MF Ghost Anime Overview and Analysis

I wanted to talk about MF Ghost for a while now, but I wanted to process it for a while, because this was a big anime for me personally. Something I was following and looking forward to since the first teaser was released two years ago. It was special to me mainly due to it being a sequel to the very popular drifting anime, Initial D. Car animes are pretty much non-existent now. Unlike in the 90s, no one seemed to care about cars in anime anymore. Everyone was watching the Formula 1 Netflix show Drive to Survive or playing Mario Kart. But I do care. Anime and cars have a special relationship and the easiest way to see that is to check out Natasha. If you don't know what an Itasha is, it's a car wrapped with anime characters. The word Itasha itself isn't really anything to be proud of because it literally means a gooner car or more accurately a cringe car. But you can't deny the special bond between them. But that bond isn't so strong these days like it was in the 90s. And that's thanks to one single manga. Initial D. The most popular car media to come out after the Cars movie. Oh wait, the cultural significance of Initial D is undeniable. The reason drifting became so popular in fiction and car culture is thanks to Initial D. The manga was really a standout in the 90s because when you read Initial D, you can see the passion of Shigeno Sensei in the manga. This alone made a lot of non-car guys take out their mom's Corolla for a car park drifting session and they were never the same after. Initial D was not just popular in Japan, it showed people all over the world how cool Japanese cars are and it pretty much worked as a free commercial for them. Anyone who is remotely interested in cars have heard the name Initial D, and even if you haven't, you have definitely seen the white and black Toyota Corolla AE86 with Japanese text on the side reading Fujiwara Tofu Shop. This anime alone increased the price of this 80s Corolla to stupid amounts. Finding this car for a reasonable price today is next to impossible thanks to Initial D. This anime made this car a character of its own and made a commuter car into something pretty much everyone wanted. When talking about Initial D, it's impossible not to talk about Keiichi Tsuchiya aka the Drift King. Getting someone as talented and informative as Tsuchiya on board to work on the manga definitely made Initial D much more detailed and realistic on things that it approached. Primarily the drifting techniques and behavior of the cars. That being said, Initial D was never supposed to be realistic. A lot of the things they do in the anime and manga is still very much fictional. But the pure spirit of drifting is all that matters at the end of the day. Now let's talk about the long awaited sequel to Initial D, MF Ghost. MF Ghost was very intriguing to me because it looked like everything an Initial D fan would be looking for. Cool cars, epic music and good representation of racing and drifting. And of course, recurring characters. I knew some details about this when it was going on, but I never read the MF Ghost manga because by the time I found out, they already announced the anime. This anime had big shoes to fill. And I understand your only other competition being your extremely popular and acclaimed prequel is extremely unfair, but long story short, MF Ghost is a big mixed bag for me. MF Ghost takes place sometime in the 2020s, a future where gas cars are officially dead and everyone just uses self-driving electric cars. Realistically, this isn't happening anytime in the 2020s because we're in 2024 and Cybertruck is the face of electric cars as of today. So I doubt there's gonna be a big change in that for the next 6 years at least. But anyway, in their world, everyone bought Teslas and no one drives gas cars anymore, so the Takahashi brothers decides to host a competition called the MFG. Yeah, the same Takahashi brothers from Initial D. MFG started as a successor to the Initial D program and does sanctioned street races for cars of any power. Meaning a Prius can go head to head with the Bugatti. And the only regulation they have is power to grip ratio which means more powerful cars must have bigger tires while less powerful cars should have thinner tires for a fair balance. Also all cars must be gas cars and that means hybrids are also not allowed unless you take out the ERS system. Just from that you can see it's taking a much different approach from Initial D, starting with the entire thing being legal and in the future, but it's much more than that. The main character, Karagiri Kanata, or Karagiri Rivington, is a half-Japanese, half-British guy who has come to Japan to find his dad who abandoned him and his mother. A lot of things to unpack, but the character itself isn't as interesting as the backstory, sadly. Kanata is like Takumi from Initial D, but worse. He has no personality, he's extremely overpowered, and a chick magnet. I would be okay with the other two if he didn't have the personality of a bread, but he's the most- vanilla boring ass character you can think of really. Katagiri came to Japan and moves in with his family friends to find his dad and his idea was to change his surname to his dad's which is Kanata and race cars until his dad somehow notices him and to do that he joins MFG. Kanata is a stupid guy really. He was a F4 regional champion before he decided to just fuck his career up and go to find his dad who abandoned him and his mother one day. Like Bro didn't want to do F3 or F2 but moved to Japan and drive in MFG to find his dad. No words. Ren Sionji is the female lead of the show and daughter of the family that Kanata is leaving with. In the first episode, she says she doesn't believe in love at first sight and by the second episode, she's barking for Kanata. Ren as a character is thankfully a bit more complex than Kanata and feels like an actual human being. She helps Kanata be comfortable and also helps in his quest to find his dad. But the problem I have with her character is how they're sexualizing her for absolutely no reason. Ren works part-time as a MF Angel, and she's only 17, mind you. And the job of an MF Angel is to literally be sexualized, which I find really creepy and... very weird. There are more instances of extremely creepy behavior from people in this anime which I will be talking about. Ogata is actually one of my favorite