5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #4. Hajime no Ippo: The Fighting! (2000)

Based on: the manga by George Morikawa. 1989 - present/ongoing.

Claim to fame: Denpushii rouru! **jet engines**
Dubbed: Yes, but it's a mixed bag.
Subject: Boxing.

Hajime no Ippo is a modern day classic and if you haven't seen at least one episode of the first series, put everything down right now and go find some of it. Like Initial D, I've heard good things about this show for years and delayed on watching it. At the time, Netflix was always missing the discs of the series or had it on long wait. (Yes, this was back when mailed DVDs were primary for using Netflix.) My Internet connection was lousy at the time too so I couldn't go find it online either.

Like Initial D, I thought "meh, boxing? Who cares?" in the same manner I dismissed a show about illegal street racing. It's old, it looks kinda lame, and doesn't have anything to offer me. Even these days, in trying to introduce this show to others, I see the same dismissiveness with them as I used to have. But passing on this show is a big mistake.

Hajime no Ippo is about Ippo Makunouchi, a limp noodle of a highschool kid that has a bit of a nervous personality and a good heart. He's a hard worker, helping his mother before and after school to keep their business afloat and inadvertently honing his physical strength in the process. He gets bullied and in the first episode, boxer Mamoru Takumura comes to his rescue.

Long story short, Ippo's meeting with Takumura ends up jumpstarting a passion for boxing. Ippo gains strength and confidence (well, some confidence) as we watch him persevere towards his new dream of being a professional boxer.

So some various points here...

1. This story is on-going. My recommendation is actually for the first season of this show. It's over 70 episodes long but it tells a single concise story with a beginning, middle, and end. There's other seasons and OVA but as the narrative progresses in subsequent media, we get into longer (sometimes outright sillier) fights and it honestly feels pointless at times. The story is reduced to "x has to fight y" and the sense of direction is kind of lost. I have watched all of the available Ippo anime and will continue watch more, but I don't blame anyone for checking out after season one.

2. This show is now more readily available. Legally. It's been on YouTube for a long time in its entirety but I fully see the YouTube uploads being pulled as it was recently announced Hajime no Ippo will be on Crunchyroll. Um, yay. Don't get me wrong, I like Crunchyroll way more than some of the other available services. I assume the app is supposed to be garbage if you're a free user so you can pay for better service. Which is fair. But I'm biased and Crunchyroll just likes to freeze on me way too much.

Me vs. Crunchyroll

If Crunchyroll isn't your thing, Discotek Media picked up Hajime no Ippo for 2021 home media re-release. I wanted to link to their site but I can't find an entry for Ippo there. Their website just advertises to buy from Rightstuf or Amazon anyway so you can find it there with a simple search.

3. You don't need to know shit about boxing. Like Initial D, this show is willing to hold your hand. Ippo doesn't know anything about boxing either so as the other characters hold his hand, this show holds your hand.

4. The English dub is so bad it's good. It's a bit garbage, not gonna lie. The actual voice actors themselves aren't terrible actors or anything but delivery, the lines themselves, and the casting is all a bit off. Be prepared for that if you insist on an English dub. I do find myself amused by the English dub tho' because of those reasons. I've seen the Spanish dub too and that one's pretty solid. 

You will never have a nickname as cool as Rocky the Naniwa Tiger.

This show, however, is best experienced in Japanese and has some powerhouse Japanese voice actors including Rikiya Koyama as Mamoru Takamura, who manages to be both a guiding force for Ippo as well as, uh, another bully; Wataru Takagi as Masaru Aoki and Keiji Fujiwara as Tatsuya Kimura, gym mates along with Takamura and Ippo; Tomokazu Seki as Ichiro Miyata, former gym mate turned rival except not really; Kenji Utsumi as Genji Kamogawa, owner of the gym and Ippo's boxing coach; and Masaya Onosaka as Takeshi Sendo--a.k.a. Rocky--a hot-head boxer who challenges Ippo to a fight. All of their performances really bring the comedy and drama home. These actors have all collectively done tons of voice over work and if you watch anime you're bound to find several great characters among their resumes.

** pained elephant noise **

5. The humor can be low-brow. There are dick jokes and naked dudes in this thing. Neither of these is bad and everything in this show is funny. Even Takamura being a creep is presented in a way that doesn't glorify his behavior but shows he's a d-bag. (He's still my favorite character.) This point is just here for full disclosure.

6. Don't be fooled by #5, because this show does drama pretty well. There's some tense scenes, some sadness and legit depression. It all arrives organically without being hamfisted. The story's twists and turns come naturally. Going into the show, some characters feel unimportant and while there are characters that stay that way, others actually come back or have a moment that makes you appreciate how it was approached.

While I don't want to spoil everything in this post, an example in particular that stood out to me was Ippo's school bully Masahiko Umezawa. This is the bully we see in episode one; the same bully Ippo has to be saved from.

