KWEH!
This #ThrowbackThursday is a little bit more special than usual. We are reminiscing back to a popular anime as well as looking back at the fun times we had at our old broadcast. Drifting down memory lane, here is “Speedy Speed Boy” by Marko Polo from the anime, Initial D!
https://youtu.be/6LtXVjOmvDY
A little bit of information about the artist: Marko Polo is one of many pseudonyms adopted by Maurizio De Jorio. Maurizio is an Italian disco and Eurobeat artist whose work got even more recognition from Initial D. Maurizio, under his many aliases, worked on many different songs featured in the anime. Unfortunately it is not easy to confirm which other pseudonyms are his. So far, some of the confirmed ones are Niko, Dejo, Morris, and Max Coveri. If that were truly the case, he is responsible for my addiction to “Night of Fire,” another song featured in Initial D.
What is Initial D? It is a manga/anime created by Shuichi Shigeno in 1995 detailing a young man named Takumi Fujiwara and his illegal street racing adventures. It focuses on drift-style racing. The locations used in the series are based on real-world Gunma Prefecture and its locales. Undoubtedly, the series brought upon the rise of popularity for certain cars such as the Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 (used by the main protagonist as his race car and also owned by the family), Subaru Impreza WRX, Mazda RX-7 (there are a few different builds of the car), and more.
The popularity of the series also jumpstarted the rise of Trueno AE86 collectors and enthusiasts. Aside from appearing in Initial D, AE86 also made appearances in racing games such as Wangan Midnight (based on the manga of the same name), Need for Speed: The Run, and the Gran Turismo series. It is often said that the car’s resale value went up because of the popularity of Initial D.
Another fact about the series: despite Wangan Midnight being serialized and published five years earlier than Initial D, the former did not gain as much publicity.
One of Jalopnik‘s correspondents living in Japan wrote an article about how Japanese drifting parallels/differs from the depictions in the series.
Now let us talk a little bit about nostalgia. It has been several months since our site, Yatta-Tachi started in May. We have grown out of our previous community and are striving to become an independent entity that reaches globally. For those of us who were around during our broadcast era, we remember the fun/weird/awkward/noisy/troll-y/tearful/angry moments. “Speedy Speed Boy” was definitely a part of our small broadcast culture and history. For the new folks, I say welcome and stay for a spell or two! Some time from now we can all look back in the rearview mirror and think: “Oh yeah, I remember when we used to…”
Sources: Wikipedia, Otaku USA Magazine, and Eurobeat Prime
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