Moé Moé Rabu

Firstly let me just say that was an epic battle between the three cars. In the earlier stages of the series, the race scenes have been pretty standard since it was mainly the Devil Z and Blackbird versing each other, but with the addition of Kouichi’s GTR and Reina tagging along, this has to be the best race scene I’ve seen so far. The whole sensation of seeing 4 cars racing at speeds over 300km/h is something you can’t get out of Initial D, and heck, I haven’t been this excited for quite a while.

Impressions

It amazes me on how fast the Devil Z got fixed, but it has allowed us to see the battle sooner and spend more screen time on the race itself. That was something certainly lacking in the more recent episodes. I do admit that Kouichi’s GTR is pretty damn awesome to keep up with the Devil Z and Blackbird, given that the GTR would be the heaviest out of the three, and that he also has Harada as a passenger. But of course the GTR is no lightweight in terms of power, but the Devil Z with it’s new improvements is something definitely to be feared. For a car as old as the Devil Z to be hitting 330m/h and over is pretty frightening on it’s own, but Akio would have never gotten to those speeds without Takaki or Kitami’s help.

Shame that Reina was kind of left out of the battle and stayed back as an observer, but Kitami made a pretty valid point on how Kouichi is different to Reina where not only his car is different, but the will and determination he has, plus the things he sacrificed for him to be there far outweighs Reina’s. Though I do hope Reina will become faster in the series rather than be the one who’s being left behind. As for Harada, it didn’t surprise me when he said he blew his engine. But now that Kouichi has stopped racing and gone back to his wife, I wonder what happened with the car? Did he sell it to Harada? Anyway that’s the end of this arc so next episode we should be moving onto a new arc in the Wangan Midnight series.