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Its been a long while coming. While I love watching Japanese anime, this is probably one of the few turnoffs to following a fresh series. The wait can be excruciatingly long and painful. While the raw Japanese version of the newest episodes have been available for quite a while now, there’s a huge lead time before the translated versions become available to the public. I truly respect the various factions out there who are contributing their time and efforts to translating the script

Initial D 4th Stage: Project D - Act 23: Endless Battle

Anyway, the point of the matter is that after almost 2 months since the release of episode 22 in December 2005, the subtitled version of episode 23 has finally been released! While I have been waiting for the longest time, I haven’t been checking up on the series. So it was quite a coincidence and a big surprise for me when I check in on 23rd February to find that it has been released. Needless to say, I queued it for download and watched it yesterday. I am happy to say that the wait was well worth it.

For those who have been following the series up to episode 22, we saw the start of the battle between Takumi Fujiwara’s Eight-Six and Toshiya (GodHand) Joushima’s S2000. Episode 23 starts in the middle of the 6th run. The downhill race has turned into an battle of endurance. As with previous episodes, the ability and strengths of both drivers are slowly revealed and discussed in a series of conversations between the spectators at the sidelines and the experts from either team (Ryosuke and Ketsuke on Project D, and Hoshino [Godfoot] for team Purple Shadow).

Spoiler Warning (Skip the next paragraph to avoid):
In the course of the episode, it is revealed that Joushima has been toying with Takumi, messing with his mind and showing him fake lines to follow on the track. As we already know, Takumi has amazing concentration when trailing and has a knack for absorbing what his oponents show him and making it his own. Unfortunately, this time round, he plays into his opponents hand and fall for Joushima’s trap. Takumi becomes slower in each round that he leads due to him adapting his rival’s lines. In the 7th run, he is eventually overtaken by Joushima. This snaps Takumi out of his slump and he applies all the techniques that he’s picked up from previous races thus far (including using the gutters, and the drive-in-the-dark-without-headlights trick) to keep up with Godhand and eventually regain the lead. The battle is still very much in the air and will be concluded in episode 24.
End Spoiler

Episiode 24: Final (?)
As I was checking some resources for this post, I got another surprise. Now the title of this post was originally Initial D 4th Stage: Episode 23 Released!. However, I had to change it when I noticed episode 24 had been released hot on the heels of 23. So there you have it. Initial D - Fourth Stage - Project D - Episodes 23 and 24 sub-titled versions are out there in cyberspace just waiting to be downloaded.

The file is labeled Final, so it makes me wonder if its the final episode for the series. The previous stages of Initial D were all of relatively short runs. Stage 1 had 26 episodes while Stage 2 consisted of 13 acts. So it doesn’t really surprise me if act 24 is the last one for the fourth stage (Project D).

The download is not complete yet but I’m sure we can guess that the race will see its dramatic conclussion. However, we’ll have to wait till the end of the episode to see whether or not Takumi is able to retain his unbeaten record. Personally speaking, I have a feeling that he will win. But who knows. There might be a twist in it somewhere. What do you think?

I’ve been following the Initial D story since the first stage way back in 1998. You can say that I’m a fan of the series. While I hate the waiting, I’ve enjoyed every episode that has been released and I’m happy to say that although its into the 4th season, the title still holds some appeal to me. How about you? Have you been following the series? Do you think they’ll have a 5th season? I sure hope so :)