Initial D’s trilogy of films will be having its first film “New Theatrical Movie Initial D Legend 1: Awakening” released with an English dub under Sentai Filmworks December slate. A Blu-ray Disc and DVD combo pack will also be released by the company on December 15.
The trilogy films was first released in Japan starting on August 14 for the first film. Then for the second and third film, they were released in May 2015 and February 2016.
It was in July that Sentai Filmworks officially announced the licensing of the films “New Theatrical Movie Initial D Legend 1: Awakening”, “New Theatrical Movie Initial D Legend 2: Racer” and “New Theatrical Movie Initial D Legend 3: Dream.”
The story of the films is a retelling of the car-racing manga by Shuuichi Shigeno and stars a high school student Takumi Fujiwara. He works two jobs as a gas station attendant and a delivery boy for his father’s tofu shop.
Unknown to him is that in working late night shifts at his father’s shop and making deliveries with the family car, an aging but modified Toyota Sprinter Truen, he had ended up developing precise driving schools. This results in him gaining the attention of the various racing groups in the Gunma prefecture and being challenged to a race to see Takumi’s potential towards becoming a road legend.
The cast for the main characters include Takumi being voiced by Mamoru Miyano, the voice of Ichirouhiko in “Bakemono no Ko.” Daisuke Ono, who played as Sei Handa in the slice of life series, “Barakamon”, played as Ryousuke Takahashi for the films.
The voice behind character Keisuke Takahashi was Yuuichi Nakamura, recognized for having played as Muramasa in shounen series, “Bleach.” Lastly, playing as Takumi’s father Bunta Fujiwara was Junichi Sawabe.
For the staff they include:
Studio: SANZIGEN Animation Studio and LIDEN FILMS
Chief Director: Masamitsu Hidaka
Director: Tomohito Naka
Scriptwriter: Mayori Sekijima
Character Designer: Koji Haneda
Composer: Akio Dobashi
“Initial D” is sports racing manga written and illustrated by Shuichi Shigeno and was serialized in 1995 by Young Magazine. Kodansha then collected the chapters into 48 volumes and then gained an English-language distribution in North America by Tokyopop from 2002 to 2009.
From 1998 to 2008 then 2012 and 2014, studios OB Studio Comet, Studio Gallop, Pastel, A.C.G.T and SynergySP adapted the series into several anime series and OVAs. Then in 2005 and 2014-2016, two films were released.
Source: AnimeNewsNetwork