#i like that i say this and then look like a mf male manipulator somedays

[casperth3ghost]

hey guys someone remind me to go down the 'harley davidson top' rabbit hole tonight

thanks

[bergeronprocess]

I watched the first episodes of both the new racing anime, MF Ghost and Overtake! Here are my thoughts.

A little bit about me: I do like cars. I'm a big fan of Top Gear and have been since I was a teenager. I married a car mechanic who is building his own racecar (a 90s Lexus that he is going to put a 2JZ engine into). We watch NASCAR and F1 from time to time. He plays Gran Turismo and Forza. We have watched stages 1 and 2 of Initial D together. I wouldn't say I'm an expert car knower like he is, but I'm somewhat of a car knower.

MF Ghost (which I am just going to jokingly call Motherfucking Ghost until they spell it out) is from the same artist as Initial D, so it has that same uhh distinctive art style. Very square jaws, everyone is drawn as if they have on lipstick, etc. It's not my favorite art style. The CGI on the cars looks incredible - Initial D truly looks like the Money for Nothing music video by comparison lol.

My husband and I are both no fans of electric cars, and he's sometimes worried that gas engines will indeed someday stop being manufactured entirely as they are in the "15 minutes in the future" world of MF Ghost. A character also implies that all other forms of auto racing have shuttered or been banned ("he would have been in Le Mans back in the day"), making MF Ghost almost a dystopia!

Kanata is interesting - coming back to Japan to look for his father, and something has happened to his mother too (what could that be?), after going to a racing school (what kind? Is it just an MFG school? Or do they still do other kinds of auto racing?), he hops into a beautifully rendered Toyota 86 (the famed Hachiroku - we named our cat Hachi after this car) to get into MFG.

We do not see much racing at all in this first episode, and it ends RIGHT as the Eurobeat starts - which seemed like the ultimate "Awww man! Seriously?!" moment to me - but we do get to know Kanata and...Ren. Oh, Ren, honey, I can already tell that men are failing you. She's a high school student who works as a race queen in the SKIMPIEST outfit I've ever seen on a race queen (it is literally just a sports bra and white panties. It ain't no dang way those are pants of any kind) and two grown ass men are seen lusting after her. Because she doesn't want to disclose any information about herself, they don't know her age but we do, thus making the extensive male gaze she gets all the more stomach-twisting. Just once I would love for her to tell that Aiba guy "Oh, by the way? I'm in high school." He would shit his britches.

Of course, Initial D also dealt with a teenage girl, a whole child, having an enjo kosai relationship with a grown ass man. So grown ass men messing with girls when they should know better seems to just be a Thing that Shuichi Shigeno likes to put in his stories. Doesn't mean I have to like it. As a woman, I just want to protect Ren and help her!

Overall though, it's an interesting premise with a lot of questions.

To me Overtake has more passion and heart though. It's set in just the normal world, where F4 and Super GT racing both still exist lol, and mainly concerns a photographer (who very much reminded me of Kaji from Evangelion) who has been traumatized and cannot photograph people's faces as a result. He is assigned to take pictures of the Super GT cars and gets distracted by the F4, their opening act. Since he's an audience stand-in character, he gets a helpful education in the finer points of racing, making this much easier for car not-knowers to pick up. The characters are fun and charming, I don't see any obvious evidence of girls being manipulated by the male gaze (there are race queens but they're wearing proper outfits with tops and bottoms), there's a Godfather reference and LOTS of racing right from the jump. Seeing Koya suddenly get that light in his eyes as soon as he went into the paddock, I understood that - that's how I felt when my friend took me to my first hockey game. Immediately I was just like YUP this is awesome, I love it, more please. So I think Overtake has a lot of heart and a more upbeat feeling than MF Ghost.

I'll keep watching both because I'm interested in seeing where they're going, but I am a little 😬 about the treatment and portrayal of Ren.

Still, it's fun to have not one but TWO car racing anime in the same season!