All bullies should be made to rock the pomp'. Even the girls.

Normally, this type of character would appear and serve his purpose as he does in the first episode. And then maybe he'd appear later so we get some contrast to Ippo-then versus Ippo-now. But, no, this show does one better. Like, this guy gets actual character growth. I had seen some images of him later in the series and didn't even realize he was the same guy. I was really surprised. Without giving away much more, he actually becomes a decent person. Touches like this throughout any series are just very nice. While it doesn't happen with everyone (some of them do stay kinda random), it does happen with more than just Umezawa's character. It's immersive to have a character come back and be a bit more important than the viewer first thought.

Btw, if you like the old school pompadour delinquent look, Takamura pretty much rocks it the entire show. Putting it out there because I just dig that type of design.

Since you have no excuses, go watch this show. The first part of Discotek's series re-release is currently available, you can go to YouTube now, or wait for it on Crunchyroll soon.

My Favorite Studio Ghibli Films

On the back of my recent Earwig and the Witch review that I just posted, I'm making this new post for my top five Ghibli films. This is based on my own opinions and personal enjoyment. It has nothing to do with what films were the most impactful to the industry, made the most money, or are beloved by the majority. These films are my comfort food. I've already given my basic opinion on Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke in my Earwig review. Sorry, but I stan Lady Eboshi and would burn that entire forest to ashes for her smile.

She's my Queen. No homo. :)

So, uh, with that out of the way, I'm gonna start listing my faves. I'm not really giving too much thought to the specific order.

A village so comfy you'd expect a Titan to come and smash it.

1. Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

I'd say this is my current top favorite. I say "current" because I think it changes sometimes. Before, it might've been Kiki's Delivery Service or something like that. I recall seeing this in the theater when it came to the U.S. and being kinda disappointed. So it's really grown on me in the past few years to say the least.

I think what I look for the most in my Ghibli films these days is the pure aesthetics. This film has quaint villages; the "moving castle" which is the most comfy hunk of junk I've ever seen in a film; the beautiful flower field; and the castle grounds that are stately without being intimidating. This film makes me want go to the hat shop and trim hats with Sophie or sit down with a cup of coffee and a blanket in front of Calcifer's fire.

I like the characters for the most part. Sophie is bland and inoffensive without being boring. I think in part because she takes things in relative stride. "Oh, I'm old? Better go" and then she just packs her food and leaves. She has a tiny bit of mischief in her that balances her well with the apprentice boy, the snarky fire, and the dramatic Howl. The Witch of Waste evokes a sense of danger at the beginning of the film, sympathy after being stripped of her powers, and then anger when she takes Howl's heart. (Though I forgive her when she gives it back.)

I don't really watch the dub. Billy Crystal and Christian Bale kinda pull me outta my vibe. They aren't terrible or anything but I prefer the Japanese language.

Sophie and Howl falling in love is a bit weird. It feels too sudden but they do mesh well together so I can buy it to an extent. I don't really watch this film for the love story or lack thereof anyway. I just like to sit and chill out with it.

This room has the best use of weed I've ever seen.

2. The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

Just look at that room, man!  Look at that room. This film vibes. All sort of beautiful settings abound: the houses of both Arrietty and Sho exude with coziness and the fields, garden, and wildness outside is such a treat. The story's not exactly impactful so I think that's why this one doesn't really win people over. Like Totoro has a dying mom and Spirited Away has a little girl saving her family and you know this stuff from the get-go of those films. This film is all "little people can't let the big ol' human beans sees thems." And thus, it doesn't feel like much despite that it does get some stakes at the ending half. 

Apparently, there's two English dubs including a Brit dub with Saorise Ronan and Tom Holland and I really want to watch it some day. Like Howl's Moving Castle, I don't care for the English dub we got so much. But with this film, I like the dub even less so. It's probably the music that does it to me.

I don't recall if this movie came to theaters in my area at all and I don't remember watching it in a theater. If it ever gets a re-release (post-pandemic), I would love to go see it on a big screen.

Lofi Beats to Study and Relax To. No takedown pls.

3. Whisper of the Heart (1995)

This film is really damn touching. It, above most other Ghibli films in my opinion, feels incredibly personal but not like Only Yesterday which smacks your face with the protag's past. This film feels like we're being silently invited into an important period of time in this girl's life, omnisciently recounting this girl's childhood when she starts becoming the writer she knows she is. Or maybe it's more bias on my part because I like to write, too. Either way, it's a sweet little story with a touch of fantasy and young love.

Of course it has those Ghibli aesthetics: Shizuku's family's cramp apartment; the school grounds and the library; the quaint shop full of curiosities; and the snug, homey streets of town. The characters are nice with some of them having a light touch of sass. 

