MF Ghost 2nd Season

Is MF Ghost Season 2 Better Than Season 1? Sure. Is it better than Initial D? Not even close. Is it bad? Not in my opinion, but I feel I should lay out the problems and let you be the judge. Since MF Ghost is the successor to Initial D, it makes sense to compare the two. Initial D is one of my all-time favorite anime, and it sets a high bar. Let’s break this down, starting with the negatives before moving to the positives. (Note: It’s far easier to explain this anime’s faults than its strengths, so expect more detail in the negatives.) The Negatives:Where’s the Maturity?: One thing that made Initial D stand out was its raw, mature vibe, even as a PG-13 show. It didn’t shy away from edgy humor, innuendos, or showing characters doing things like smoking or cracking jokes about relationships. This gritty realism made the world feel grounded. You believed these were real teens and adults living their lives, making dumb decisions, and thriving in a world of street racing. MF Ghost? It feels like it’s aimed at 8-year-olds who just watched Skibidi Toilet. Its attempts at “mature” humor are embarrassing. You have the MFG girls parading in tight outfits, which feels more stupid than an actual addition to the story since they are only there for fan service. Then there’s a driver whose entire personality revolves around dating minors—yes, you read that right. It’s creepy, unnecessary, and gross. Instead of enhancing the story, these moments derail it and distract from the racing, which should be the focus of this anime. Flat Characters, Flat Story: Let’s talk about Kanata. He’s supposed to be the next Takumi Fujiwara, but he’s boring. Unlike Takumi, who started as an uninterested delivery boy and grew through grit and unexpected challenges, Kanata starts off as a pro. Why? Because Takumi trained him off-screen. That’s it. He’s overpowered from the start, and the only thing holding him back is his car. The writers skipped character development entirely, slapping on a generic “driving school backstory” instead of giving him a meaningful arc to gain his own experiences. Takumi was compelling because he was human. He didn’t care about racing initially—it was something he got dragged into. Watching him grow as a driver and person was half the fun. Kanata, on the other hand, feels like he’s just there to win races, making his journey feel empty. The supporting cast doesn’t fare any better. Most of the characters are bland cardboard cutouts without unique personalities or motivations. Initial D’s rivals stood out—Ryosuke was the calm tactician, Keisuke had fiery determination, and even side characters brought unique energy to their races. In MF Ghost, rival drivers barely register; they’re just there to lose to Kanata in increasingly predictable ways. And the supporting cast? The girls exist solely to cheer Kanata on or serve as eye candy. They have no depth, no personality, and no real purpose. You realize quickly that most of these characters are boring, shallow, and forgettable. Racing Is Heavily Drawn Out: I touched on this in my Season 1 review, but it bears repeating. Each race in MF Ghost drags on endlessly. Whether it’s a qualification lap, a test lap, or a full race, you’re looking at anywhere from 2 to 6 episodes per race. Compare that to Initial D, where most races wrapped up in 1–3 episodes. The pacing in MF Ghost is atrocious. Scenes are bloated with filler, stretching races unnecessarily. While some argue the different style of racing justifies this, I think it’s more about producers milking the source material. More episodes = more seasons = more money. Here’s how episodes break down: 40%: Filler racing where nothing happens. 20%: Meaningful racing where a racer’s position changes. 40%: Announcers providing pointless commentary or MFG Girls updating the leaderboard while tossing out random, unneeded facts about themselves (usually sexual or date-related). The focus on fan service over racing is frustrating for a car racing anime. The Racing Is Super Unrealistic: Kanata’s Toyota GR86 is supposedly “modified” to make it competitive, but the anime doesn’t bother explaining these modifications in detail. There’s vague talk about “suspension changes,” but no real details. Later (tiny spoiler), a turbo upgrade gives it 100 extra horsepower, but even then, it’s absurd to believe this car can keep up with Ferraris or Lamborghinis, which have far superior horsepower, advanced ABS systems, and expert drivers. In Initial D, when Bunta upgraded Takumi’s AE86, he explained the changes (such as changing the engine in the AE86), grounding the story in a sense of realism. MF Ghost skips all of that and asks us to believe a GR86 with minimal horsepower can magically compete with modern supercars. Adding to this is the unrealistic depiction of the cars. Tight corners at ~60mph (~90kph) in the rain without sliding? Even with good tires, that’s impossible. Lastly, the Romance: The romance is awful. Ren, the supposed love interest, is a bland, basic tsundere stereotype. Her entire personality revolves around being jealous while secretly wanting Kanata. Every scene with her feels like filler, especially when her inner monologues interrupt the races. Even Initial D handled romance better. Mogi and Takumi’s relationship took a backseat to the racing, which was the right call. Nobody watches these shows for romance, so why waste time on half-baked love stories? The Positives: Better Than Season 1: This season is a significant improvement over the first. The races in the latter half of the season are much better and feel closer to the latter seasons of Initial D (Stage 5 and Final Stage). While I still dislike the announcers, romance, and Ogata's worries, these issues are less frequent in the latter half of the season. Eurobeat: The Eurobeat is solid—nothing more, nothing less. Some tracks are from Initial D, while others are new. The older tracks are still fantastic, and the newer ones, though less memorable, are decent. Character Improvements: The characters have improved somewhat since Season 1. Kanata feels more notable and realistic, particularly in the latter portion of Season 2, where his aggressive driving contrasts nicely with his kind demeanor outside of races. Even Ogata is more tolerable this season, showing some character growth and understanding of the GR86’s faults and has a desire to actually rectify them. 7/10 – Definitely watchable, but you’re better off re-watching Initial D, at-least in my opinion. A good step up from MF Ghost Season 1, but still not beating any of the Initial D Stages.

