Forza Horizon 6 pulls from one of the best racing anime ever created

With only a month left before the release of Forza Horizon 6, the hype to sprint through its sakura-strewn streets and serpentine mountain roads has reached a fever pitch. Playground Games has layered its latest open-world racing sim with all the hallmarks of Japan, from the neon-lit city avenues of Tokyo to the snow-capped peaks of the Japanese Alps.

Forza Horizon 6 is set to offer a kind of serenity behind the wheel that few games have truly captured, but the wait for its official debut is starting to drag on. If the flood of early gameplay footage isn't enough to satisfy that pull toward rubber-streaked pavement for the next month, it might be time to look back at the manga and anime that defined it.

Image: Playground Games/Xbox Game Studios

Before The Fast and the Furious, there was Initial D. The 1998 anime, adapted from Shuichi Shigeno’s manga of the same name, is a tour de force that captures the art of touge racing in all its thrilling splendor. “Touge” (峠 in Japanese) literally translates to “mountain pass,” the winding roads that became proving grounds for young, thrill-seeking drivers in Japan throughout the 1970s and 1980s. By the early '90s, tight-knit groups had formed around these same roads, refining drifting techniques and reshaping car culture in the process.

Initial D draws directly from that world, pulling from its creator’s firsthand experience with street racing. The story follows Takumi Fujiwara, a seemingly indifferent high schooler with a knack for driving, honed by years of delivering tofu on Mount Akina for his father since he was 13. Unlike your typical Brian O’Conner or Lightning McQueen, Takumi doesn’t chase racing; he just happens to be better at it than anyone else.

Takumi’s first race down Akina makes these ideals clear. He enters the race on the simple promise of a full tank of gas provided he wins. For Takumi, there’s no ego behind the wheel whatsoever; it’s just another ride down a road he knows by heart. Across from him, however, is Keisuke Takahashi of the RedSuns, treating the race as a proving ground against the so-called “White Ghost of Akina.” It’s equal parts nail-biting and hilarious, all the while offering raw introspection on the art of drifting.

What makes Initial D so compelling isn’t just the characters, but its vehicles, which feel like extensions of the drivers themselves. Takumi pilots his father’s panda-white Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86, an unassuming coupe that was already a cult favorite in Japan’s underground touge scene. By the time the anime debuted, the AE86 had been elevated to icon status by drifting legends like Keiichi Tsuchiya, the “Drift King,” whose influence helped define the style the series would go on to immortalize.

Image: Kodansha

The AE86 has since evolved into a defining staple of drifting culture, and it’s the kind of car that feels right at home in the digital Japan of Forza Horizon 6. Fortunately, the car is set to be included in the game’s extensive vehicle lineup, along with Initial D’s Mount Akina and other real-world layouts. A setting like this one brings that fantasy closer than ever: winding mountain roads, late-night runs, and the chance to carve through corners the way Initial D made famous. All that’s missing is a trunk full of tofu, a styrofoam cup of water in the holder, and a Eurobeat-laden soundtrack.

It’s no surprise the series continues to endure through the likes of Horizon 6. Since its inception, the anime series has spawned retellings, side stories, a live-action movie, and even a sequel in MF Ghost, which is set several years after First Stage. (Initial D leans so heavily into its racing identity that its seasons are framed as “Stages,” each one shifting gears as Takumi’s journey in the world of drifting evolves.) And Forza Horizon 6 won’t be the last we see of Initial D’s legacy this year, as Sung Kang’s Drifter film seems to be hitting all the same notes.

More than anything, Initial D endures because it understands something most racing stories ignore: it’s not about speed, or even winning — it’s more about the feel of the drive. The rhythm of the road, the weight of a turn, the quiet obsession of getting the drift precisely right. Long before open-world racers like Forza Horizon tried to capture that sensation, Initial D had already put it on full display, steeped in as much real-world detail as possible.

And somehow, even all these years later, the 1998 anime still does it best.