The dub's okay and has a Cary Elwes cat. You can't say no to a Cary Elwes cat. Sadly, it's the only film ever directed by Yoshifumi Kondo. And double-sadly it has a sequel (The Cat Returns) that left me feeling kinda meh. I think it's due to the sequel being a much more fantastical story than this film and I liked this film for the opposite reason. The sequel exclusively follows the Cary Elwes cat so it's still worth a watch. I have yet to find anyone that has The Cat Returns as a favorite tho'.

That feel when has talking cat but you can no longer understand him.

4. Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

I think this might've been the first Ghibli film I ever watched and for that reason was my first favorite by default. Not that it's a bad one to have as a default favorite. I would say it's a nice gateway Ghibli film. It's fantastical without being too fantastical: Kiki rides her broom and can talk to her cat but I can't think of any other instances of magic we actually see. It's also adventurous without being too adventurous: Kiki leaves home for a quaint seaside city. Aside from a jaunt in the forest, she doesn't really go anywhere else. And it has drama without being too dramatic: Kiki loses her powers, becomes depressed, but then is happy again. 

I think a lot of the other Ghibli films, for better or for worse, have a level of Japanese culture that makes them a little less accessible than Kiki is. Not that I don't appreciate Japanese culture but films with less cultural nuance do feel more universal.

As for the English dub, the actors do a good enough job. This movie was released in an English dub on VHS in 1998. Phil Hartman voices Jiji and while I love Phil Hartman, I can concede he's not really right for the role. (RIP Phil Hartman. Jiji was his last voice role and I was a Simpsons fan at the time so I was very familiar with who he was.) To add insult to injury for fans of this film, the English dub did make some changes and take some liberties which was more common back in 1998. So even though I'd say this is the most accessible Ghibli film, there was a need to make it more accessible. This film's dub was then tweaked for later re-release to sort of course-correct back in 2010. Which is fine... because I stick the subs for this one now anyway.

License and registration please. Just kidding. No one drives me.

5. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Gonna be honest here. I did not like My Neighbor Totoro when I first watched it. Firstly, it took me forever to actually watch it. When it was released in the U.S., I just didn't care. The pictures you see in regards to this film show this weird, round rabbit-looking thing and two little girls. And it's just... what is this? And why would I watch it?

I ended up taking Japanese classes in college and our sensei put on some of this film. This brings me to the second issue: those opening credits started and I wondered what the hell I was looking at. Hearing that song, it sounded like this movie was for toddlers or something. Again, what was this about and why should I watch it? So I zoned out. I didn't know what to think of this back then.

I don't know what exactly made me watch this again. It was many years later and probably when my sister and I were going on a Ghibli binge. So we watched My Neighbor Totoro with the Disney dub around its release in 2006 and we really loved it. I definitely see the appeal and timelessness it has now.

That cozy house, the beautiful country side, that sweet family, and those odd forest critters give this film such a nice touch. I don't really care for Totoro himself but he's actually not in the film all that much. Susuwatari and Cat Bus for the win.

While it may be heretical to say this, I like the English dub more than the sub. I'm not even a fan of the Fanning sisters and the older girl plays her role kinda stiff in my opinion. Even so, the English dub is prettty damn decent and the younger Fanning girl does a fantastic job as Mei.

Kurotowa and Princess Kushana are best. No lies detected here.

Honorable Mention:

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984) - Does this really count as a Ghibli film? No? Yes? Well, I really like it either way. Especially Kushana and Kurotowa, played by The Bride and Jack Skellington in the English dub. Princess Kushana is everything I really look for in a fantasy princess: she has a sense of personal duty, she's tough, she suffers, she becomes ruthless and then she becomes understanding. Nothing against Nausicaa herself, but Nausicaa didn't feel like she had growth the way Kushana did. Beginning of film: Nausicaa love forest. Nausicaa protect bugs. End of film: Nausicaa love forest. Nausicaa protect bugs.

Also in the dub is Patrick Stewart as Lord Yupa. I liked his performance here, too. The English dub does have Shia of all people as Asbel but, er, just ignore him. I feel like this movie pulls off the themes that Laputa and Princess Mononoke tried to much better.

Spirited Away (2001) - I had a lovely time watching this in the theater when it came to the U.S. and I dig the aesthetics. I'm just not into the story so much. After halfway through, I kinda check out. It's like once she gets on that train, my brain also got on the train but never got off of the train. Heh. But it's really a beautiful film about two disgusting pigs and their nameless daughter.

Earwig and the Witch (2020) - Yes, I liked it enough to make it a favorite. I wrote a review in my earlier post. I think it's flawed but still solid.

Whatever else I've not discussed, I either still like it but not as a favorite (such as From Up on Poppy Hill, Porco Rosso, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko) or haven't seen it (The Tale of Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There) or am indifferent for one reason or another. If you're so inclined, comment with your favorite Ghibli film and why you love it. Unless it's Princess Mononoke. Ha ha.

5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #3. One Outs (2008)

Based on: the manga by Shinobu Kaitani. 1998-2006.
Claim to fame: Insanely homoerotic opening credits.
Dubbed: Sadly, no.
Subject: Baseball.

