Moé Moé Rabu

With the S30Z crashing into the construction area, the Blackbird continues driving on. Akio steps out and begins wondering why it didn’t do what he wanted. The next day Kou tells Akio that he won’t fix the Z since and thinks that he should look for a different Z. That night, the driver of the Blackbird is with a girl named Eriko and he takes her to the place where her brother, the previous owner of the Z, died. Later on the two pull into a gas station and Akio happens to be working there. Akio recognises it as the Blackbird and proceeds to serve him. The driver of the Blackbird introduces himself as Shima Tatsuya, but Tatsuya and Eriko are surprised when they hear Akio’s name. Tatsuya asks whats happened to the Z, but Akio simply tells him that it’ll come out to Wangan again.

Later that night, Akio is at another job and gets a phone call telling him the parts he ordered have been delivered. Once he finishes work, he meets Eriko outside waiting for him. Eventually she follows him to his garage and watches Akio work on it. She tells Akio that he is the same as her brother, working 2 part time jobs and then spend whatever time left working on the Z. She asks why he chooses this Z and not some other car, but Akio replies that he doesn’t know why and states that he is not her brother. He doesn’t care what happened in the past but the Z is now his. He tells her to go home and give a message to Blackbird that he’ll be waiting at the Ichikawa parking area on Wednesday at 3am. But Eriko cries out she doesn’t want to see anyone else to die before running off.

When Akio finally fixes the Z, he goes for a drive with Kou that night. Kou is surprised that Akio fixed it all himself and that his driving has improve, but Akio feels that if he isn’t careful, the Z will betray him. The next night, Eriko is waiting for Akio outside the nightclub he works at. She tells him that Tatsuya agrees to meet him but she also wants to talk to him, so Akio tells her to wait until he’s finished work. Later on, Akio is driving Eriko home and he asks what she wants to talk about. Eriko shows Akio the other key and the keychain for the Z and says it belonged to her brother. She tells him that he couldn’t find that key and used the spare key before he died. Arriving at her home, Eriko leaves the key to give to Akio, but before she leaves, Akio asks her to sit with him when he races the Blackbird as she may get the answer she asked earlier.

On the night of the race, Akio asks her to sit with him. Reluctant at first, Tatsuya tells her to go ahead. So as the two start racing, Akio is leading but also makes a risky move to get ahead. Eriko is at this point yelling for Akio to stop and that she doesn’t understand. Akio feels that it’s not the Z’s fault that her brother died and to not blame it. Though the Devil Z and Blackbird are approaching the same area where Akio crashed, he thinks it won’t happen again, but as he gets closer, he begins to slide and crash into the construction area.

Impressions

Well not as good as the first episode but it does give some nice development on the Devil Z story. We get the idea of why it’s now called the Devil Z due to the amount of crashes it has been through, even to the point of having it’s previous owner killed, but I like how Akio is determined to believe that it’s not the Z’s fault and that he doesn’t think it will betray him. Though now he is coming to a crash for the second time I think he’ll come to see whether or not he considers the car possessed by the devil.

I also just realised that Tatsuya’s character design has slightly changed from the manga and I’m not really sure which is better looking. But in the end, it’s still crappy drawing style anyway, lol. With him being the driver of the Blackbird, I like how it appears that the Blackbird and the Devil Z are the legends of Wangan, but I’m sure as the series will go on we’ll see more drivers come along. Though it does make me wonder how long that will take since the start of the manga itself is pretty slow. Not to mention in the opening sequence we really only see 3 cars. At this point I’m not sure how long Wangan Midnight is slated for, but I have a feeling it’ll be 13 episodes assuming they are only going to cover the 3 cars.

Well an alright episode but mainly due to the lack of racing scenes, and really, that’s all I’m watching this for. Plus there was a lack of BGM’s used in this as well so hopefully we’ll get to hear more soon.