Overtake! is actually a pretty big premiere for me. It’s in the mid-table category for starters, which means my hopes for the season are somewhat vested in it being a keeper. It’s also my main sleeper for the season (not that there are many), and those are always important for my mood. The main reason it’s a sleeper is the staff, headed by a truly premium director in Aoki Ei – not an auteur like Hatakeyama or the Watanabes but supremely competent and assured. It also features character designs by Takako Shimura (Hourou Musuko) and a big-time art director in Itou Akira. Both Aoki and Itou performed those same roles on Hourou Musuko in fact, so this is something of a reunion project.
Of course, my mantra is that the most important person on an original series is the writer, and Sekine Ayumi has nothing especially convincing in her resume. So we’ll see, but for one week at least, I’m on-board. This was a very good premiere indeed, with the unmistakable guiding hand of a confident helmsman at the wheel. There’s some CGI (no auto racing anime in 2023 would dodge that) but it’s not obtrusive, and the overall production values are excellent. There’s also a lot of exposition, but it’s presented in such a way as to at least make sense – the main character knows nothing at all about auto racing. As, let’s face it, is going to be the case for an overwhelming majority of the viewers.
I’m a modest fan of auto racing at best, and what I’ve watched is mainly NASCAR – closed-wheel racing, like the GT cars photographer Madoka Kouya (Katsuyuki Konishi) has come to Fuji International Speedway to snap. What I know about open-wheel racing (like the F4 cars Overtake! is focusing on) is in part thanks to Capeta. It’s ironic that the first anime in 15 years that puts me in mind of Capeta airs in the same season as an adaptation of a Soda Masahito series, but it’s not his. F4 is literally that, the 4th division of the hierarchy that has Formula One – by some measures the most expensive sport in the world – at the top.
The Capeta experience (I’m a huge fan) clears a path for me to embrace Ovetake!, there’s no denying it. The underfunded team trying to compete with the big corporate outfits, the genius boy racer taking on the adults, the excitement and drama of this fast-paced and dangerous sport – it takes me right back to those Capeta moments. Materially the two shows are very different, however. In fact the main protagonist of the premiere is Madoka, who’s suffering from some sort of PTSD that’s shattered his ability to do his job. His friend (and possibly ex-lover) Yukihira Saeko is trying to help him out, and this GT photo gig is a part of that effort.
The other key player is Asahina Haruka (rookie Furuya Anan, as green as Katsuyuki is experienced), the young driver for the plucky underdog Komaki Motorsports. Derisively called a “chicane” (an obstacle on a road course) by the big teams, Asahina and Komaki are trying to get by on a shoestring, which has an immediate appeal for Kouya. He’s also drawn by the passion and intensity he sees in Asahina, who doesn’t look a day over 16 (sixteen year-olds can race in Formula 4). Lacking these qualities so utterly in his current state and clearly wishing he could get them back, Kouuya gets a vicarious thrill out of watching the Komaki team work.
Haruka has, in fact, qualified 10th on the 36-car grid for that day’s F4 race, which is pretty impressive. Kindly team owner Komaki Futoshi (Sasa Kenta) takes a shine to Kouya and gives him an all-access credential, effectively a front-row and behind the scenes look at his first auto race. Haruka is climbing up the board when he blows a tire (presumably lack of funds being the reason the team has to use the same tires they used in qualifying), which ends his day early. Snapping the photo Kouya did afterwards feels a bit invasive, but it obviously means something to him to be able to get back in the saddle, and he offers to be a sponsor for the Komaki team (is he independently wealthy?).
This is one, in fact, that I very much am the target audience for, and Overtake! absolutely works for me so far. I like Kouya a lot and I’m curious about his backstory, and while we know nothing about Haruka to speak of, he too is an intriguing figure. The racing stuff is handled really well, and with this team in place the visuals overall are every bit as good as you’d expect. We still face the uncertainty over whether the writing will be good enough to hold up for 12 episodes, but Overtake! gives me a lot of cause for optimism with this premiere.
BBOvenGuy
October 3, 2023 at 12:44 pmOkay, I’ll give the show a try. I’m an Indianapolis native who grew up going to the Speedway every year during May, and I wasn’t sure how they were going to handle the details of racing.
