VROOM, MOTHERFUCKER. VROOOOOOOOOOOM!!! Motorcycles are so fucking cool, dude. Seeing these ones animated so well when they might be obnoxious CG blobs today makes me happy. The story was pretty basic, and interesting to think about in connection to the mangaka's later work, Initial D. I think Initial D First Stage is damn near perfectly paced with great stakes because it all comes down to Takumi's relationships with the 86 and his rivalry with well-defined opponents. Bari Bari Densetsu doesn't exactly have that. It feels a lot slower when they're not racing and the original author's portrayal of women he was clearly not too interested in writingis even thinner here than in Initial D. The movie stops dead for weird fan service scenes featuring the pink-haired girl (pretty cute design within this style, but it's not my favorite style), and one of those scenes is an attempted rape at knife-point. Where the rapist is even—I shudder to write this—attempted to be redeemed as a person immediately afterward. That doesn't work.

But, even then, the fact that the racing is mostly semi-pro here takes a bit away from the Initial D formula, because there's no defined antagonistic opposition. The dynamic is that the two main rival characters have a love-hate relationship and they work together to win a qualifying race. That means there's no inter-race commentary or "I have to beat him" or psychoanalyzing the action. The race starts, it looks good, and it's over without you getting really invested in it. Of course, I think they realized this when it was initially being written because they added some crashes to make things more interesting.

I understand there's probably more street racing in the manga, and I understand this is actually a summary of a 2-episode OVA, so there's more for people who want more. But I enjoyed the art a bunch and was otherwise left a bit wanting by it.