Review of Wangan Midnight

Meh, this show a mixed bag. Probably wouldn't want to watch it again. If you're watching it now and are hoping that it gets better, it doesn't. You can stop watching around episode 11 since it's the same thing on repeat since that point. It had some really good moments here and there, which was the main reason why I ended up watching it until the end. Hoping it was actually going to amount to something. But it just ended up disappointing me. Of course, if you're planning to watch this show it's 99% likely that you're coming here from Initial D. Just so you know the"races" in this show are just guys riding in a straight line to see who has the faster car. So don't be surprised. It's more of a car tuning show anyway.

Every 4-5 episodes the same exact arc repeats itself. A new racer with a JDM car shows up. They race against the MC and lose. They decide to forsake their personal life in order to upgrade their car. That takes about 3 episodes. They race the MC again and fucking lose AGAIN (lmao). Then they decide that racing is for losers and quit the racing scene so that they can focus on their actual life instead of wasting all their money on cars like a fucking dumbass. The new racer never appear in the show afterwards.

Now repeat that 6-7 times and that's the whole show. Not even kidding.

Now, the first time this kind of arc happened it was actually well done, and pretty touching.
But then it just happens again and again. I thought it was doing that to subvert expectations and finally do something meaningful one of these times, but nope.

The characters... Well they sure are some of the characters of all time.
Everybody besides the mechanic with a scar is the same boring nice-guy racer, or nice-guy tuner, that acts exactly in the same way in every situation. The only thing that differentiates them is that some of them treat their cars like machines and some have this weird
sort of partner relationship(?!?!). I know it sounds weird but that's like the main dilemma for the characters in this show.

The whole fucking plot point of the MC's car being haunted or some shit goes absolutely nowhere, the same with his teacher and many other things that just end up unresolved. Leaving the feeling that the show runners just forgot what they were making.

The fact that the ending is just some random race that abruptly cuts doesn't help either. In fact it might be the main reason why I got frustrated after finishing the show, I'd be hard pressed to find a worse ending in anything ever. But it was probably due to budget or whatever so I guess you can use that excuse.

The 3D animation is pretty nice, pretty boring camera angles but whatever. The 2D animation is... Really uneexpressive and unimpressive, to be curt.

One of the few redeeming qualities is that you can actually learn a thing or two about tuning cars from this show (I think? They do throw around a lot of buzzwords).

Anyways, as always people are probably going to tell me that I just didn't get it or some shit like that. Just keep in mind that for many people this show is going to be really boring for like 80% of the time.