. There are two other major characters. There's Ryosuke, who is another drift racer, and his friend, who is the final good drift racer and the ultimate friend of Takeshi. Takeshi is Takumi's friend at the end. Ryosuke is more like the introduction to the world of drift racing.
I think it's the other way around, is Takeshi, because it's the night kids is Takeshi. Oh, that went backwards, yeah. Okay, so Takeshi and Ryosuke meet on Naonikina. Their whole plan is that they want to be the best drift racers and professionals, so they are going on a tour of Japan, racing the best locals everywhere they go. Well, yeah, because, I mean, essentially, past this movie and the actual manga and anime is, they're like, oh, we want to find the best street racers, drift racers, so that we can make our own club, and that'll be Project D.
So this is the initial D and then it'll be a project D. So their current plan is to find a guy that they call the racing god of Mount Akina. And in their opinion, it must be the dude who owns the gas station because he used to be a good racer. Well, they think it's someone at the gas station, but that's because Itsuki keeps calling himself the racing god of Mount Akina. Yes, that is true. So he shows up at the gas station to demand to speak to the racing god of Mount Akina. And the owner of the gas station is this...
other dad character. And he comes out, he's like, we don't want any part of this. We don't want any trouble. Just leave us alone. And one of the things I like about Takeshi and Ryosuke is that despite the fact that they are illegal street drift racers, they are unfailingly polite. Oh, they're great. Honestly, my favorite people in here where they're just like, hey, we want to have a street race with someone. We heard there was a really good street racer here. And they're like, please don't do anything. And they're like, oh, don't worry. We're just going to be up at the mountain on Saturday. If someone wants to race, that's fine. And if not, that's also fine. Everything's fine. We don't want to fuck your deal up. We got no ill will towards anyone. We only race early in the morning. We do careful setup to make sure no one's going up or down the mountain when we do it. And here's the other thing I
If this was a Western one, they would have come into the gas station, knocked some shit off the shelves, and been like, who thinks they're bad enough to fucking race me? And it would have been, we need to establish these as bad guys so that there is a thing to overcome and you feel good about beating them. But in this, because it's setting it up to be like, oh, these are going to be his partners way later on, they can't be bad guys, so they have to just show up and be like... hi, we'd like to race, no pressure. They're just really friendly. There's even a point later when they finally managed to suss out that the former, the guy who was the best racer here, the person that came here to race in the very first place, is the dude who owns, Takumi's father, the dude who owns the tofu delivery business. And one of them goes there and is like, hey, I heard you're like the best racer ever, I would like to race you. And he's like, give me a reason. And he starts spooling off reasons. Mostly he accidentally pisses off the old dad. He mentions his wife leaving him. His wife leaving him. He's like, you used to be the greatest racer ever, but you left it to get married and then your wife left you and now what did you even do that for? Yeah, he's like, look, shit happens and...
you know, great racers have to be able to take what comes at them. And there's no way you could have known that your wife would leave you, but you can't just quit because of that. But it's still a nerve touch. And so the response is basically, I have nothing for you here. Please get out of my store and go to another one. Unless you want to buy tofu, there's nothing for you here. And that leads to the guy being like, I'm really sorry. I will leave you in peace. Please don't, you know, again. And never comes back to bother him. Exactly. These two guys, Takeshi and Ryosuke, are like the only people in the movie that I even sort of like. Yeah, they're great. Because they're just like real happy that people are racing. Because...
You have Itsuki, who's a little shithead. You have Takumi, who's just bored. He's a lazy, boring shithead. It's not even that he's lazy. He just doesn't give a fuck. He's just apathetic about literally everything that happens in this movie. There's one point where he's like, I'm going to win in a race against you. He gets mad at a guy and is like, I'm going to beat you in a race. And it's like, if you say so, man, it's weird to see you show initiative.
Then of course, like both of the dads, like at least it's Suki's dad is kind of a good dad, but you know, Takumi's is a super asshole. And then by the last half of the movie, we're supposed to be like, yeah, he's a cool guy. And now he's helping out Takumi. So that, you know, makes it all better that he routinely beats his child with a big old stick. Yeah. There's this, when he goes to the beach with Natsuki and she's like, I got a sexy swimsuit. I found the one with the least amount of clothing. Also, it's very large and not at all a regular bikini.
Like, it's shorts and a tank top, essentially, is this bikini. But anyway, when he takes his shirt off, she's like, oh, wow, you got the shit kicked out of you. And he's like, yeah, my dad abuses me. And she's like, that's okay. I like kids who have been abused. That's weird. Yeah, again, different sensibilities than anything you might be used to. There's a point where he doesn't want to take a towel off his chest. And she's like, you gotta take that towel off. And he does. He's covered in big welts. And she's like, what the hell is that? And he's like, oh, you know, I'm sorry. My dad beats me up. And she's like, well, the thing I hate is those well-off boys. Sissy well-off boys who don't have a bunch of father-inflicted scars. Yeah.
