Highlights
- Overtake! is a new racing anime that has the potential to become one of the best in the genre due to its unique premise based on an actual real-life racing event.
- The anime utilizes impressive CGI animation specifically for the racing scenes, effectively conveying the realistic mechanical movements of the cars and adding a sense of authenticity.
- The story follows an underdog protagonist, Haruka Asahina, who faces numerous obstacles as a driver for a small team, but his passion for the sport and talent gradually gain recognition, making it a compelling underdog story.
Although “Sports” is one of the most popular genres in anime, racing (especially motorsport) is among the least popular subgenres of sports. The only racing anime that received a rather significant amount of attention within the last couple of decades was Initial D and Redline. Only those two.
Fortunately, there’s a new anime in the Fall 2023 season that might be able to put this subgenre to the forefront. It’s called Overtake!. It might seem like any other series at first, but two episodes in, it’s clear that this series has all the right ingredients to become one of the greatest racing anime ever, and here are the reasons why.
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As Ricky Bobby once said, "If you ain't first, you're last" and these anime are sure to race viewers to the finish.
It's Based On An Actual Racing Event
Overtake! is a story about a teenage boy named Haruka Asahina. He is a racing driver who competes in the Formula 4 Japanese Championship under a small team called Komaki Motors. This premise alone sets Overtake! apart from its predecessors. After all, unlike a story about a fictional race like Redline or a street race like Initial D, Overtake! is based on an actual real-life racing event.
Formula 4 is part of the global Formula 1 racing family. It was made to bridge the gap between professional karting and the more prestigious Formula 3. Formula 4 was created as a way to nurture young talent and give them a chance to gain a true open-wheel racing experience. If they are successful in Formula 4, then the path to Formula 3 or other professional junior open-wheel racing classes will be open up for them.
For the Formula 4 Japanese Championship, numerous drivers under different teams will race across multiple racetracks across Japan. As a matter of fact, at the time of writing, the Formula 4 Japanese Championship for the 2023 season is still underway. Not only that, the racetrack shown in the first episode of Overtake!, the Fuji Speedway, is actually one of the tracks that is used in the actual Formula 4 event.
Needless to say, the characters, the teams, and the cars themselves are fictional. However, the design of the car, the rules of the race, the responsibility of the teams and the drivers, and even the exuberant costs mentioned in episode 2 are very much based on reality. Seeing how the series tries to be as authentic as possible will surely bring a smile to every motorsport fan.
Great Use of CGI
The success of recent CGI anime like Kaina of The Great Snow Seaand Trigun Stampede! proves that CGI anime can be as beautiful as hand-drawn animation. That said, there are only a handful of anime studios that dare to create a full CGI anime series. Most will simply use CGI for scenes that display mechanical movements or a huge number of objects, which is precisely the approach used in most Mecha-based series like the Gundam franchise.
This is also the approach used in Overtake! The majority of the animation is done in the traditional hand-drawn way, except the racing part. During the actual race, every single car on the track is CGI. Thanks to this, the viewers can see and feel the true mechanical movements of these racing cars.
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The tires spin at high speed, the brakes get hotter near every corner, the suspension works extra hard to tackle every bump, and the smooth movement of a car that is about to overtake its opponent. Every mechanical movement that happens during the race is conveyed properly with CGI, which creates a deeper sense of reality for these fictional races. It might not be as stylistic as hand-drawn animation, but what it lacks in style, it makes up for in a higher sense of realism.
It Is An Underdog Story
Overtake! happens at the height of Formula 1 hype in Japan. After all, there’s a young Japanese man named Yuki Tsunoda among the 20 drivers in the F1 grid right now. He is racing for Red Bull's sister team, the Scuderia Alpha Tauri. His team might not be one of the top contenders for the Championship titles, but they are still racing to their best ability in every race weekend. That is partly the reason why so many fans feel excited whenever Yuki manages to score points for his team. In a way, he is living a real-life underdog story right now.
The same thing can be said about the protagonist of Overtake! After all, Haruka Asahina is a driver for the smallest team on the grid. Their budget is way smaller than the other bigger teams, which limited their ability to practice or change spare parts. As a result, lots of other drivers look down on Asahina and his team. But Asahina’s love and passion for the sport keep him going amidst so many obstacles on and off the tracks. And with every race, he slowly but surely showcases his talent to the world. A true underdog story.
Here’s another bit of interesting information. Yuki Tsunoda was actually the 2018 Japanese Formula 4 champion, which led to him getting support from Red Bull Racing, the reigning Formula 1 Constructor champion. So even though Overtake! is a fictional story, it’s not too far-fetched to assume that the amazing journey of Yuki Tsunoda inspires the story to some extent. Besides, both Yuki and Asahina currently race in black and white racing cars, so the similarity is certainly there.
Overtake! is available to stream on Crunchyroll.