characters in this show and he doesn't even do a lot to achieve that. Ogata is a mechanic and the owner of the car that Kanata drives, the red GT86. He's a very nice and chill guy who manages the back end of what Kanata does. Ogata has an old relationship with the Sayanji family, the family that took Kanata in. He's a very expressive character and and always surprised whenever Kanata races. He's also very considerate, and intended to only take 20% of Kanata's prize money, saying that risk Kanata taking was too high. But Kanata insisted, and he signed a contract with him to take equal share. This is a show with a lot of characters, and some of the other ones that are worth talking about are Aiba Shun, who is a seasonal MFG racer who drives a Nissan GTR. He's pretty fast and a nice dude overall, and he's also a good friend of Ogata. The others are Takahashi- brothers. Both the Takahashi brothers, Ryosuke and Keisuke aren't really explained in MFG apart from the fact they host a competition. Ryosuke works as a filthy rich doctor so unless you have watched Initial D, they aren't really explained here. Both the parents of Ren, the Saiyanji family are also good people who let Kanata stay with them and help with anything that he needs. Now there are many other characters, mainly drivers like the Lotus siblings who drives an XG Genemiya. And then there is Michael Beckenbauer, who's the number one on standings and drives a Porsche Cayman. He's also supposedly the best driver on MFG as of now. And then there is Koki Savatori. Savatori is a creepy-ass character and his entire personality is that he loves only 17-year-olds. Yeah, this entire thing is that he's a pedophile. He drives an Alpine A110 and he's fast, but I got no idea why there's a character like this in the show, because it does absolutely nothing for the plot in any way. Just plain creepy, that's it. I'm not a huge fan of any of these characters, and overall, almost all of them are pretty basic and does not have the depth like characters in Initial D. Now, talking about MFG, it's a competition that emulate street racing legally. Because in MFG universe everyone just switched to self-driving cars so the only way to get some illegal street racing is to do it legally in a closed street circuit. All the races are held in Japan and the anime takes place in the fourth year of MFG. It was started as a next step of Initial D, another program started by Ryosuke himself. The rules for MFG are also pretty simple. The first part is qualifying. It takes place in a time attack format which takes over 7 days and to ensure fairness of driving conditions, the qualifying only takes place on dry conditions on sunny days. All the competitors are aiming for a top 30 finish and the top 15 can participate in the finals. These 15 finalists are also known as the divine 15. The finals takes place in a race format where the top 15 race each other and the race takes place under any weather conditions. If you watch Formula 1, it's like only the Q2 grid gets to race while the others are paid in exposure. So, do I like this anime? I have a love-hate relationship with this anime personally, and let me tell you why. The reason I think this anime is good is that it's fun to watch. Racing is always fun to watch, and there is no difference there. But it's no Initial D, mind you. MFG does general racing and hype aspect pretty well. And also thanks to the banger music, which is half the reason I recommend people to watch Initial D, is also done right here. It's not a Eurobeat, but it's good in its own way, which also includes some Eurobeat here and there. But when MFG stops racing, it's one of the most uninteresting pieces of shit out there. Now I know I'm comparing this to Initial D quite a lot, but the reason for that is because racing genre really does not have a lot of competition and I know living up to Initial D is hard, but MF Ghost just does not do it. Whenever they stop racing in this anime, which unlike Initial D where they do quite a lot of setting up, this is pretty fucking boring. because the premise is nonsensical and feels like they made up something for no reason. Now I understand animes can focus on something that they are trying to accomplish and completely ignore other parts of it, but all I'm saying is that it doesn't hold a candle to Initial D, which did both pretty well. Before we wrap this up, some people might have a question about Takumi Fujiwara. Is he in the anime? Considering this is a direct sequel to Initial D, he should be here, right? Well he is but not in a way you would think. I don't want to spoil that part so I'll just let you watch and find it out. And the visuals. The visuals are pretty top-notch here. For racing anime I think they did a very good job with all the car models and tracks. Talking about the car models, unlike Initial D, MFG has a lot more variety of cars which I do appreciate. Initial D only included Japanese cars because it was trying to put the Japanese cars on the spotlight. But MFG includes cars from every class and country. Our protagonist Kanata drives a red GT86 which was Toyota's answer to a successor for the AE86. Personally, I adore the GT86. I think it's one of the best pocket-friendly sports cars made in recent times and seeing it on show really made me smile. GT86 obviously isn't a speed demon but I love the howling of this car and that's exactly what they're highlighting in this anime. MF Ghost, just like Initial D, gives the protagonist a low-powered, good handling car, and they're supposed to put that on pole or a race win. And the GT86 is a perfect car for that. So is MF Ghost a good anime? I'd say the racing is pretty good, but if you're looking for anything more than that, no it's not. Personally for me, I do like racing, and even with all the BS going on, I still kinda enjoyed it, but it might not be for everyone. Also, I'm pretty disappointed in the fact that Initial D felt like a more progressive anime when you look at it today compared to MFG, which takes place in the future. Anyway, that's about it. Thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it. Subscribe to the channel if you like my content. Comment the color of your underwear. And one more thing, if you made it till here, make sure to follow me on Twitter. I do post quite a lot there, so if you're interested, maybe consider following me on Twitter. Not X, on Twitter. And I'll see you later.