Not since the high school football anime Eyeshield 21 have I ever felt so cheated about not getting a proper adaptation of a series. I'm still undecided on which was worse: that Eyeshield 21 had 145 episodes of censorship + watering down Yusuke Murata's artwork + long, drawn-out filler-rama that progressively meanders to Nowhere'sville; or that in 145 episodes the Devilbats never fulfilled their goal of getting to the Christmas Bowl even though they get there, totally win, and their journey there is fuckin' sweet. (Come on, that's not even a spoiler at this point.)

"Wait, what are you doing, Beck?" you ask as you look back at the title of this post. "What about One Outs?" Similar to Eyeshield 21, the characters of One Outs also play a sport hugely popular in America (American football vs. baseball); have a seemingly impossible end goal championship game (Christmas Bowl vs. pennant); and are also comprised of a group of generally low-ranked underdogs (Deimon Devilbats vs. Saitama Lycoans). They have one super-talented semi-stoic dude (kicker Musashi vs. ace batter Kojima), a kind-hearted naive catcher guy voiced by Kappei Yamaguchi (Monta vs. Ideguchi), and a wicked fan-favorite motherfucker with crazy bleached hair whose underhanded schemes improve the performance of the players as well as keep the team whole and running (quarterback Hiruma vs. pitcher Tokuchi). And like Eyeshield 21, the manga version reaches the end game while the anime ends prematurely.

"So, why would I want to watch this?" you say. "Also, why do you keep writing dialogue for me?" Well, One Outs--even partially adapted--is still bad-ass. The fact that this is only a partial adaptation means you have no excuse to not watch it. It's like watching The Matrix and saying "well, he didn't liberate all mankind yet so fuck this movie." And like The Matrix taught us, sometimes it's better not to continue shit. Anyway, it's not as if I'm recommending Eyeshield 21. There's only 25 episodes of One Outs. And another benefit of only being 25 episodes means every episode progresses the story. Like one of my other recommendations--Initial D: First Stage--One Outs still feels like a full story with a beginning, middle, and end. Only someone who knows zilch about baseball would expect them to win the championship at the conclusion of 25 episodes. Now that I'm three paragraphs in, maybe I should write about the show itself, eh?

Kojima and Tokuchi chillaxing in the dugout.

I know I keep making Eyeshield comparisons, so let's get to where they differ. Firstly, what this and actually every show on my "5 Anime" list have in common is that none of them are centered on high school kiddy bullshit. Initial D had high school kids in high school, but it centered more on the racing and had several adult characters. We never had to sit in class with the main character or go to a school festival or something shitty like that. Akagi starred a young boy but every other character is an adult, including Akagi himself once the timeskip kicks in. The Saitama Lycoans are a pro baseball team. Ace hitter Kojima has been on the team for 21 years. Even if every show on my list primarily focuses on younger men (several racers in Initial D are in their early twenties, Akagi is 19 after the timeskip, One Outs' Tokuchi Toua is 20, and characters in the last two shows on my list are also early twenties), that's a small price to pay to not be in a damn high school.

Secondly, there is no stammering doormat protag in the form of a Sena counterpart. The star of the show is undoubtedly this guy: Tokuchi Toua. Tokuchi's not a baseball player. He knows the game and he can throw deceptive pitches, but he is a gambler at heart and uses his pitching talents to earn illegal wads of cash. The funny thing is that his pitching isn't even that spectacular. His batting is passable but not great. He's not a super-fast runner. His stamina for an actual game is shit. But Tokuchi uses his sharp wits and smart mouth to make things go his way and I love him for it.

Let's get to the meat: One Outs starts out with two guys from the Saitama Lycoans pro baseball team looking for a replacement pitcher after one of them hurts his widdle finger while training in Okinawa. They meet a woman called Big Mama (nice name) who takes them to a bunch of--mostly American--dudes gambling in the dark of night at a baseball field. They then proceed to gamble. This is not a great start.

I bet you can't guess which one's Big Mama.

There's nothing more grating than a show that begins with what are basically throwaway characters and makes us spend too much goddamn time with them. Now, these guys aren't true throwaways in the sense we never see them again. I'll call them Nakane and Glasses, because I'm pretty sure one of them was named Nakane and I'll be damned if I remember the name of the one with glasses. Neither one is all that important. In retrospect, we should've had Kojima and catcher Ideguchi as the ones who look for a new pitcher because Kojima and Ideguchi are the two members of the team that kinda become Tokuchi's boys. They keep secrets with him and strategize privately with him and it just seemed like having them meet Tokuchi first makes the most sense. If I recall correctly, the anime even improved on the manga because I don't think Nagane and Glasses were even on the main team and the anime made their roles stronger. To make another Matrix comparison, it'd be like opening the movie with Apoc and Switch instead of Trinity and Cypher. The latter two were waaay more important to the story so using them made the most impact and the most sense. But I digress.

