The 2024 Geneva show kicks off today. But enough about that, who remembers Initial D? Probably you’d need to be seriously into manga to have consumed any of the Japanese comics (though it was very popular in its domestic market) but the subsequent anime series made a bigger dent globally, not least because in America it surfed the wave of interest in illegal street racing generated by The Fast and the Furious. For the uninitiated, it charts the rise of Takumi Fujiwara from a teenage gas station attendant to AE86-driving legend. Needless to say, it is famous for frenetic drift scenes and memorable spectator exposition like: ‘the FC is skidding to the outside of the curve! Is this for real?!’
You get the idea. (Check out the trailer for Andy Lau’s live-action version below if not). It was mostly about driving fast and (eyes narrow) looking cool while you did it. And it is in that spirit that we suspect Toyota has commissioned a five-episode animated show called ‘GRIP’. To swerve around the problematic issue of frowned-upon street racing, it is set in the future, and ‘combines heart-pounding action, adrenaline-fueled races, [with] a battle between the human spirit and computer control.’
Yes, that’s right, our heroes - the three-member GRIP team, mentored by wise Master Rugu - are pitted not only against bearded baddie Dr Aron (the enigmatic CEO of SynthCorp, a man ‘hellbent on eradicating human driving after losing a hand’) but also against the ‘lifeless’ autonomous vehicles that are sucking the joy from the pastel-coloured streets. Their weapons of social change? A GR Corolla, a GR Supra and a GR86, obviously. This thing bloody writes itself.
Quite who the show is aimed at is hard to say (children? GR owners? the children of GR owners?) but the first episode is coming to YouTube imminently, and on the basis that ‘the GRIP team is the last hope for the spirit of driving’ we feel sort of duty bound to watch it. Partly for the inevitably top-notch company-sponsored dialogue, partly for the legacy of Initial D and partly, of course, in solidarity. The GRIP team probably isn't going to save us from computer control, but at least Toyota is going down swinging. And shouting about it.
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 4 3"%3E%3C/svg%3E)
![](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 1 1"%3E%3C/svg%3E)