Unlike in the 90s, no one seemed to care about cars in anime anymore. Everyone was watching the Formula 1 Netflix show Drive to Survive or playing Mario Kart. But I do care.

Anime and cars have a special relationship and the easiest way to see that is to check out Natasha. If you don't know what an Itasha is, it's a car wrapped with anime characters. The word Itasha itself isn't really anything to be proud of because it literally means a gooner car or more accurately a cringe car. But you can't deny the special bond between them.

But that bond isn't so strong these days like it was in the 90s. And that's thanks to one single manga. Initial D. The most popular car media to come out after the Cars movie.

Oh wait, the cultural significance of Initial D is undeniable. The reason drifting became so popular in fiction and car culture is thanks to Initial D. The manga was really a standout in the 90s because when you read Initial D, you can see the passion of Shigeno Sensei in the manga. This alone made a lot of non-car guys take out their mom's Corolla for a car park drifting session and they were never the same after. Initial D was not just popular in Japan, it showed people all over the world how cool Japanese cars are and it pretty much worked as a free commercial for them.

Anyone who is remotely interested in cars have heard the name Initial D, and even if you haven't, you have definitely seen the white and black Toyota Corolla AE86 with Japanese text on the side reading Fujiwara Tofu Shop. This anime alone increased the price of this 80s Corolla to stupid amounts. Finding this car for a reasonable price today is next to impossible thanks to Initial D. This anime made this car a character of its own and made a commuter car into something pretty much everyone wanted. When talking about Initial D, it's impossible not to talk about Keiichi Tsuchiya aka the Drift King. Getting someone as talented and informative as Tsuchiya on board to work on the manga definitely made Initial D much more detailed and realistic on things that it approached.

Primarily the drifting techniques and behavior of the cars. That being said, Initial D was never supposed to be realistic. A lot of the things they do in the anime and manga is still very much fictional.

But the pure spirit of drifting is all that matters at the end of the day. Now let's talk about the long awaited sequel to Initial D, MF Ghost. MF Ghost was very intriguing to me because it looked like everything an Initial D fan would be looking for.