I was just like, god damn, I don't like anyone in here. It's just Takeshi and Rasuke. Yeah, those two characters are fine. I mean, even, you're supposed to like, what's her name, Natsuki, for the most part. It turns out that she is a high-end girlfriend experience call girl. She's basically a sugar baby, is what her deal is. So, like, in exchange for a bunch of expensive gifts and money, she'll go...
like on dates and probably also sexual favors. Yeah, we don't actually, we never get an explicit sexual favors thing. I think it's a girlfriend experience thing. Yeah, I mean, the sugar baby thing. I just want someone to go with me and I'll give you money. Roughly similar. I saw it as more of a transactional, you know, I get you for weekends type experience. Yeah. Which she does, and the movie even explains why she does that. Her dad died. There's a lot of dead parents floating around in this town. Every single parent. Yeah, basically the only person who doesn't have a dead parent involved. I'm sorry, wait, the gas station parents are still together. You just never meet the mom. Yeah, you never see the mom. You get threatened with her once. So Tofu Man, because that's her name, by the way, Gas Man and Tofu Man.
Well, I mean, that's what they call each other. He's Bunta, and I forget what the other guy is. But Tofu Man, his wife left him, probably because he's a drunk, abusive shithead. No, we're supposed to believe that he became that after the wife left. Yeah, I don't believe that. I know I'm supposed to, but I don't. And then, yeah, we never actually see the other wife.
But yeah, her father, like, died early, and so she's desperate for money to help take care of her family and her mom. Yeah, it's just been her mom and her... Now, if you're wondering, like, oh, that's a tragic story, that this woman has had to turn to a life of prostitution to, like, you know, so young. She's still in high school. Had to turn to a life of prostitution to, like, help take care of her aging sick mom, and she's still trying to find a way out of it, and she's found a man that she loves unconditionally. If you think that he will rescue her, no. As soon as he finds out, he's like, I will never talk to you again. Goodbye. And that is the end of that relationship. That is also the end of the movie. Yes, the end of the movie is him being like, oh, I see you are a prostitute. I'm done with you. Good day. End movie. And you're like, what
probably about halfway through this film, while they're doing all their dumb racing bullshit, that like, oh, Natsuki, even the first time we see her, you're like, oh, there's definitely some sketchy shit going on here. I thought it was going to be that she was being abused by her stepdad, but it turns out that this guy is just someone who hires her to be with him. I didn't even think that. There's a scene where she's riding along in a nice white BMW, and a dude who you never see hands her an envelope of money, and she counts it, and she says you're too generous, and he's like, hey, is this enough to take care of you and your mom for a while? Did you already spend the money I gave you last time? Do you need more than this? I thought...
that this was going to turn out to be like a Willy Wonka-esque figure in the racing world that would turn out to be a helpful final thing towards the end of the movie. They're like, we need to fix our car. How can we possibly do it? No one knows anyone who has any money. And she'd be like, oh, well, would it be useful if I happen to know the guy that owns the Honda factory around here? Would that be helpful? And instead, it's- 100% the exact vibe I got from that conversation was, I am your stepdad and I am giving you your allowance to keep quiet about the fact that I am fucking you. Yeah. In retrospect, that makes a lot of sense. I just was expecting a very different sort of thing. But yeah, we're jumping around today. But yeah, that's the ending of this movie is-
He finds out from his friend Itsuki, because he sees her leaving a love hotel. And then he goes, well, your girlfriend's a whore. Girlfriend's a total whore. She costs 30,000 yen to sleep with. Only 30,000 yen. I'm like, okay, number one, how the fuck do you know? You don't know that shit. You know the price. You just saw her in a car leaving a love hotel. You don't know shit about fucking Itsuki. I was also really hoping that it would turn out that...
So because I got strong stepdad vibes, I thought it was going to turn out, in my case, that it was going to be, oh, we're supposed to think that she's having sex with a stepdad and that this is like... a whole weird, terrible, abusive relationship thing, but then it turns out that he actually owns a series of love hotels, and she's there helping him, you know, do business there, and that's what the whole thing was? Yeah, I kept expecting it to be a misunderstanding. Like, I was expecting this movie would have a big misunderstanding in it that would get resolved, and it doesn't. The closest thing to a misunderstanding it has is that Takumi gets really, really mad when Itsuki tells him, and they have a fight at the gas station, and then he leaves, and he goes and sees her in an alley getting out of, uh, she's, like, looking for him, she gets out of the car, and waves, and he's like, well, that car's nice enough that it has to be owned by a John for prostitutes, and then he just turns and runs away, and we never see, we never resolve it.