Incidentally, Japan’s most successful race driver probably started in F4 and worked his way up to F1, but then left and came over to the US to drive in IndyCar instead. (IndyCar is open-wheel like F1, but the cars are more standardized – more competition and less cost – plus they run some oval tracks like NASCAR.) Americans call him “Takuma Sato” pronounced Ta-KOO-ma SA-toe, but I’ve heard Japanese announcers call him “Sato Takuma” pronounced SA-toe TA-koo-ma. He is now a two-time winner of the Indianapolis 500, and he’s also won the Long Beach Grand Prix, which is IndyCar’s second-most prestigious race. And now I’ll stop geeking out and give you your blog back…
Guardian Enzo
October 3, 2023 at 12:55 pmThere are road courses on the Indy circuit too, a couple of them anyway.
F1 is tough to break into. Old money and tons of it, a real gentlemen’s club. As drivers go it’s definitely not for everyone.
BBOvenGuy
October 3, 2023 at 3:21 pmYes, IndyCar races on ovals, permanent road courses, and temporary street courses. And yes, F1 is tough to break into.
One thing about the F4 cars in Overtake is that they don’t have the “halo,” the frame built around the cockpit to protect the driver’s head. Those are standard in all the FIA series now. IndyCar took it one step farther and added a full windscreen. But they did a good job with the racing details otherwise.
Antony Shepherd
October 4, 2023 at 10:17 pmI’ve been watching British F4 races for a while and they only got the halo last year.
A bit of digging around shows that 2023 Japanese F4 cars don’t yet have the halo, they start using it with the next generation of cars in 2024.
I’d been wondering why the halo didn’t feature in this show, though I am surprised that not every F4 championship got them at the same time.
While the halo was controversial with some people, there’s no doubt that it’s saved drivers’ lives.
Nicc
October 3, 2023 at 1:41 pmThis is the second show of the season with automobile racing (The other being “MFing Ghost”, that you covered earlier) and it’s the better of the two premiers. Motorsports is something that I watch on occasion and depending on what’s on. I like catching the Sunday in May when the Monaco Grand Prix, the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 are on the same day. You can get your Formula 1, IndyCar and NASCAR fix all at once. I try to catch some of the 24 Hours of Le Mans too whenever it’s on. One of the biggest events of the summer around here is when racing boats come to town.
I liked how the episode progressed. We start out with Madoka Kouya, who is a photographer. It’s quickly revealed that he’s got some kind of trauma (The imagery suggests it happened on the water) and he’s unable to take photos of people. He’s sent to a racetrack to take photos and gets introduced to the world of racing. That’s something that I enjoyed too as Kouya is pulled along with us. We get acquainted with the big teams and also the small ones trying to make their mark.
One of the small teams is Komaki Motorsports. It looks like it consists of one driver, one mechanic and one manager. The driver is Asahina Haruka, who seems to be a lad of few words. There’s some kind of rivalry between him and Tokumaru Toshiki from Belsorriso, which is one of the large teams. You are correct that the difference in funding comes to play during the race itself. Haruka is doing well in the race, but using the same tires for the qualifying and the race itself was too much for them and they blow. As we see later, it’s a frustrating end for Haruka, but Kouya is able to take a photo of a person for the first time in a while. Yep, there was a lot to like here from the characters, the story so far and the technical presentation. I’ll be coming around for a second lap next week.
Scampi
October 3, 2023 at 6:37 pmBased from the twitter comments in the flashback, Kouya may have snapped a photo of someone drowning, and what’s worse, made eye contact with them. While there was no logical way he could do have done anything to save them, I guess he also has a knack for capturing people in very inappropriate moments. In that case the debate of morality vs personal pursuit applies to both racing and photography, wonder if the story will pursue this further.
Joshua
October 3, 2023 at 10:49 pmI guess the one thing Ayumi Sekine has going for is writing the anime adaptation for the lucratively popular Idolish7 franchise which coincidentally is a series that Troyca worked on (with Ei Aoki as supervisor even), and most likely is what pays the bills for them considering that they worked on this series for 5 years now since 2018. In a way, considering that this is the show that commemorates the Troyca’s 10th anniversary featuring the best talents the studio has on-board (and reuniting several other acquaintances as well), it does seem like this is Sekine’s chance to prove themselves with an original project.
Anyways, this premiere surprised me in all the right ways, even as someone with little knowledge on F1 racing. Interested in seeing where this goes.