Cool cars, epic music and good representation of racing and drifting. And of course, recurring characters. I knew some details about this when it was going on, but I never read the MF Ghost manga because by the time I found out, they already announced the anime. This anime had big shoes to fill.

And I understand your only other competition being your extremely popular and acclaimed prequel is extremely unfair, but long story short, MF Ghost is a big mixed bag for me. MF Ghost takes place sometime in the 2020s, a future where gas cars are officially dead and everyone just uses self-driving electric cars. Realistically, this isn't happening anytime in the 2020s because we're in 2024 and Cybertruck is the face of electric cars as of today.

So I doubt there's gonna be a big change in that for the next 6 years at least. But anyway, in their world, everyone bought Teslas and no one drives gas cars anymore, so the Takahashi brothers decides to host a competition called the MFG. Yeah, the same Takahashi brothers from Initial D. MFG started as a successor to the Initial D program and does sanctioned street races for cars of any power. Meaning a Prius can go head to head with the Bugatti. And the only regulation they have is power to grip ratio which means more powerful cars must have bigger tires while less powerful cars should have thinner tires for a fair balance.

Also all cars must be gas cars and that means hybrids are also not allowed unless you take out the ERS system. Just from that you can see it's taking a much different approach from Initial D, starting with the entire thing being legal and in the future, but it's much more than that. The main character, Karagiri Kanata, or Karagiri Rivington, is a half-Japanese, half-British guy who has come to Japan to find his dad who abandoned him and his mother. A lot of things to unpack, but the character itself isn't as interesting as the backstory, sadly. Kanata is like Takumi from Initial D, but worse.

He has no personality, he's extremely overpowered, and a chick magnet. I would be okay with the other two if he didn't have the personality of a bread, but he's the most- vanilla boring ass character you can think of really. Katagiri came to Japan and moves in with his family friends to find his dad and his idea was to change his surname to his dad's which is Kanata and race cars until his dad somehow notices him and to do that he joins MFG. Kanata is a stupid guy really.

He was a F4 regional champion before he decided to just fuck his career up and go to find his dad who abandoned him and his mother one day. Like Bro didn't want to do F3 or F2 but moved to Japan and drive in MFG to find his dad. No words.

Ren Sionji is the female lead of the show and daughter of the family that Kanata is leaving with. In the first episode, she says she doesn't believe in love at first sight and by the second episode, she's barking for Kanata. Ren as a character is thankfully a bit more complex than Kanata and feels like an actual human being. She helps Kanata be comfortable and also helps in his quest to find his dad. But the problem I have with her character is how they're sexualizing her for absolutely no reason.

Ren works part-time as a MF Angel, and she's only 17, mind you. And the job of an MF Angel is to literally be sexualized, which I find really creepy and... very weird. There are more instances of extremely creepy behavior from people in this anime which I will be talking about.

Ogata is actually one of my favorite characters in this show and he doesn't even do a lot to achieve that. Ogata is a mechanic and the owner of the car that Kanata drives, the red GT86. He's a very nice and chill guy who manages the back end of what Kanata does. Ogata has an old relationship with the Sayanji family, the family that took Kanata in.

He's a very expressive character and and always surprised whenever Kanata races. He's also very considerate, and intended to only take 20% of Kanata's prize money, saying that risk Kanata taking was too high. But Kanata insisted, and he signed a contract with him to take equal share.

This is a show with a lot of characters, and some of the other ones that are worth talking about are Aiba Shun, who is a seasonal MFG racer who drives a Nissan GTR. He's pretty fast and a nice dude overall, and he's also a good friend of Ogata. The others are Takahashi- brothers. Both the Takahashi brothers, Ryosuke and Keisuke aren't really explained in MFG apart from the fact they host a competition. Ryosuke works as a filthy rich doctor so unless you have watched Initial D, they aren't really explained here.

Both the parents of Ren, the Saiyanji family are also good people who let Kanata stay with them and help with anything that he needs. Now there are many other characters, mainly drivers like the Lotus siblings who drives an XG Genemiya. And then there is Michael Beckenbauer, who's the number one on standings and drives a Porsche Cayman. He's also supposedly the best driver on MFG as of now.

