Initial D future generation, MF Ghost, is confirmed to premiere in 2023! Now, the best drift racing anime will come back with a new story and smoother visuals!
The anime takes years in the future after the Initial D story. The combustion engine is no longer around because the electric self-driving car becomes the norm.
A group of people wants to reminisce about the past and makes a race championship called MFG. They use a rare fossil-fueled car to compete.
Unlike the prequel, the race in MF Ghost is perfectly legal. But it doesn’t make the race looks tame. We can still see the intense atmosphere when they race each other in street.
Though it is more modern than Initial D, can it beat the popularity of its prequel?
Here’s the information we can get so far.
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MF Ghost Release Date
MF Ghost Season 1 Release Date
Countdown to August 1, 2023 at 10:00 AM (UTC)
Unconfirmed
MF Ghost anime was first announced on January 4, 2022. At the same time, they released the first PV and visual teaser stating that the anime will premiere sometime in 2023.
Four months later, they released the second PV, two main characters’ design, and the staff. The notable difference is the number of cars shown in the PV.
For the record, the anime uses the actual sound of said car. The official Twitter account posted a lineup of eight sports cars with a total cost of 200 million yen (1.4 million USD) gathered for audio recording.
Finally, the third PV was released on January 4, 2023. It contains the complete lineup of the main cast as well as the background story in the PV.
Now that we have a complete insight into the adaptation, we can expect that the anime almost reaches a finish line. It is estimated that MF Ghost will premiere in the summer of 2023.
MF Ghost Trailer
The third PV was released on January 4, 2023. It shows smoother 3D animation compared to its prequel, initial D. The first scene also foreshadows the famous drift scene of Takumi Fujiwara from initial D.
The complete cast was also revealed at the same time as the third PV was released. They are;
- Uchida Yuuma as Katagiri Kanata (Kanata Rivington)
- Sakura Ayane as Saionji Ren
- Ono Daisuke as Aiba Shun
- Hatanaka Tasuku as Ogata
- Kamiya Hiroshi as Beckenbauer Michael
- Namikawa Daisuke as Ooishi Daigo
- Suwabe Junichi as Akaba Kaito
- Yasumoto Hiroki as Ishigami Fuujin
The anime will reprise a lot of Initial D staff. Tomohito Naka (New Initial D Movie: Legend) will come back to direct the series and Yamashita Kenichi will be responsible for the series composition.
Mima Masafumi (Initial D First-Final Stage) will be the sound director, while Dobashi Akio (New Initial D Movie: Legend) will handle the music for the series.
Felix Film will be the studio for creating the anime. Though they haven’t touched a decade mark yet, with the right man to do the job, the anime should have a better prospect when it comes out.
MF Ghost Story
In the year 202X, the electric self-driving car becomes the norm, while internal combustion engine-based cars are basically extinct in Japan.
Over the past decade, the number of traffic deaths has decreased by a whopping 87 percent. Fossil fuel cars are removed from the roads of advanced nations with astonishing speed. Now, they’re like an endangered species.
In Japan, a new motorsport event is created as a sort of requiem for this vanishing breed. Streamed worldwide all over the internet, the popularity is skyrocketing. Its name is MFG.
The story follows a 19-year-old Japanese-English racer, Kanata Livington. He comes to Japan after graduating from a top racing school in the United Kingdom. He has two objectives while residing in Japan, the first one is to join MFG and the second is to look for his missing father.
To fulfill his second goal, he enters MFG with his father’s surname, Katagiri, and borrows a Toyota GT86 from Ogata, a friend of the family who is Kanata living with.
Despite his car’s overwhelming advantage, he makes it into the top 15 in his first race showing his phenomenal skill.
It turns out that Takumi Fujiwara, the legendary downhill racer, is actually his mentor back in the UK. Senior employees in MFG and former racers notice his presence from his first race. Now, the new generation of MFG is brewing with a new wind!
MF Ghost News
MF Ghost was created by Shuichi Shigeno. The series has been serialized in Kodansha’s Weekly Young Magazine since September 2017. The entire chapter is compiled into sixteen volumes of manga with the latest being released on February 6, 2023.
The English version of the manga was released by Kodansha USA and Comixology, though they only release the digital format. They released the digital version of the first through the tenth volumes on January 11, 2022, in one go.
As of January 2023, the manga sold over 4 million copies worldwide. It doesn’t come as surprise because the series is basically a sequel to the popular racing manga, Initial D.
In October 2018, the author said that MF Ghost already reached 1/5 of the entire story. That time, the third volume was released a month before.
Now that we have 15 volumes, we can expect that the manga will soon reach its end. Of course, if Shuichi-sensei deems fit, we possibly have an expanded storyline that he originally planned.
For a record, the prequel, Initial D, is completely adapted into anime which spans from 1998 to 2014. With that kind of record, we can expect that MF Ghost will follow its predecessor and mark itself as the best car racing anime in years to come.
