Initial D: First Stage

Initial D: First Stage:
Act 01 : The Ultimate Tofu Store Drift
Act 02 : Revenge! The Rumbling Turbo
Act 03 : The Downhill Specialist Appears
Act 04 : Into the Battle!
Act 05 : Dogfight!
Act 06 : A New Challenger
Act 07 : Pride of a Racer
Act 08 : Time's Almost Up!
Act 09 : Eight Six vs. GT-R
Act 10 : Five Point Hairpin
Act 11 : Shingo Arrives!
Act 12 : The FR Killer
Act 13 : Itsuki's First Date
Act 14 : Evolving Drift
Act 15 : Takumi's Fury
Act 16 : The Angel of Usui
Act 17 : Sudden-Death Death Match
Act 18 : Hot Winds & Furious Driving!
Act 19 : Super Drift!
Act 20 : The End of Summer
Act 21 : Challenge From a Super Star
Act 22 : Fierce Uphill Battle!
Act 23 : The Rainy Downhill
Act 24 : Akagi's White Comet
Act 25 : The Last Battle
Act 26 : A New Downhill Legend

Overview:
The story begins when street racers of the Red Suns, a team from Mt. Akagi, come to challenge Mt. Akina's local Speed Stars team to a "friendly" race. After seeing how skilled the Red Suns are, the Speed Stars treat it as a race for pride, determined not to be humiliated on their home turf. However, the Speed Stars are left in a bind when their team leader and primary downhill driver Iketani has an accident during a practice run.

Iketani learns from Yuuichi, the manager of the gas station he is working in, that the fastest car in Akina's downhill was a panda-colored AE86 owned by a tofu maker, and traces the car back to a local tofu shop. He discovers that the shop's owner, Bunta Fujiwara, was a street racer of great repute in his younger days. Iketani appeals to the older man to take his place in the race against the Red Suns. Iketani is confident that Bunta will come to save the day. But when the race day comes, his son Takumi appears with his Toyota Trueno AE86 instead. Although at first reluctant to let Takumi race, Ikatani relents after it is revealed that he is actually the "Ghost of Akina," the one who outran Keisuke while on one of his delivery runs. Takumi proceeds to defeat Keisuke Takahashi and his Mazda RX-7 FD3S, causing considerable astonishment in the local racing community and putting an end to the Red Suns winning streak.

Originally apathetic about the notion of racing, having only raced Keisuke on the condition his father would let him have the car with a full tank of fuel for a day to use on a date, Takumi begins to grow more interested as he receives other challenges. He begins to understand the concept of a street racer's pride when everyone advises him to duck a challenge from a driver of Mt. Myogi's Night Kids team who drives an extremely powerful, technologically advanced Nissan Skyline R32. The competition against another member of the Night Kids, Shingo Shoji, becomes personal for Takumi after Shingo attempts to wreck Iketani and later forces his friend and co-worker Itsuki to crash when he mistook Itsuki's car for Takumi's. After this, which resulted in Shoji's defeat (in his Honda Civic EG6 hatchback--reportedly the rival to the AE86--in a "Duct Tape Deathmatch") came a duel with a female driver/navigator duo team hailing from Mt. Usui known as Impact Blue and their Nissan Sileighty.

Each of the races presents seemingly impossible odds to overcome. The opposing cars are almost always much more powerful than Takumi's AE86, and the race against Shingo is a "Duct tape Deathmatch," in which both drivers' right hands are taped to the steering wheel, a format which severely limits ability to steer and highly favors Shingo's Honda Civic EG-6, which is a front-wheel drive. Takumi's rear-wheel drive AE86 would be much harder to control, but by instinct, he figures out his own technique and went on to win the race. Shingo actually tried to crash into Takumi's car planning to end the race with a tie, but the AE86 entered a turn and dodged the EG6 and sent the latter to a major crash. The race against Impact Blue is the first for Takumi outside of Mt. Akina, in the completely unfamiliar environment Mt Usui, the SilEighty team's home course.

Takumi's first wet race was against Kenta Nakamura of the Red Suns, driving an S14, which happened in Myogi after Keisuke's race with Nakazato. That previous battle happened before the rain, with Nakazato leading all throughout until his tires lost grip, letting Keisuke drift his way to victory. Afterwards, the audacious Kenta asked the spectators if they wanted a race against the AE86, and they did. Takumi accepted the challenge. Kenta, having a more powerful car, led during the uphill part but Takumi went ahead on the downhill, finishing with a huge distance. This was among Takumi's easiest races, as he himself had tons of experience in more adverse weather conditions.

While Takumi races others over the course of the summer, Keisuke's brother Ryosuke Takahashi, who is the leader of the Akagi Red Suns, formulates what he refers to as his "Fastest Racer Theory" to defeat Takumi, relying on computer simulations that he had formulated. As summer draws to a close, Ryosuke challenges Takumi to a race and is defeated when he is overtaken by Takumi on one of the last turns before Akina's finish line. Ryosuke acknowledges that Takumi was faster than him, and advises him not to be satisfied with Akina's small stage and to seek out bigger challenges.