And then there is Koki Savatori. Savatori is a creepy-ass character and his entire personality is that he loves only 17-year-olds. Yeah, this entire thing is that he's a pedophile. He drives an Alpine A110 and he's fast, but I got no idea why there's a character like this in the show, because it does absolutely nothing for the plot in any way. Just plain creepy, that's it.

I'm not a huge fan of any of these characters, and overall, almost all of them are pretty basic and does not have the depth like characters in Initial D. Now, talking about MFG, it's a competition that emulate street racing legally. Because in MFG universe everyone just switched to self-driving cars so the only way to get some illegal street racing is to do it legally in a closed street circuit. All the races are held in Japan and the anime takes place in the fourth year of MFG. It was started as a next step of Initial D, another program started by Ryosuke himself. The rules for MFG are also pretty simple.

The first part is qualifying. It takes place in a time attack format which takes over 7 days and to ensure fairness of driving conditions, the qualifying only takes place on dry conditions on sunny days. All the competitors are aiming for a top 30 finish and the top 15 can participate in the finals.

These 15 finalists are also known as the divine 15. The finals takes place in a race format where the top 15 race each other and the race takes place under any weather conditions. If you watch Formula 1, it's like only the Q2 grid gets to race while the others are paid in exposure. So, do I like this anime? I have a love-hate relationship with this anime personally, and let me tell you why.

The reason I think this anime is good is that it's fun to watch. Racing is always fun to watch, and there is no difference there. But it's no Initial D, mind you.

MFG does general racing and hype aspect pretty well. And also thanks to the banger music, which is half the reason I recommend people to watch Initial D, is also done right here. It's not a Eurobeat, but it's good in its own way, which also includes some Eurobeat here and there. But when MFG stops racing, it's one of the most uninteresting pieces of shit out there.

Now I know I'm comparing this to Initial D quite a lot, but the reason for that is because racing genre really does not have a lot of competition and I know living up to Initial D is hard, but MF Ghost just does not do it. Whenever they stop racing in this anime, which unlike Initial D where they do quite a lot of setting up, this is pretty fucking boring. because the premise is nonsensical and feels like they made up something for no reason.

Now I understand animes can focus on something that they are trying to accomplish and completely ignore other parts of it, but all I'm saying is that it doesn't hold a candle to Initial D, which did both pretty well. Before we wrap this up, some people might have a question about Takumi Fujiwara. Is he in the anime? Considering this is a direct sequel to Initial D, he should be here, right? Well he is but not in a way you would think.

I don't want to spoil that part so I'll just let you watch and find it out. And the visuals. The visuals are pretty top-notch here.

For racing anime I think they did a very good job with all the car models and tracks. Talking about the car models, unlike Initial D, MFG has a lot more variety of cars which I do appreciate. Initial D only included Japanese cars because it was trying to put the Japanese cars on the spotlight.

But MFG includes cars from every class and country. Our protagonist Kanata drives a red GT86 which was Toyota's answer to a successor for the AE86. Personally, I adore the GT86.

I think it's one of the best pocket-friendly sports cars made in recent times and seeing it on show really made me smile. GT86 obviously isn't a speed demon but I love the howling of this car and that's exactly what they're highlighting in this anime. MF Ghost, just like Initial D, gives the protagonist a low-powered, good handling car, and they're supposed to put that on pole or a race win.

And the GT86 is a perfect car for that. So is MF Ghost a good anime? I'd say the racing is pretty good, but if you're looking for anything more than that, no it's not. Personally for me, I do like racing, and even with all the BS going on, I still kinda enjoyed it, but it might not be for everyone. Also, I'm pretty disappointed in the fact that Initial D felt like a more progressive anime when you look at it today compared to MFG, which takes place in the future.

Anyway, that's about it. Thanks for watching. Like this video if you liked it. Subscribe to the channel if you like my content. Comment the color of your underwear.

And one more thing, if you made it till here, make sure to follow me on Twitter. I do post quite a lot there, so if you're interested, maybe consider following me on Twitter. Not X, on Twitter. And I'll see you later.

Transcript for:MF Ghost Anime Overview and Analysis

Transcript for:
MF Ghost Anime Overview and Analysis