With high school graduation right around the corner, Takumi Fujiwara has a lot on his mind and a lot to prepare for. Everything becomes even more complicated when Takumi is offered a spot on Ryosuke Takahashi's elite Kengai Racing Team, which seeks to assemble the greatest racers in the Gunma area for a tour of Japan's mountain passes. Before he can accept however, Takumi feels the need to settle the score with the Lancer Evo driving Emperor team, defend his downhill-racer crown against the son of his father's greatest rival, and finally settle things with his unfaithful girlfriend Natsuki.
Direction
CGI-enhanced drifting that actually aged better than it had any right to.
Sound
Eurobeat soundtrack that single-handedly defined an entire subculture.
Writing
Takumi's silent brooding somehow carries genuine emotional weight.
Director
Noboru Mitsusawa
Shin-ichiro Miki
Takumi Fujiwara (voice)
Ayako Kawasumi
Natsuki Mogi (voice)
Mitsuo Iwata
Itsuki Takeuchi (voice)
Takehito Koyasu
Ryosuke Takahashi (voice)
Nobutoshi Canna
Kai Kogashiwa (voice)
Masahiko Tanaka
Kyoichi Sudo (voice)
Takumi Yamazaki
Miki (voice)
Unsho Ishizuka
Bunta Fujiwara (voice)
Kazuki Yao
Koichiro Iketani (voice)
Wataru Takagi
Kenji (voice)
Tomomichi Nishimura
Yuichi Tachibana (voice)
Tomokazu Seki
Keisuke Takahashi (voice)
Kinryu Arimoto
Ken Kogashiwa (voice)
Kazuhisa Kawahara
Seiji Iwaki (voice)
Nobuyuki Hiyama
Takashi Nakazato (voice)
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This film cemented touge racing in global car culture, directly inspiring the 'Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift' mountain sequences and countless real-life drift events.
The CGI drifting was controversial in 2001, but animators insisted traditional cel animation couldn't capture tire smoke physics realistically. Fans eventually embraced the hybrid style.
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