MF Ghost

Template:Nihongo is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno. It is a sequel to Initial D, and is also focused on the Japanese street racing scene. The series has been serialized in Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine since September 2017, with its chapters collected in 21 Template:Transliteration volumes as of October 2024. An anime television series adaptation by Felix Film aired in October to December 2023, with a second season premiering in October 2024.

Plot

The series takes place in 202X, where self-driving electric cars have replaced internal combustion ones. However, in Japan, there is a large organization called MFG, founded by Ryosuke Takahashi (from the Initial D series), who does street racing with internal combustion cars. A new rookie, Template:Nihongo who is competing with the pseudonym Template:Nihongo, a 19-year-old Japanese-British young man, has showed up on the scene driving a Toyota 86, and beating European top-tier cars, such as the Lamborghini Huracán LP 610-4, Ferrari 488 GTB, Lotus Exige, Alfa Romeo 4C and Porsche 911 Carrera (991). Kanata has been trained by legendary downhill and rally racer Takumi Fujiwara (protagonist from the Initial D series) at the Royal Donington Racing School in the UK and is a Formula 4 world champion. He has only one motive: to find his long-lost father.

Media

Manga

MF Ghost is written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno. The manga began in Kodansha's [[Seinen manga|Template:Transliteration manga]] magazine Weekly Young Magazine on September 4, 2017. The series is connected to Shigeno's previous work Initial D. In October 2018, Shigeno stated that the manga is 1/5 finished. In November 2022, it was announced that the manga would enter on indefinite hiatus due to the author's poor health; it resumed publication on February 20, 2023, and entered on hiatus again on April 18 of the same year; on the same date, it was announced that the manga had entered its "final battle". The series resumed on June 19, 2023. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual Template:Transliteration volumes. The first volume was published on January 5, 2018. As of October 4, 2024, 21 volumes have been released.

Kodansha USA and Comixology announced that they would publish the manga digitally starting on January 11, 2022. The series was added to Kodansha's K Manga online platform in May 2023.

Anime

An anime television series adaptation was announced on January 4, 2022. It is produced by Felix Film and directed by Tomohito Naka, with Kenichi Yamashita supervising the scripts co-written by Akihiko Inari, Naoyuki Onda designing the characters, and Akio Dobashi composing the music. The series aired from October 2 to December 18, 2023, on Tokyo MX and other networks.Template:Efn The opening theme song is "Jungle Fire feat. Motsu" by Yū Serizawa, while the ending theme song is "Stereo Sunset" by Himika Akaneya.

Following the ending of the twelfth episode, a second season was announced, which premiered on October 7, 2024.Template:Efn The opening theme song is "Rock Me Kiss Me feat. Motsu" by Yū Serizawa, while the ending theme song is "Side U (Prod. AmPm)" by Himika Akaneya.

Crunchyroll is streaming the series. Medialink licensed the series in Asia-Pacific, streaming it on its Ani-One Asia YouTube channel.

Reception

By January 2019, the manga had over 1 million copies in circulation; over 3.2 million copies in circulation by January 2022; and over 4 million copies in circulation by January 2023.

Anime News Network (ANN) had four editors review the first episode of the anime: Rebecca Silverman was put off by the fan service depiction of Ren and felt disappointed with the racing being relegated to "only about thirty seconds of actual race footage"; Richard Eisenbeis felt betrayed by the lack of "awesome dirfting car races and killer eurobeat music" throughout the episode, but gave it credit for being a "solid introduction" and had decent stories involving Kanata and Ren, saying he will check out the second episode; James Beckett critiqued that "automotive-illiterate viewers" may enjoy the series through Ren and Kanata's potential romance but was unsure of its racing anime appeal based on the brief snippets it shows, saying that fanbase "will have to wait another week to get a real taste of the action." The fourth reviewer, Nicholas Dupree, was unimpressed with the "mild-mannered and matter-of-fact" main cast (outside of Ogata) but felt that viewers will get invested in them during the long run. He added that the visuals were a mixed bag, commending the details to the CG vehicles and the "distinctive character designs", but was critical of the environments being "(barely-)edited reference photos," saying "the make-or-break detail will depend on how well they can capture the speed and intensity of racing in the next episode."

Fellow ANN editor Steve Jones chose MF Ghost as his pick for the Worst Anime of Fall 2023, criticizing the "paper-thin characters, shoddy presentation, and almost nonexistent story" compared to Overtake!, and added that it fails as a continuation to Initial D, saying "Yes, it brings the Eurobeat back, and that's absolutely the best creative decision this sequel makes. But in all other respects—setting, character, stakes, direction, storyboarding—the classic Initial D anime runs laps around this one." Monique Thomas chose the series as her pick for the Worst Anime of 2023, feeling the races lacked storyline stakes and contained "long technical explanations", and felt the overall production away from the tracks was "sterile with very little expression," saying, "It feels like someone took all the worst parts of Initial D and cobbled them together into one vehicle. It's a reminder that we're no longer "running in the 90s" and have left them behind a long time ago." Kennedy, also writing for ANN, reviewed the complete anime series in 2024 and gave it an overall C grade, praising the racing segments but felt it lacked Initial DTemplate:'s "over-the-top elements" that made it fun and criticized the bland characters throughout the disjointed story, concluding that: "On its own merits, it's (no pun intended) pretty middle of the road—exciting race scenes, which are weighed down by just about everything else. Overall, I wouldn't readily call it a particularly good or bad anime. But, it's the Initial D you have at home: it may also be a racing anime set to a Eurobeat soundtrack, but it lacks the over-the-top fun of Initial D."

External links

• Template:Official website Template:In lang
• Template:Official website Template:In lang
• Template:Anime News Network