That's the end. That's the end of the movie. Well, she wasn't looking for him because she was like, don't come see me tonight. See me the next day. He was like, I will come see you tonight because he knew already and he wanted to prove it for himself. So he saw her getting out of that guy's car. Yeah. And then he's like, I got absolutely no forgiveness for you, lady. Goodbye. And then he goes home and he calls Itsuki and he's like, I'm sorry. And then he hangs up again. And then he calls Ryusuke and he's just like, I will be on your racing team. Hang up credits. Yeah. End of movie. So fucking weird. Anticlimactic bullshit ending. Yeah. Now, of course, since Takeshi and Ryusuke are our main, not even antagonists, just sort of our main...
like, will be other protagonists later on in the story, but this is only doing the first part of the story. Like, okay, so we need a villain, though. So in comes the Emperor Racing crew, who are professional racers, not street racers. Yeah, now, you can tell the difference between the local street racers. dress in cool outfits that are uniformly related to their current racing teams and look nice. And the emperors dress like street gang members with post-apocalyptic spiked leather jackets. I absolutely love that the professional racing team looks like a street racing team and the street racers all look very professional. The other thing, their racing team you get to see more members of than any other grouping. They all wear the same kind of super spiky punk leather jackets and they all have giant hair, like completely huge up hair that they keep up with giant bandanas. So they're very visually distinct, but they also don't look like professional racers. They look like they're threatening Batman. Yeah, they definitely look like a...
gang of some kind, rather than these are a professional race club. And they're the closest thing we get to, like, a genuine bad guy in the movie. Yeah, because, you know, we've had Takumi beat a few people in his shitty little Corolla, and then they're driving, but it's Suki behind the wheel, and... this professional race guy is like, hey, fucking race me, dude. And then, or rather shows up behind him, like bumps his car, puts his shit up. A lot of the races in this movie are spontaneous. They're just people showing up near each other on the mountain. Yeah, so this guy slams into his bumper and then is like, oh, I thought this was the Corolla from the fucking tofu shop because Itsuki went and bought the exact same car that Takumi has because he was like, oh, clearly it is driving a shitty old Corolla that will make you a winner. But he was like, oh.
I thought you were the tofu shop guys. Sorry, I wanted a real race. He calls them garbage and their car trash and he just keeps doing it. That's not enough to make Takumi be like, oh, I'll race this guy. Instead, this guy drives off and then they keep going down the mountain. But later, further down, he like swerved his car to be cutting off both lanes and they almost crash. And he's like, that guy almost killed us. All right, fuck this dude. Let me drive. Yeah. And then they switch and now he wins the race. But now that he has beaten one of the lesser members of the Emperor crew, now the leader of the Emperor crew is like, ooh, now we got a race. Yeah.
Meanwhile, Tofu Man and Gas Man agree to go out together for one night because Gas Man has caught wind of the fact that Takumi is apparently driving the car late at night and winning global three races. Well, he thought it was Bunta. Yeah. He was like, oh, let's go out. I didn't realize you were racing again. Yeah. And he's like, oh, no, that was my kid. That's my kid. And he's just casually, they go to like a comfort hotel. So each of them have two prostitutes on their arms. Yeah.
and uh bunta's just explaining he's like no that's my kid he uh i've been making him do the morning deliveries up mount akina for for years now and i increase his speed every time and well he increases his speed every time because he's like it used to take him two hours to do the delivery then an hour and 45 and so on until it just takes him like 30 minutes to get there and back yeah he says he can get up out and back in four minutes and the rest of the time taken up is delivering the tofu yeah um which is apparently completely insane sure that's fine um he also literally this dude is so unabashedly like an abusive dad that he's like Yeah, part of it, the reason he's so good at it is because one time he came home super, super fast, but he had clipped the back of his car and messed up my tofu, so I beat the fuck out of him. Yeah, I beat the shit out of him, and then next time I was like, here's a glass of water. You leave it in the cup holder, and if you spill a drop, I'll kill you. I will kill you. And so he starts driving slow again, but eventually he just learns to also drive fast without spilling water. Yeah, he's like, oh, now he's got not just speed, but also the precision to do these turns with ease so that it's not a jarring turn. Everything stays where it should be. Yeah.
So anyway, then Bunta passes out instead of paying his portion of the bill to go to the comfort restaurant with all the hookers. And so now, because the gas station dad had to pay for things, he gets blackmailed by his son who finds the receipt. He's like, I will show mom this unless you buy me the car I want. Yeah. And now he has his own AE86. That's what starts off all that shit. Yeah. So the emperors of the bad guys, and you can tell they're bad guys also because they're all in black. Yes, they're all in black cars. They drive black cars. They make fun of everybody. They call everything trash. And one of the big things that I feel...
is lacking here that you normally get in any sports whether it's a manga or anime or even just a regular like western sports movie or anything you have to have a point where your hero gets beaten like fair and square by someone and is like, oh shit, I've got to step my game up. I was being complacent. Whereas in this, the only time he loses a race is because his car breaks down. Yes, his car breaks, even though it's right after they give him a lecture about how cool his car is because of how great his dad's mechanic skills are. Oh, you put in the best suspension you could possibly get into this. Yeah. He tightened everything up. It would have taken me six months to get the car to the shape that it is in right now. Your dad did it in three weeks. He's a legend. I would change nothing about this car. It is absolutely perfect. Whatever tune-up job he did explains why this car is not a hunk of shit like we all thought it was. And then he goes- And then the five minutes later-
The very race that they do exactly right after it, it's like, oh, my engine blew. You're like, what? You've been spending the last hour on the side of a mountain prodding this car and figuring out how cool it is, and then you do a race and it blows up, and I thought for sure it was going to be like, oh, this is the heel turn for Ryusuke, who's going to be like, ha ha, I fucked your car up while I was looking at it. No, there's no heel turn for Ryusuke or for Takashi, they're just good people. Yeah, because when his car breaks down, they're like...
