Initial D

Uh, okay.

So we've got [laughs] Silent Voice, Attack on Titan, uh, Violet Evergarden, Chuunibyou, uh, Initial D, Frieren, uh, fucking, what's his? Kaguya-sama, Chainsaw Man, and is that Kimi no Todoke? Yeah, it is Kimi no-

Yeah, Kimi ni Todoke.

Mm.

Favorite anime is Silent Voice.

Gotta be younger.

I was like, I think the Initial D, always when I see, like, an older anime-

Mm

chose a different car this time we've been

playing around with that but it's been good um and also um i've been mainly playing initial d extreme stage on ps3 because i've got all these initial d games and i haven't fully been playing them so yeah I jump back onto this.

I had this copy for a very long time.

And I haven't fully sat down and played it, if you know what I mean.

Thanks to Bejul.

So

Bejul was saying he's gotten into Initial D. I was like, oh, yeah, cool.

I got all the Omnibus books for my birthday last year.

We got Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Card Cap- Sa- Cardcaptor Sakura, Sakura.

Uh, Initial D. We've covered...

We...

So we've covered...

We definitely did Initial D.

Did we? Have we? We've done Cowboy Bebop, right?

Yes, we did.

Yeah, and Stu Levy has a great interview on there, comes off as quite charismatic in this, in this interview.

But he talks about when Initial D came out and how he doesn't like Eurobeat.

Eurobeat is cheesy to him, and so he was like, "Let's rip out all of this Eurobeat music and put in my hip-hop music."

When you say, "My hip-hop music," we need to be very specific, Gerald, because what...

When you say, "My hip-hop music," you literally mean music that Stu Levy composed himself because-

[laughs]

... that's what he did for not just Initial D but also, like, Reign: The Conqueror and, like-

Mm-hmm

'Cause it's so descriptive

... one of the interesting things, so coming from, watching back in the day, like, a lot of anime and especially something like Initial D.

Oh, yeah.

One of my favorite animes of all time.

But yeah, there is something, this big physical cabinet with huge guns that's really fun to share with other people, whether you're playing together or watching.

the feeling of how cool it is to walk into arcade I have a different definition of cool from some people maybe and slot in your card that's got your save data on and then be able to you know if you're playing with other people show the routes you've got or the guns you've got the different guns really can change it as well so yeah I love I always have one of these cards in my wallet my initial D arcade save cards which kind of serve the same purpose in a racing game but yeah and then I guess you know I was talking about arcades and friends as well like There was a really good Wii port that came out.

I mean, if you want to play seriously, the Wii, it's not like a light gun in terms of precision if you're trying to push well.

Because it's an IR

That's a really nice way of putting it.

You know, I have in my wallet my arcade memories and progress and that wallet's always in my pocket.

And it's very rare to find a Ghost Squad machine or an Initial D machine that takes one.

But it adds to the excitement, not just saying, there's an arcade cabinet I love, but there's an arcade cabinet I love and I'm going to, you know, can pull out a card and that, to me... feels cool the initial d ones are really good they um mine are very tatty but each time you have a profile that's randomly generated and as you each time you reach milestones in the game a detail is scratched off and reprinted so it becomes a more individual picture and the worlds you clear are gone and yeah i remember going to canada on a press trip in the days when press went to canada instead of overseas instead of influencers i'm happy i'm happy the young people get to do that now um But yeah, I went in, you know, and I put my, this guy playing Initial D, won a game, yeah, put my card in.

... incredible.

Like, uh, my goodness, what's the initial D?

MF Ghost.

Yeah, MF Ghost is something.

Just do it.

Okay.

In Initial D, what is the home mountain of the Red Suns?

Mount Akina.

he had done this thread, um, on...

It was, yeah, it was just a bunch of clips of the initial Tokyopop dub of Initial D, which- [laughs]

Ah, yes, the tricked out version.

Yes.

Um, even when Gmail had eight- His initial response years later, um, he was still able to recover it.

So I do have to give it up, and when I saw that you had interviewed him, like, via video, um, it [laughs] was like, again, very small world.

And of course, um, the Initial D topic is inevitable, but, you know-

Now, that, that's not one of those things where you shrug and you go, "Small world."

Oh, it's true.

Kind of like Initial D, Burnout.

And that kind of drift action, too, is what you

would get in those arcades, too.