This is the part of the show where it'll probably lose you if you didn't already leave while Tokuchi was flying around shirtless in the OP. Nagane, Glasses, and Big Mama have all sorts of conversations which just sounds like a bunch of prattle. "This is why you Japaneseses lose at teh gamblings. Blah blah blah." This show can get so damn verbose and over-explainy that your brain tunes it out automatically. It is heavy in the beginning and just when you think you're out of the woods, someone's explaining something else. Sometimes even with diagrams.

Explanation of the One Outs gambling game.

In rewatching the show, I can absorb what they're saying and it makes sense but upon my first viewing, it just felt like characters were talking just to hear one another speak. It's a problem that resurfaces and if you're not a viewer that can handle wordy explanations, this might not be for you. The good thing about the explanations tho' is that they definitely guide the baseball novices. The viewer certainly can't complain that the show never told them what's what.

Another reason the beginning might lose you is that it takes too long to get to the damn point, the point being getting Tokuchi Toua on the team and playing his special brand of baseball. Nakane and Glasses lose a bunch of money, Kojima comes to defend their honor or whatever, Kojima loses, Kojima rechallenges Tokuchi and only then does Tokuchi join the Lycoans.  All that shit takes three episodes with things not really up and running until episode 4. It's not boring by any means but it's the weak part of the series and when I rewatch this show, I typically start with episode 4 for that very reason.

Episode 3 is still important for first time viewing since it does a lot of the set-up. Tokuchi joins under strange conditions: the One Outs contract. He makes an arrangement for compensation with the team owner by using the number of outs, with the contract getting alterations as the games progress. While the anime unfortunately doesn't get the point where this all explodes spectacularly in the owner's face, we still get to see that bastard lose his shit.

One quality that really makes the show a favorite of mine is that sometimes Tokuchi resorts to deceptively simple trickery to get results. It almost felt like he was teaching me something to use in my everyday life. A single heard sentence or a single white bandage can completely change the outcome of a game. It was this show that got me jonesing for anime that use psychological solutions but Akagi was the only one that came close to what I was looking for. (Coincidentally, or not, Tokuchi, Akagi, and Kaiji are all voiced by the same guy: Masato Hagiwara.)  

Maybe it's just me but a lot of the time when a show or movie (anime, live action, whatever) tries to be "smart," it turns out to be this over-elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque mess of a plot.  From Episode 4 onwards, we got into game after game. Can the Lycoans beat the Mariner's awesome clean-up roster?  Can the Lycoans overcome Dennis Johnson's godlike speed?  Do the Lycoans have any hope against an entire team of dirty cheaters that will use every trick in the book? Of course, but the fun is finding out how, so pick this series up and enjoy it.

5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #2. Akagi (2005)

Based on: the manga by Nobuyuki Fukumoto. 1992-present.
Claim to fame: Is this the only thing selling Kindai Mahjong for the past twenty-four years?
Dubbed: Nope.
Subject: Japanese Mahjong.

So... some preliminaries to get outta the way here. This show is technically called アカギ 〜闇に降り立った天才〜 which translates into "Akagi: The Genius Who Descended into Darkness."  Or at least this is what Wikipedia has told me. That's one long-ass name. The guy in the picture is Akagi Shigeru and he's the star of this shindig. Is he a genius? That's probably up for debate. I mean, if he were a genius, I'd think he have better things to do than keep courting that death wish he's had since puberty. Also, being a "genuis" has neither relied on luck and coincidence as much as it does here. However, he's a smart cookie and plays some psychological games, so he gets to keep the genius title. I saw a review or two that didn't like that he's not above cheating but cheating's a pretty genius thing to me. It certainly beats relying on luck. As for the whole "descending into darkness" thing, I mean, meh. He's already a dark kid before any sort of descent occurs. He "descends into darkness" the way my teeth descend into those pumpkin pie bagels at Panera Bread. Goddamn, those are delicious.

Now you're thinking "this show's about a genius? And he descends into darkness? That sounds pretty hardcore for a show about a game best associated with little old Asian ladies like in the Joy Luck Club." Okay, yeah, I hear ya. This is the other thing that I need to get out of the way. This is Japanese Mahjong as played by a young sociopath against yakuza and, later, a fuckin' murderer. This makes it intense high-stakes gambling, which brings the tension and makes this shit fun.

Now I tried this show and the anime based off of one of Fukumoto's other works, Kaiji, at around the same time. It's very difficult to find a bad review of Kaiji. At least it was for me. I wanted something a bit brainy to watch. Not really "brainy" as in book-smart but "brainy" as in "plays mind games." In my opinion, Kaiji didn't deliver on that. I was sick of seeing the main character cry like a bitch and he was kind of an idiot that lucked into "not dying." I was going to say "lucked into life" but nothing about that guy's life other than not dying could be considered lucky. At one point, his survival is enabled by the fact a naked guy taped valuable jewels to his shoulder instead of sticking them in a condom and shoving them up his @ss like a smart person in that scenario would've done. I dumped that show and moved on to Akagi trepidatiously. I was not hopeful it would be that different and very happy to be proven wrong. Akagi pretty much gives me everything Kaiji could not.