Oh, shit, man. That sucks. Are you okay? Hey, if you want my car or one of my dude's cars to drive in the race, you can have my car to race in. Yeah, of course, because not only is Takumi a lazy shit, he's also just kind of a acerbic mean one. He's like, no, I won't race any car but mine. Fuck off. And he just stomps away. He's a petulant teenager. What are you going to do? So you think, okay, well, maybe this is the moment where he rallies. We just saw his amazement at how good of a mechanic his dad is. Maybe he goes to his dad, seeks out his help. They work together. We get a fixing the car montage. Maybe some Eye of the Tiger plays while they slide in and out from underneath the car. Maybe there will be some sort of bonding thing so that you can feel...
maybe slightly better about the fact that he is in the worst relationship with his dad. How about instead of that, his father finds the broken car and fixes it without mentioning it to Takumi that he's doing it at all. Yeah, he just takes the fucking gas station guy and is like, you and me are going to soup up this car past where it should be and give it like an actual race car engine and fucking go ham on it and not do anything to tell Takumi or anything like that. No, we'll just show up later while he's moping around like a mean dope like he always does and be like, here's the car again. And he'll be like, good, I deserve it.
I'm going to win that race now. You have a weird take on Takumi. I mean, Grant, he's not as petulant as I'm making him out to be. He's 90% either lazy or just gornless. Those are pretty much his two modes. Oh, yeah. No, the big problem with Takumi in this is that he just sort of like very lazily walks around doing his job at the gas station where he works. And then when he drives, he's like bored and has his hand on his...
head while he's driving around these turns. I think there's a telling point where he wants to take Natsuki to the beach because he promised to do it like two weeks ago. And then the next day, he's supposed to take her to the beach. So he goes to his dad and just goes, are you using the car tomorrow? And his dad goes, yeah, I have an event I have to go to. You're welcome to come with me. And he just turns some petulance out of the room. And I'm like, no, it's not even petulance. He's just like, okay. He mopes. He just goes, no, I've...
I 100% am like, oh, he's just doing this because he knows if he says, hey, can I have the car? I want to do a thing. His dad will beat him. No, you're not wrong there. What I'm saying is, he had like fucking three weeks to get ready. Where was your plan? How did you not? Like, I'm just saying, when I was a teenager, if I wanted to borrow the car, I knew exactly what my parents' fucking schedules were for the next month. I knew everything because I was like, well, I got to know when the time was right. I got to schmooze them. I got to do some favors in a couple of days to lead up to it. She just went, hey, you're taking me to the beach this Sunday. Like you promised, she says. No.
Not that he promised that Sunday, that he promised at a nebulous point in the future. He was like, I will take you to the beach someday. And she went, that day is Sunday. Okay, well, I guess that's different. I saw that like you promised. I figured he'd just fail. He was derelict in his duty to get this shit done. When you're a teenager and you want to date a girl, you do fucking groundwork. No, because this is the, you know.
bumbling little idiot teenager who isn't trying to date someone he's like oh but you're my friend so he had promised her oh at some point i'll take you to the beach yeah back when they were like childhood friends and now that she's like leaning over to him to be like i bought you food and i bought me a sexy swimsuit yeah and he's like oh food i'm gonna eat the food it's it's very much a like hey can i borrow the car this sunday because i've just gotten a date sprung on me and he's like no i'm using it okay i'm not gonna argue he doesn't say a fucking thing besides are you using the car tomorrow He doesn't mention the date. Well, you think he could probably get through to his abusive dad by being like, a hot girl dad. His dad would be like, ah-ha, horndog, ah-ha-ha. Of course you can have the car. See, I thought that's what happened, but I was like, would happen. But of course he's like, I'm not going to argue with my dad. I've had, you know, my entire life of that being beaten into me. But argue isn't even a thing. If he just led with, I have a date, do you think I could use the car? Instead, he does the most passive thing you can do. Yes, because more than being petulant or mean, he's just the most passive character that there is. Yeah, and that's my usual passive character voice. Just because I have very...
I don't have a lot of respect for passive people, John. Hey, which is why I go to bat for him. I'm like, it's not that he's being an asshole. He's just like, hey, are you using the car? And yes, I am. All right, I will not argue any further. Apparently one of us sees ourself in Takumi. Yes, I am a racing god. But yeah, no, the thing with that is, of course, then the gas station guy is like, hey, because Takumi has turned down this race on Saturday, the Sunday before, he needs to go to the beach. He's like, my kid is going to race instead, and he will die.
