I’ve been covering the Initial D FUNimation releases for awhile now and all of them have pretty much been solid. What can you expect to find as a first timer to Initial D? Well there’s a lot of tomfoolery, a few cute girls, but mostly high speed street-racing and its not all city streets as the street teams battle it out in downhill and uphill races speeding through windy hillsides at break neck speed sometimes just inches from one another as they drift their vehicles through sharp turns and sometimes make miraculous moves to out fox one another. Forget what you’ve seen on television. NASCAR and Formula One haven’t got a thing on the intense action Initial D has to offer.

First Stage Part Two puts us right where Takumi’s legend is growing. Everyone wants a piece of him and his modified Eight-Six and despite Takumi’s carefree attitude when it comes to his skill everyone else see’s it and considers him fresh meat on the street circuit. The first race involves Takumi and a member of the Night Kids racing team. This isn’t an average race though as both drivers have their steering hands taped to the wheel for a bit of extra challenge. It’s a live or die race both for reputation and for their very lives as they must maneuver between twisting downhill turns with less control over their vehicles. Fans of the show will recall a legendary racer that shows up to challenge Takumi using such a technique named the Godhand Technique in the Fourth Stage series. Other races include guy versus girls (yeah you read that right) as Takumi takes on the Blue Impact Team of Mako Sato and Sayuki. Finally Takumi must take on the White Comet of Akiga, a legendary racer who is a God among other racers. As always the races are fantastic, the music adds an extra level of intensity, and the story moves along at a pace that’s sort of non-committal yet you can’t help but become enveloped in Takumi’s plight as he slowly but surely takes the wheel.

Bonus features include the same old same old. Textless opening song and textless closing song plus trailers. Honestly, and I don’t usually consider trailers to be a bonus feature, when its all you got you start to realize that some of them are pretty damn good. Most looked forward to series coming from the trailers has to be Sands of Destruction, Gun X Sword, and Towers of Druga. Other then that not much to look at in bonus features. In any case it’s a must own for Initial D fans. Enjoy.