We never learn much about the character of Akagi, but at least Akagi never relies on some naked asshole to save him. Maybe Fukumoto had Kaiji cry so much because Akagi doesn't. If it weren't for his enjoyment in seeing others squirm and wallow in defeat, sometimes I'd swear the guy has no feelings at all. We first meet Akagi when Akagi's thirteen years old but he doesn't look it. Or, rather, he doesn't look different from when we see him again at 19/20. He never undergoes any dramatic shift in personality or any great catharsis either. We never learn what makes him tick.

He's fucking crazy. Even as a child, he's just fucking nuts. In the first episode, we find out he drove off of a cliff. That's frickin' cray and this show never tells you why he's wired this way, so don't go looking for it. Frankly I prefer it this way. I don't need his edgy fuckin' origin. I can imagine an American remake of this shit starring Benedict Cucumber-batch (gotta whitewash that cast, y'all, 'cause Hollyweird says so) where two thirds of the movie is Akagi's tragic, abuse-laden origin and subsequent life as a street urchin and "omg, it's so sad." In other words, shit nobody gives a fuck about. Don't get me wrong, the viewer cheers on Akagi but Akagi doesn't feel sorry for himself and neither should you. At the end of the day, we just wanna see him cream his competition. Not knowing shit about him is part of his appeal.

Anywho, after playing lemming, thirteen-year old Akagi stumbles into a mahjong parlor where some poor, indebted sap named Nangou is about to cark it. The dude's losing bad. If he doesn't win, the yakuza are gonna kill him and collect his insurance payout. Nangou is desperate for a miracle and Akagi Stu becomes that miracle. Wait? "Stu?" Yes, because he's never played mahjong in his life yet he becomes a fuckin' master in, like, two seconds.

My bad: five minutes. Not to mention I just told you Akagi drove off a cliff and later just walks into the fuckin' mahjong parlor. The narration likes to hype him up a lot, too. We're pretty much told Akagi's legendary over and over again. I mean, sheesh.  At least, in terms of my stu-meter, Akagi's pretty low on it. While he does have some huge luck that comes into play, he's not above cheating or tricks to win when that luck's not on his side.  And it's not as if all the women want him and all the men want to be him. Well, one guy wants to be him but not in the way you're thinking. I don't even recall a single female character in this show. It's a sausage fest if I ever saw one.

The artwork is a mixed bag. Most characters look decent from the front but the profile shots will kill you. It really threw me off when I watched Kaiji so at least by Akagi I was used to it.  This guy below's not even one of the weirdest ones in the show.

Unlike your face.

Now, I don't know anything about mahjong, but I've never been so invested in guys going "Pon!" "Chi!" "Ron!"  I looked up rules and can't begin to tell you what the fuck some of it means. This show explains very little and you rely on the character's narrations, reactions, and expressions to tell you everything else need. And there's a lot of reactions. A lot of shock and maniacal laughter.  Even with fansubber notes tho, it almost doesn't feel like enough sometimes.

And a hey nonny-nonny, coo-coo cah-choo.

I mean, I don't know half of what they're saying.  I had to go look up Japanese mahjong rules to help me out on some of this. I enjoyed Akagi enough that I didn't mind doing this and rewatching stuff, but I see the complication of mahjong as probably the biggest hurdle folks will have with this show.  "Why wud i watch muh-jzong wid ROOLS when i can see dragon ball super instead?"

Music and voice acting is pretty good. Nothing stood out as bad in that regard. There's an interesting set of characters but no one sticks around consistently. Akagi doesn't have a mentor, sidekick, or anyone in that role. He interacts with Nangou, a crooked cop, and later on a naive co-worker from a toy factory.  All of them participate in their own way in the story but we can't exactly pile them together and call them Team Akagi or something. Meanwhile, any opponents of Akagi's just take the train to Fucked Off Land. We never see them again with the exception of one who finds his ass on a slab in the morgue. It would've been nice to see some of them come back for a rematch or become friends or allies with Akagi. But alas, Akagi is a dark genius and dark geniuses don't have friends. Lose a mahjong match to Akagi and you might just go crazy.

Guy in purple lost so badly at mahjong he can't stand up without help.  [Not a joke.]

For just being mahjong, the matches are actually kinda thrilling.  If anything, there's too few matches despite this being a 26 episode series. While the first batch of episodes keeps a decent pace, the latter half of it is focused on a single match with no end. Why doesn't it end? Because it's still going on in the manga today. Seriously. Not only has Akagi not won yet, we already know he doesn't lose because this entire series is a sorta-prequel to another of Fukumoto's works—Ten—which has an older Akagi as a character.