Like, my kid is a dumb idiot who can't drive, and if he races against these dudes, he will kill himself. Please save my son and force your child to race. One of the things I like about this movie is the fact that the gas station owner is just fully aware of the fact that his shit is a dumb fuck. He's like, look, I only have one son. He's a little piece of shit. I hope he dies. No, he's like, look, he's my only kid. I need him to live because it's the only legacy I have. But for some reason, he has it in his head that he is a racing guy, and I really need him to not do that. See, I don't think he said he was his only kid. I think he said he was his only son. Well, that's all that matters. I think the number one thing he doesn't want to have to do is pass his gas station on to a girl. Well, we never hear or see.
anything about a daughter. That is true. And I assume that we see a bunch of characters that are just like flashes across the screen in this. There's a woman working at the gas station that I guarantee you is someone from the manga. Oh, it's the woman he tries to take the love hotel. Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And the other one is, there's a shot in one of the early races, they just pan across a big dude with carrot top hair, and then you never see him again. I mean, he's in the background of the race shots. Yeah. He's always in the audience watching the races. He's just there, and I'm like, that guy's gotta be a guy from the anime or something. No, it's just a dude who has an actual look to him. Like, oh, that dude is huge and has...
Like an afro. You don't think they just took like background, or not background, but like minor characters in the anime and just were like, oh, we'll just populate the background with them as like... No. Yeah, I guess I'm... Got in my head in an MCU mindset where they're like, ah, we'll put fucking Power Man in the background for the true fans. Yeah, no, 100% not. So anyway, yeah, he gets insulted by these dudes, wins a race against them, then they show up again and challenge him by like, they actually do the thing where they show up and they're like, your gas station looks like shit. Everything's shit. Everyone's a fucking shit. If that one guy doesn't race me, shit. Anyway, we'll be up the mountain waiting for him to race us. We get that, you know, the moment you were waiting for the whole movie. Because it basically reads like, they beat this one guy from the Emperor team, and then this other guy shows up who's the leader of it, and it's very like, I told on you to my big brother. I just find it hilarious that the Emperor team is bothering. Like, they're the ones who are like professionals. They have jobs to do.
They have a huge fucking trailer to drag the car around because it's too expensive to drive in normally. Yes. And you're like, what are you doing here? Why are you doing this? Why would you need to punish locals? You could just show up in the trailer and be like, see our trailer? That's because we're professionals. We get paid to do this. Hey, okay, bye. Anyway, I see no reason to race you. You're not a professional. Yeah. Also, professional racing isn't done like this. Yeah. Obviously, you beat me. You're on a track that you have driven exclusively for five years. Yeah. There's a weird line. Does he race both the Emperor guys before the final race?
No. Because there's a point where the guy, the final boss guy... Well, Ryusuke has raced the emperor guy and beat him. Oh, okay. That's what the whole thing is. That's what it was. Because he has a line where he's like, no one who ever races me beats me twice. And that's why, because the race is Ryusuke, Takumi, and the leader of the emperors. Yeah, that makes sense. He just doesn't want to get beat by... He's going to beat everybody. He doesn't even care about the fact that Takumi is racing. No, he's like, this is a rematch between us. Yeah. And this guy is there because I'm doing a favor to this other dude in my squad to beat him to make him feel better, I guess. Yeah. It's, uh... I don't know. The bad guys are hard to care about because they feel like, what are they doing here? It's...
again, it's one of those things where I'm like, man, you made a movie out of the beginning part of a giant manga and it does not really track to be able to just watch this as its own self-contained story. The other thing that's, I mean, I just want to bring this up again. They use, I'm pretty sure the road that they race on is in Hong Kong and not in Japan. The actual Mount Akina that they race down. It's gorgeous. It's a beautiful mountain road somewhere. But they don't have the tools.
does this production team to film exciting racing on it and nor to make the rest of the movie make any sense because a lot of this movie is freeze frames that suddenly start as quickly as they end. So you'll just see like a character walking through a door and it'll freeze frame on him walking through the door and then just start again. But there's no like fanfare or stuff that splashed on the screen to make to justify why they did that. It also will cut to the same shot. You get a fuckload of that where I've never seen this in movies that aren't 3000 times cheaper than this. We'll see shit like a dude on the phone and it'll just fade out to another shot of the same dude on the same phone. I mean, I.
I understand sort of what was going on there where they're like, we want to kind of evoke the manga panel thing. I can see this trying to be stylized. Here's a still shot and a still shot and a still shot so that you can get that kind of idea. It doesn't do. The phone call doesn't work. Yeah, the phone call in particular makes it look like they just forgot to shoot the other side of the phone call. That's what it looks like. Because they show this guy and he's like, yeah, okay, well, anyway, I would like to sign up for the thing. I don't remember what it was about. Tell me about where your son is. You're a professional racer or something or other. I guess I did tell you he's a professional. It's all the same guy talking. And they clearly shot all of, they did this little thing. Okay, now in this shot, your line is this. And he just does it. Okay, okay, cut.
