The Fall 2023 anime season featured the spiritual sequel to the classic street racing Anime, Initial D. As people tend to mellow with age, so has the creator of Intial D. MF Ghost continues the concept of racing on regular roads with normal cars, but expands the concept from pure drift racing, and moves it from beyond the underground.

MF Ghost follows Kanata Livington, a Japanese-English racer who, we learn partway through the series, is the protege of Initial D protagonist Takumi Fujiwara – who after the end of that series became a drift racer and was ultimately forced to retire after a car accident. Kanata has come to Japan searching for his missing father after his mother’s death, believing that he can draw him out through racing. Kanata’s attractive looks also draw the romantic attention of the older teenage daughter (17, going on 18) of the family he’s staying with, Ren Saionji, who is working as a race girl for the MFG race circuit, along with rival racer Nozomi Kitahara. Notably, Ren Saionji wears a wig while working as a race girl, and is only known by her number, so Kanata doesn’t know Ren is a race girl.

If you want a long time spent on races, the details of the track, the strategy and tactics, and maneuvering over the course of a race, this show has what you want. A massive chunk of this season is spent strictly on one race, all the way from qualifying to both laps of the race itself. Everything from drafting to tire and brake management gets discussed over the course of this race, with characters from Initial D returning to serve as commentators. MF Ghost gets into full sicko mode. Oh, and the Initial D Eurobeat is in full effect.

That said, the characterization of this series suffers. I can’t tell you anything about Kanata’s personality aside from “He’s an attractive man”, “He’s looking for his father”, and “He was raised in the UK so he doesn’t read or write Japanese very well, and wasn’t taught how to use chopsticks.” The “Yajikata Siblings” are siblings and have a sibling rivalry. Michael Beckenbauer is bored. Ren is in love with Kanata. It’s very generic. Maybe in the manga by this point these characters have gotten fleshed out more, but at this point in the anime, they’re still fairly one note.

On top of that, we really need to talk about the MFG Girls. Now, scantly clad Race Queens are certainly a distinctive thing in Japanese race culture, but the MFG Girls are especially skimpy. It’s bikini bottoms (drawn with visible labia, and a tendency to ride up in the back giving a wedgie) and a slightly more involved sports bra + angel wings. I actually went looking up other Race Queen outfits, and they’re generally more conservative – even the ones used in JAV videos. There are tight skirts, midriff exposing outfits, and occasionally cleavage windows, but the full butt generally stays covered. While the camera angles Race Queens are filmed in real life races can certainly have the same kind of leering viewpoint that the race broadcasts in MF Ghost have, the fact that the outfits are so skimpy (to the point that one of the character traits of another of the MFG Girls is that she’s proud of her ass and lets her bikini bottom ride up into something more like a thong) is obnoxious.

Ultimately, I think MF Ghost’s first season does present the racing action of a full race well, and I do think that the shift of the style of race to a lap race from drift racing does allow more dynamic action and can prevent the series from becoming monotonous. However, the character writing and presentation suffers from how the races are paced, though hopefully, we’ll get something of an improvement next season.

MF Ghost is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

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