Takumi Fujiwara is back and he's ready to race in the second season of the popular anime Initial D. In this set of episodes Takumi does a lot of racing, but he doesn't always win. He also finds out a secret about his girlfriend that he was happier not knowing about.  With a new engine, new streets to race, and new opponents the only thing this series is lacking if length.  Unfortunately there are only 12 episodes on this set with an additional 2 episode OVA series highlighting a pair of female racers.

Series Background:

Takumi Fujiwara is your average high school student.  He goes to school, works at a gas station and helps his father out with his tofu business.  Every day he wakes up in the middle of the night to deliver fresh tofu to a restaurant on top of Mount Akagi.  Even though he just got his driver's license, he's really been driving up and down the curving mountain road, every day, for five years.  It's a long and boring drive, so Takumi started seeing how fast he could fly down the road on his way home.  He became faster and faster and started drifting (letting the back end of the car slide out in the direction of the curve) to increase his speed.

After passing a street racer on the mountain road one night, Takumi finds himself the talk of the town.  Everyone wants to see him race again, even though he doesn't want to.  Was it a fluke that his father's ten year old Toyota Trueno "eight-six" actually beat a souped up GTR?  The local street racing gang, the Akina Speed Stars, are desperate to find the mysterious driver and recruit him for their team.

Over the course of season one, Takumi took on all comers and became a local hero by beating them all.  Even drivers with better cars or more finely tuned engines couldn't out-race the young kid.  Every time things would look desperate, Takumi would learn something new about his car or driving itself and pull out a win.

This season:

Being the best driver down Mt. Akagi means that everyone wants to try to take Takumi down, but he's not an easy person to defeat.  Fujiwara is so good at the mountain pass that he decides that he won't race on it anymore.  There's not enough challenge and he's not growing as a racer, so he'll only compete with drivers on their turf from now on.

Traveling to other districts to race is fine, but he's put a lot of wear and tear on the old eight-six's engine.  It's only a matter of time until it gives out, and blow it does.  Takumi's father, an old racer himself, has anticipated that however and already found a new engine to put in the car.  He drops it in and lets his son take off, but something's wrong.  The car doesn't have as much power as it did before.  Even at high RPMs it doesn't accelerate like it should and looses power every time Takumi has to shift.  His father said the engine was better, but why is he having so many problems?  There's a lot of potential in the new power plant, but Takumi has to discover how to unleash it.
Another problem Takumi has are the anonymous notes that he keeps receiving.  Someone is hinting that the girl he likes, Natsuki, is going out with someone else; an adult who drives a Mercedes.  He's not sure what to make of it, and doesn't really believe the object of his affections is a prostitute, but when he sees the two of them together there's no other conclusion he can reach.

This season was a lot of fun, just like the last one.  Even if you don't know anything about street racing (I certainly don't) the show makes it interesting.  It does a good job of explaining the finer points of each race.  At some point before or during every competition someone will ask "Does Takumi have a chance?" and then another person will calmly explain the disadvantage that he's racing under.  The program does a good job of upping the stakes for each race without making it ever seem ridiculous.

The races are exciting, but the interaction between Takumi and his friends are the best parts.  Itsuki, the comic relief of the program, shows his serious side when he meets a girl and falls in love.  He's just crazy about this lady, but does she feel the same way about him?  For such a simple story there's a good amount of characterization.  Each of the main characters grows and matures over the course of this first season.

Like the first season, this set of episodes has a mix of CGI and traditional animation.  The cars for the most part are computer generated and though these CGI elements don't stick out like they do in some shows, they are only semi-successful at blending with the rest of the show.  The cars don't look like they are part of the picture; it looks more like a superimposed image.  This isn't terribly distracting though and doesn't interfere with enjoying the show.

The only problem is that the season itself is rather short, only a scant 13 episodes compared to the 26 for season one.  (The first episode of season two is presented on the first season set and isn't presented here.)  Also included in this set is a two-episode OVA story about Impact Blue, a team of female racers who were beaten by Takumi in the first season.  This short tale shows the price that the driver, Mako, has to pay by being such a good competitor.  Though a lot of the supporting cast from the main show makes appearances, Takumi is awkwardly absent.

This second season set seems to be the individual volumes presented in new packaging.  The twelve TV episodes and two OVAs that make up this set come on five DVDs.  The discs are housed in one of those horrid fold-out cases, two discs to a page.  The disc overlap each other about half way, with one disc raised up higher than the other.  The fold-out book is held together with a thin pressboard sleeve.  Not the greatest packaging ever, but it does the job.

Audio:

This set offers viewers the choice of 5.1 audio tracks in either the original Japanese or in English.  I alternated audio tracks through the first handful of episodes before I gave up on the English dub.  The English voice actors do a good job, but the original music track has been replaced with some horrible rap music that really got on my nerves.  It didn't fit in with the rest of the show and was really distracting.  Ugh.  The music on the Japanese track is much more appealing.

Both tracks made good use of the full sound stage.  The rears really come alive during the race scenes and that adds a lot to the atmosphere of the show.  Unfortunately when the races are over the show collapses into what is basically a stereo mix.  Even that sounds good though as there is a lot of panning.  When a car drives across the screen, the engine sounds follow it from one speaker to the next.  Overall this was a good sounding show with no distortion or background noise.

Video:

The full frame image was fine but not outstanding.  The picture was on the soft side, with lines being just a little blurry and not as distinct as I would have liked them.  Aliasing also was a problem, with fine lines in the background having a stair-step effect and jittering when the camera passed over them.  Cross colorization was also present though not to a great extent.  The colors used on the show were a bit dull, but that may have been the look the creators were going for.  Aside from those rather minor complaints that picture looks fine.

Extras:

The set has a fairly standard set of extras spread across the nine discs.  There's a clean opening and closing, and each disc also has a short reel of bloopers from the English ADR sessions.  Some of these are funny, but most of them are only slightly amusing.

Final Thoughts:

This season picks up where the previous one left off, and though it's rather short, the creators pack a lot of excitement into these 12 episodes.  The races themselves are exciting and the show never goes wanting for action, and the developments in the characters personal lives are interesting too.  Well worth picking up especially in this nicely priced season set.  Recommended.