Now, in this shot, your line is this. And I think the idea was supposed to be it was going to be shot reverse shot on the phone call where he was talking to the gas guy, and they just didn't. So instead, they just cut from this guy talking to this guy talking. And it looks insane. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Throw some fucking star wipes in there while you're at it. Why not? There's a lot of choices made in this that are very strange from a... I mean, obviously, from the storytelling and acting point of view, you're like, all right, this is a little weird. But yeah, the actual production and shooting of it is like, why are you... Why are you just...
looking at a flag and then like occasionally stopping it and then it goes and then stop it. Yeah. And then stop it. There's a race. One of the, I don't remember which one, all the races are the fucking same. One of the races features a good two minutes of exciting hip hop music and shots of the road with no cars on it. Yes. Where you just see like road cut to another shot of the road, cut to another shot of the road. And I'm not saying this isn't like a setup. This isn't like the morning of the big race. Let's look at the track as it's getting prepared. No, the race is in progress. They just can't show you the cars because they didn't get, they didn't get coverage of it.
It's definitely a choice that they have made. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, some of the race shots are modestly impressive, but you're expecting a lot more. If you're trying to sell drift racing... Well, like I said, the last race is the only one that really feels like it matters because the first time you see Takumi do this, you're like, oh, cool. He's a very good racer. That's super cool. But then there is no change to it. And at least adding the other car, you're like...
okay, you got different stakes. He now has to not just drift around one guy. He's got to drift around two guys. The other thing about that race is he has the new engine and he is not used to it. It's got way more horsepower than he's prepared for. They jump him in his little Corolla. They jump him to 250 HP and he is not ready for it. So they have a... They give him one race down the mountain with the new thing and then his dad just goes, oh yeah, I put a new thing in there.
You'll have to adjust for that. And then he does. Indeed he does. I would say the only cinematography in this I liked, there were a couple shots during one of the races, I think against the first Emperor race, where they would do zooming in from the back of the car right through the car and into the driver's seat. And those were neat looking technical zooms. And they did a couple of them. They did one that started from Takumi's point of view, zoomed out of his car and into the car in front of him to see what the other driver was up to. And that was neat. Those were some neat shots. But mostly it's just the same six or so shots of, you know, you see a curve, a car comes skidding around, another car comes skidding around. Will it get in front? That's the only question. Yeah. It's...
I mean, again, if you're not a car person and you're not into racing, then this is really a movie and an entire series where, like, baby, you got nothing for me because you didn't establish enough relationship stuff. Like, the only tension relationship thing here is the basically Takumi and Natsuki. Yeah. Because, like we mentioned, it's not like Bunta tries to repair his relationship with his son. Not even slightly. At the end, he's just a good guy now. There's a scene where the final race, he's just narrating why Takumi's gonna be in. Oh, yeah, he has the position in the anime of going, now, what they don't know is that he's going to be able to, and it's that whole thing. Yes.
But he has the draw two card. Playing that card will cause his opponent to draw two cards. That means his hand will be larger. A beef sukiyaki over rice, that's when you take thin sliced beef and cook it in the sukiyaki style and then place it atop rice. Yeah, so he has that position at the end of this, but it's basically like, the movie has entirely forgiven him, even if we have had no resolution on his story. I don't know if the movie feels he needs to be forgiven. I don't know if maybe beating the shit out of your kid with a big stick is just acceptable in that town. I mean, it variably plays it for, holy shit, this is an abusive dad, or, yuck, yuck, he's beating his kid. It goes from, oh my god, actual abuse to, you know, The Simpsons. But the main thing of that is, like I was saying, because the only tension is Natsuki has this secret, but they...
do not resolve or do anything with it until the last two minutes of the movie. You're like, oh, this was just boring drift racing and then two minutes of drama at the end. And the thing they do with it is, I don't know, again, maybe it's a cultural difference where I don't get it, but where he's just like, I have seen enough proof to assume you are a prostitute, never speak to me again, goodbye. He's just like, that's not the ending I was expecting. I was expecting, you know, the Roxanne ending where he's like, yeah, you don't have to turn on the red light anymore. We are together. Nope. I mean, well, I'll say this. So the actual manga, one, Bunta is not abusive. Okay. He's just sort of like a cool, secretive, you know, figure to...
teach his son. Natsuki, same thing, is actually doing the whole, like, sugar baby thing. But instead of being like, and we are done, good day, he has, like, a couple months of trying to talk to her and figure things out before he joins Project D. Like, they stretch a lot of the things or change some things in this that I feel is not as good as it would have been in the manga. Yeah, one of the things that got me was they hadn't said anyone's name since the very beginning of the movie.
So there's a point where the denouement of this movie is him making two phone calls. One of them is to Riosuke, who asked him if he'd join his racing team and told him to sleep on it. He just says, hey, Riosuke, I would like to join your racing team. And the other one was to Itsuki. And I thought Itsuki was the name of the girl because they hadn't said their name since the very beginning of the movie. So there's a point where he calls, she just goes, Itsuki, I'm sorry. And he just hangs up. I was like, oh, okay. So that's the closest we're getting to an apology to her for like abandoning her in her moment of maximum vulnerability. But no, it's just him being like, hey, friend, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I beat you up for telling me that my girlfriend is a whore. She actually is. Yes, that's all it is.
Yeah, and that's basically the whole movie. Like, a lot of drift racing, and then, oh no, my girlfriend sleeps with people. Bye, we're done, end of movie. It's weird, because would I like to see a movie about drift racing? Sure, because I feel like it could be way more entertainingly filmed than this. Oh yeah, and it can be. I need you to watch Fast and Furious 3, Tokyo Drift. Tokyo Drift, yeah, I've never seen that one.