So, uh, why was I recommending this again?  Oh, yeah, cause I liked it.  But, really, was it necessary to name one character Ichikawa and another Ishikawa?  I almost got as lost with that shit as I did the mahjong.

5 Anime I Like That You Should, Too - #1. Initial D: First Stage (1998)

Based on: the manga by Shuichi Shigeno.  1995-2013.
Claim to fame: Dated CGI cars and uptempo Eurobeat.
Dubbed: Yes.  Twice, actually.
Subject: Illegal street-racing.

I first heard of this show over ten years ago while taking a Japanese course at my local community college. Several of the other students loved it but I didn't get the hype. I was initially (ho!) put off by the artwork and subject matter.  The characters looked goofy and, well, street racing?  Why would I want to see a show about street racing? Then, during the 2015 Super Bowl, I wanted something to watch. (Texan that doesn't do football: ho-ho!)  I noticed three seasons of Initial D were available dubbed by Funimation on Sony's Crackle service. (It's not there anymore so don't bother. Crackle's really—ahem—cracked down on their anime offerings.  Ho ho ho!) Having nothing to lose and wanting to drown out my neighbors, I turned up the TV and started the show. Less than half an episode in, I was hooked.

The main character is this guy: Takumi Fujiwara, the meh-faced teenaged son of a local tofu shop owner. He makes tofu deliveries up and down the roads of Mt. Akina (fictional stand-in for Gunma prefecture's Mt. Haruna) for the family business using his father's Toyota Sprinter Trueno a.k.a. dat hachi-roku. That the car's an AE86 apparently means something in their universe but not in mine since I'm not a car person. No, you don't have to be a car person to watch this show. The characters explain all the important shit for you. While Takumi initially (ha!) has no interest in the local street-racing scene, his natural mad drifting skillz end up catching the eye of twenty-one year old Keisuke Takahashi.

Keisuke's a member of a visiting rival team—the Akagi Red Suns—and the younger of a pair of good-looking, rich, popular and uber-talented racing brothers. The show tells us the Takahashis are also called the Rotary Brothers but then exactly no one ever refers to them as such. They also have a cute female cousin who is sadly cut out of the show.  Anyway, the Red Suns planned on wiping the floor with the local racers the Speed Stars, but tofu-schlepping Takumi is someone Keisuke can't immediately beat.

"No fucking way, y'all!"

The dynamic between these two is probably what I enjoy the best and I wish First Stage had more of it.  Takumi's general apathy clashes wonderfully against Keisuke's firey personality but they don't interact nearly enough.  The series then follows Takumi's emergence onto the street racing scene which includes multiple battles with various challengers, a bit of showboating, and a bit of love in the air, too.  And also a singular panty shot.  Oh course, that was the scene my dad walked in on.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now "First Stage" refers to "Season One."  I love First Stage and it really feels like a complete story. It even got re-adapted a couple of years back as three movies with completely different voice actors. Along with the two English dubs that were done, that means each of the main characters has four different voice actors. (Not counting other language dubs, of course.)  If you're a viewer that follows Japanese and/or English voice actors, there's someone for you in each version and you'll probably recognize a bunch of the names here without me listing their other credits.

	Original (1998)	Tokyopop Dub	Funimation Dub	New Initial D (Movies)
Takumi Fujiwara	Shinichiro Miki	Dave Wittenberg	Joel McDonald	Mamoru Miyano
Keisuke Takahashi	Tomokazu Seki	Steven Jay Blum	Todd Haberkorn	Yuichi Nakamura
Ryosuke Takahashi	Takehito Koyasu	Lex Lang	J. Michael Tatum	Daisuke Ono

Takumi's racing friend Iketani is voiced by Crispin Freeman in the Tokyopop dub. Ayako Kawasumi (Saber, Fate/Stay Night) and Wataru Takagi (Eikichi Onizuka, GTO) voice Takumi's love interest Natsuki and one his friends—Kenji—in the original Japanese version.  Fans of Funimation dubs gets the duo of Colleen Clickenbeard and Monica Rial voicing the female racing team Impact Blue and Vic Mignogna voicing Shingo Shoji.

I actually prefer more of Tokyopop's casting choices—except for Takumi's dad, I mean, were they trying to pretend to voice a muppet or what—but they really fudged things up with all of their dumb changes.  As was standard with lots of 90's era dubs, Tokyopop tried to make Initial D more marketable by adding weird lingo, completely changing the originally poppy music into wannabe rap/hiphop junk, visually altering the races the way your kid brother would, and giving a bunch of the characters new or altered names.  Takumi, Keisuke, and Ryosuke become Tak, KT, and Ry. Those are the names they went with: they renamed them tack, Katy, and rye. Why not just go with Terry, Keith, and Ryan or something like that? It's like they wanted to keep their names but not keep their names, I guess. In one scene, Iketani—renamed "Cole" or all things—even refers to "KT" as "Keisuke Takahashi." So his name's still Keisuke Takahashi, he just doesn't go by, uh, his name? Bwuh?

