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 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.
The post First Impressions – Overtake! appeared first on Lost in Anime.
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