Have you seen? I thought you hadn't seen any of them. No, of course I haven't. Okay. I don't know. That's why I said you need to watch it. Obviously, I think that's the one where it turns out Jason Statham is the bad guy. That's like the one. No, it's the one that has nothing to do with any of the rest of the series. It does. They bring back all kinds of shit from it. Well, they bring it back. I'm saying at the time it didn't have anything. One of the things they bring back, I believe, is the villain of it, one Mr. Jason Statham. I don't think so. I'm not certain on that. Now, again, I'm not saying that it is or isn't because God knows I've only watched the one for this show. Like, I watched, what did we watch? Fast 8 or Fast 7? 8. 8.
So I've seen eight and that is it, which is very weird coming into that series at the eighth one and being like, I'm sorry, what is happening? It looks like you're right. The villain of three is a guy just named Takashi. Yep. So there you go. For whatever reason, I could have sworn that Jason Statham was in that one. No, the third one is literally they bring back just the main racer from it at a later time. Yeah, I believe just to kill him. It is the most non-connected one. It is basically like Halloween 3. It just happens in another universe. Fair enough. All right, so let's get into our bests and worsts for Initial D. Jeff, what was your favorite part of the Initial D?
Or initial de. Initial de. It's French for initial of, but they forgot to put in the noun that it is of. Formula de. Anyway, I think my favorite, I mean, I already said it. My favorite part of this is Ryusuke and Takeshi just being nice characters. It's kind of like if you made a Brave and the Bold movie, like an old, like a 1960s Brave and the Bold. You know what I'm talking about, obviously, where it centered Robin, but it was just like, what if Robin got to go to the swimming hole with his two dads, Superman and Batman? You can't throw punches because of the Hays Code. So instead, what if they just rode bikes? And it's just Superman and Batman being nice, good dads who were like, hey, son, welcome into the world of superheroing. We're going to make it easy for you. Now let's all straddle this tank gun. Who wants ice cream? Who wants to watch gladiator movies?
That's what it feels like, where they're inducting this new character, but they are a benevolent on-ramp to the world of drift racing for our hero, and they are a pleasing presence in the film, where you don't go like, oh, I wish these characters would either shut up, or stop talking, or go away, or not be filmed. No, they do not overstay their welcome. They are very much just like, hi, we're here, and we have a thing we want to do, and everyone else is being fucking weird, and they're like, huh, okay. Yeah, yeah, so I would have much rather watched a movie about them. What about you? I mean, you should say the same thing, right? I mean, that honestly was definitely one of the highlights of this. I did love the, I bought a sexy swimsuit that had the least amount of cloth, and it is straight up just like,
A shorts and tank top bikini. Yeah, it's boy shorts and a drop hang tank top. Almost like a spaghetti shirt. And we show the beach when they are getting there. We're just panning around. And I was like, there are people in actual bikinis here. She's a teenager. They were trying to be especially modest. For a movie that gives multiple characters a scene where she walks by and they lean over to the ground so they can see what color her underwear are. Special mention to both Itzki and the dad for doing that throughout the course of the film. If only her skirt was two inches shorter. I could have seen more of her pubic hairs. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, the only other character I feel outside of those two that was remotely decent is the dad of the gas station. Yeah, gas dad. Gas dad was fine. He was like, oh, you know, I want to protect my son. I want to make sure that he's alive. I appreciate that he wants to protect his son, but only in a way where his son knows that he is disapproved of. But it's not even that. He's just like, dude, you can't race. And he still lets him do it anyway. He's like, I know you want to, and I know you want to do this, and I'm going to get you a car.
But please stop racing. Yeah. Well, there's a point where he's like, that's it, you're not my son anymore. I remember his son was doing it, but he was trying to demand something. There's also a scene where he's just repeatedly barfing two days after a race, and he's like, behold my dipshit son, the worst of sons. This is why I want you to be a good racer, so I can mooch off some of your good son energy. I mean, no, again, you are definitely putting things that aren't there. Well, excuse me for adding something to this nothing. But yeah, he's the only other character in there that I'm like, at least you're sort of a decent human being. Worst part of this movie for you. I mean, it's got to be the part where our main character is like,
My girlfriend's a prostitute. I can never speak to her again or seek to understand what happened. I will not talk to her about this. No resolution. The end. Grats on sort of semi-adhering to the manga, I guess, but it's not a very exciting resolution to your film. No. It is very much a, wait, where's the rest of this? You started a plot thread here that should have been started 45 minutes ago to be resolved, and yet you ended on it. Yes. I mean, plus, it's just sort of an over-regressive.