Also, the altering of the races and music just takes a bunch of the tension and suspense out of it. Show me someone who doesn't get hyped when "Get Me Power" starts up before Takumi drifts (♫ Do it, baby. Get me power! ♫), and I'll show you a fucker without a soul. You know how Rocky IV is pretty much a bunch of music videos strung together? Now let's cut out all the music and re-edit all the montages! Tragic, amirite?

As a result of the above bs, there was a mostly negative reception for the Tokyopop dub and it makes me think maybe I got into Initial D at the right time: when Funimation had already picked up the license and put out a faithful dub and sub release. Bear in mind that if you poke around the Internet for an English dub, you might end up with the older dub. Unless you go to YouTube where Funi has the entire First Stage subbed for free. If dubs are your style, you'll find four free dubbed eps to try out as well. Funimation's version, as of this writing, is available on DVD for $17 and change over at Amazon.

Now, there are subsequent stages of Initial D after First Stage: Second, Third (which is an ova), Fourth, Fifth, and Final along with two Extra Stages and Battle Stages. You'll notice tho' I specifically list First Stage as my recommendation. Honestly, the quality declines in each subsequent stage. First Stage really feels like a full story with a beginning, middle, and end. Everything that comes after just feels like sequelitis even though the story continued for a long-ass time in the manga. I mean, Takumi comes into his own as a street racer so what's left in the other stages? Lots of neat folks we meet in First Stage really get pushed aside later. I wanted to see those guys improve or at least provide further racing commentary and interaction with Takumi, but the show proceeds to care about them less and less. There's also a radical art shift.  In Second Stage, the character of Ryosuke actually becomes a doppelganger to the main character of Takumi. It's super creepy!

The first two pics are Ryosuke Takahashi and the last one is Takumi. What-what. Why did they mess with the first design? It was perfect! Meanwhile, his brother Keisuke becomes more and more Super Saiyan. And they aren't the only ones that get changed. Shigeno's original artwork, as dopey as it can be, is most faithfully adapted in the First Stage. I do wish the show went even further will making the characters visually as expressive as Shigeno does. I really came to like the duck mouths, the smug faces, and the beady eyes. Shigeno can render a smug face like nobody's business.

Unfortunately, as little as First Stage adapts his artwork, the further stages do so even less. The character's faces actually get stiffer and stiffer and by Fourth Stage, it's like watching cardboard talk. This is where Funimation stopped dubbing, with the last Tokyopop dub at the end of Stage Two. Really, nothing of value is lost. You're fine proceeding as far with it as you like. For what it's worth, there's still some cool moments, some laughs, some awesome music and some nail-biting races in the later stages. None of it comes together like in the First Stage. Probably not a popular opinion, but there ya go. By the time I got to the end of Fourth Stage, it felt like enough. If you want the rest of the story, you'd probably be better served reading the manga. And certainly, if you're a viewer looking for a more modern-looking, slicker anime with trendier music, look no further than the three movies.

Okay, at first, I was really pissing on about the movies not having the original voice actors from the '98 series or any Eurobeat music. Plus, being movies, they condense a lot of material. The movies also keep the characters pretty stiff-faced. Compare a scene from episode 1 of First Stage with a scene from the movie adaptation:

Initial D: First Stage (1998) vs. New Initial D Legend 1 - Kakuksei.

The '98's artwork gets more "love points" or whatever from me. It just looks more expressive and "snug," I guess. The movie's artwork still has merits of its own: crisp, with clean lines and bright colors. I also got a better feel for the races in the movies. While the '98 version brings fun with the Eurobeat, these races felt more dramatic visually. Just look at this lighting.

And with the '98 series, it was pretty easy to forget these dudes were racing on dangerous mountain roads.  Sometimes it felt like flat, straights with nothing to them. The steepness of the mountains, the lack of proper visibility, the hairpin turns, and the spectator pov all feel more accurately rendered in the movies. Honestly, while watching some of the '98 series, I'd wonder how the hell the spectators could even see what was going on with the race. The movies are even a bit more faithful to the manga in terms of sequence of events, with the '98 version inserting a few races out of place to fill up the episode count and reach the end with the race it wanted to.

The movies really endeared themselves to me. Although different, the voice actors and music are still pretty darn good. Cliffnotes Initial D is still a cool story and probably plays better for the younger crowd and n00bs vs. the nostalgia crowd. The latter had such a hard time accepting the shift that there's actually fan-made Eurobeat editions. No complaints, but I did actually come to like the new music almost as much as the Eurobeat. Here's one of the featured songs:

Anyway, lots of personality, thrilling races, humor, and snappy tunes make Initial D a treat and one of my favorites. Definitely worth you checking it out. Either or both versions.