thing to have happen where he finds he even has a story from her about like what her life is like where she's like yeah you know i live with my aged mom that i have to do a lot of extra jobs and so on to take care of her that's why you'll often see me going to my hometown because i i work there and come back with money for my family uh there's no point where he like has a daunting understanding or anything he just goes he just goes oh you're lower class i will not speak to you or not lower you know what i mean yeah unclean what's your uh what's your least favorite thing i mean i know the other one i mean honestly the fucking beginning of this when itsuki's like i gotta look up that skirt i was like don't fucking this guy's going to be a character because you're spending time on him. Do not introduce a character to me by, I look up skirts and brag. And tell everybody that I'm a god. Yeah. Yeah, he's not. I was like, Jesus Christ, fuck this guy. You can already tell he's comedy relief because he's wearing a Hawaiian shirt vest over his regular outfit and he's got an awful bowl cut. So you're like, oh, that's definitely. Oh yeah, this is the shorthand for, I'm the shitty friend. I'm your goofy shitty friend. Yeah. And I'm going to be the loud mouth so that you can be a stoic type. Yeah. It's just, yeah, I would figure you were going to go with, you know, abusive dad welts. The abusive dad thing is fucked up. Why add that?
That's wild. Yeah, the fact that when I looked and it was like, oh no, that's 100% a wholesale made for this movie, not from the manga. It's like, why? What did that add? I probably like 10 minutes and they were like, well, we gotta get... Except they were like, oh, this is hilarious. It's hilarious if a dad beats his kid. Before I say that it added like 10 minutes, this isn't some like 75 minute movie that gets to 80 by credits. This movie is two hours long. Oh yeah, it's... It's an hour and 45. Yeah, it's about an hour and 45. It's a long ass movie for a movie that doesn't have any shit in it. Yeah. So let's go ahead and rate the movie. We're just going to rate it 0 to 5 to give it a total rating out of 10. Joff.
one and a half. Some of the cars are interesting. A few of the characters I kind of liked. I mean, not very interesting. You don't get that much detail on the cars beyond. A GT-R is a really good car. This car is very good. An FC is also a good car, but maybe not as good as a GT-R. But maybe. An AE86 is a bad car. This is bad car against good car. Bad car win? Yeah. So a one and a half, but almost all of that is just for the tactical details about street racing and a couple of interesting camera shots. Ultimately, the melodramas and so on in this movie are take it or leave it boring. Yeah. What about you? I think I'm right there at a one and a half. Between the...
weird choices that happen as far as like the actual filmmaking of it it's not good to watch but also very boring none of the actors convincingly do anything and given that your main character's main quality is being bored with life and he's who we follow it's like oh no one cares about anything and this is boring because he is boring yeah like if he gave a shit about this and was emotionally invested then maybe you would pick some of that up which is what you normally get from sports anime but this guy does not seem to give a shit that he is drift racing no he doesn't care at all and it's it's just it's not interesting to watch no it's so It's bad and boring, so three out of ten, just don't. You gotta start rolling again when we get these Hong Kong shit movies, because Croczilla was exactly the same boring bullshit. I was honestly hoping that this would be better because it was based on a manga, instead of it just being like, oh, we made up a movie and it's garbage. I was like, oh, initially, that's a property that has popularity backing behind it. They probably put some money into it. No, of course not. That's very fair, but I would say it's not a property for either of us. No. For the same reason that we aren't out there watching the basketball anime, because we're like, I know what basketball is. I don't need a guy to breathlessly explain what dribbling is. He's doing a layup. Yeah.
I see there are five players on the basketball court. That is the correct number. Oh, my God. He's dunking. To be able to dunk, you must be able to leap over four feet off the ground. An impossible feat. Multi-track dunking. What? Anyway, there you go. That is Initial D. Thank you so much for joining us. Now, of course, we have started a new season of our TV Mastery. If you want some more content from us where we are reviewing the visual media, you can head on over to patreon.com slash system mastery. Join us there at the $5 level. We are currently...
going through shows that got canceled immediately. Yes, shows that were canceled as quickly as possible. The initial plan was one episode, but I don't know if we'll be able to hold to that because that's hard to find. Yeah, we do have another one episode wonder here where this got shown on CBS, one episode, and then they went, ha ha, whoops. Gee, I wonder why after having watched it. Yeah, it's like, I mean, you know what? Give us money and you'll find out. You get to find out. It's real bad.
Join us. $5 level. That unlocks the TV mastery, but it also unlocks our monthly afterthought where you can ask us questions and we do some weird topics and it's a lot more conversational with you. It's very fun. You get all of our bonus content. You get the characters that we make for system mastery. You get our weird deep dives into the world of Star Wars and Wikipedia. All that is for you. A ton of stuff.
So if you head on over to patreon.com slash systemmaster, you'll get all that there. Yeah, it's so much, and it's very worth it. It lets us keep doing what we're doing, and it helps me do stuff like refurbish our new office space and all this other kind of stuff that we've got to get done. Yep, and... By office space, I mean my dingy garage. So don't think we're so highfalutin here. Oh, no, this is definitely turning a nasty spider-infested garage into a place with a desk. Yes, as a number... Hey, it looks nicer than a desk. Oh, it's definitely very nice. You've done a very good job. Look, you're the wind beneath my wings.
You are my island in stormy weather. Okay, thank you. That's all I needed to hear. Anyway, we will be back in another couple weeks with some more Movie Mastery. And until then, all of you, have a good one.