My scores are reflective of my enjoyment of shows, not necessarily a neutral observation on the quality of various aspects. That being said, the art direction, stylistic choice of car textures/their animations and the overly heavy reliance on nostalgia regarding Eurobeat, are all middling to low quality, it looks cheap. That's before the several boring Gary Stu characters and the unnecessary/boring B-plots. Season 2 of Initial D's successor show continues to be a continuation of the failed formula of the first season, its main issue being that it's a sanctioned street race with full lineups of cars, instead of 1 vs 1 street racing, meaning thefocus is all over the place and you get reactions from the ENTIRE CAST (racers, commentators, audience, race girls, mechanic, support staff, support staff of other racers, organizers, live-in family members and more) instead of a couple of people, regarding what's happening. The problem here is that the audience only has so much attention to spend on something and the more characters you have, the more thin its spread. There are no meaningful struggles, only the handicaps that the protagonist is saddled with, which would be fine if it wasn't for the fact that someone WOULD sponsor him based on his sheer skill, on his first performance (it may be literal sponsors are not allowed and that it's a story point, but he should have no trouble getting significant upgrades). Add to that the increasingly awkward racing girls and the way they're focused on/portrayed and you have a show that you'll be skipping through just to see if something interesting happens. The short answer is that our protagonist overcomes nothing (he already started at 100, there's no growth beyond him learning how wonderful it is to eat cheap Japanese snacks and offal) and the pace is predictable, full of forced and unfun drama. Even the most terrible isekai slop shows are fun, have an interesting idea or at least *do* something with their characters, but all MFG has is contrived tension. Finally its major hangup is that it's not distinct enough from Initial D to be judged solely on its own merits. There are so many references to Fujiwara and the Trueno (86) and they are so constant, that MFG lives in the shadow of its predecessor. That means that it can't be judged by the audience, as its own thing. What a stinker.

Have you ever imagined yourself staring at a freshly painted wall, watching the paint slowly dry, and occasionally getting disturbed by the interesting world outside? If not, then you can just watch MF Ghost Season 2. It offers a similarly tedious experience. The race itself was promising, but in the end it turned out badly. The long racing sequences effectively reduce the enjoyment of watching all the participants' actions. Sure, they are interrupted from time to time by a good-looking moment with eurobeat playing in the background, but one or two brief epic moments are definitely not enough to save the whole episode. Speaking of the participants'actions, one important problem with the characters in this anime is their colorless personalities and monotonous dialogue. The repetition of the same sentiment, expressed in slightly different ways by numerous competitors at similar points in the race, became increasingly irritating over several episodes, especially when spoken by characters who lacked distinct personalities. The dialogue became so irritating that I eventually lost interest in the race itself. Expert commentary on the cars, driving techniques, and technical aspects offered a glimmer of hope, but, as with the race presentation, these moments were insufficient to offset the annoying dialogue. Combined with a boring race, this gives a rather negative mix. It's puzzling, because the race itself had potential, and similar dialogue issues weren't as bothersome in the first season. The plot follows the typical MF Ghost formula: races, bizarre moments involving "angels," and even stranger slice-of-life scenes that feel completely detached from reality. While some might say it's similar to MF Ghost S1, the first season at least delivered more engaging races. Ironically, while these bizarre moments were annoying in Season 1, they almost felt like a relief in Season 2, given the tedium of the racing sequences. Visually, Season 2 is on par with Season 1, perhaps with slightly more complex effects due to the weather changes during the races. The music is also consistent, with the same level of eurobeat intensity and a great selection of tracks. I consider MF Ghost Season 2 a definite downgrade from the first season. While it might offer some entertainment if you can overlook its flaws, I personally can't recommend it. It has completely dampened my interest in future seasons. This is disappointing, because the Lake Ashinoko GT arc initially seemed promising and had the potential for a strong season.

MF Ghost Season 2 is still a good watch and has very exciting races. Please read all the sections to understand why I think it's worth watching. Story structure: Now usually this wouldn't even be important because this is a racing anime and you wanna watch cars race, that's it. But MF Ghost has established a very formulaic story structure which I wanna inform everyone of. This is supposed to be a race between 15 drivers. Yet there will only ever be focus on 5 drivers max, the main character being one of them. This severely limits the type of races you see. The author hasquite a bias towards Japanese cars (wow who would have thought), so many competitors in non Japanese cars are just straight up trash. It's a pretty harsh way of saying it but that's the truth. There's an Audi, a BMW, a Mercedes, a Lamborghini, a Ferrari, a Lotus, and 3 whole Porsches. Yet 90% of these guys end up in low rankings. Like there's legit one good Porsche driver whom the Ferrari guy will never be able to catch up to and that's it. Every other car on that list is merely a stepping stone for our main character to show how good he is. "Look at the superior driving technique" "Look at that high speed cornering" "Look at how daredevil he is". We have seen this for 6 seasons in Initial D already and they are sticking to this same thing with the new character as well. The only redeeming thing is that they are introducing some characters who actually have skills to keep up and challenge the main character. And those characters actually have good enough driving skills that they can compete with each other (without involvement of the main character) and it actually is what makes for a super fun race. This is why I say that this race is basically just between 5 drivers. 15 is just to pad the numbers. Many are just there to be overtaken. Music: Eurobeat is Eurobeat. They got good music as usual and my Playlist just gets bigger. Animation: Seen a lot of people here complaining about unrealistic animation. For the most part the animations were perfectly fine. In fact I think they did an amazing job illustrating the cars during races, especially with so many close up shots. The cars still looks like amazing depictions of modern hyper cars and honestly it almost feels like watching the real things. Some movements for a couple of seconds can be janky that's it. The sounds are also spot on. You can tell if a Ferrari is on the scene or if it's a BMW based on the engine sound alone which shows their consistent dedication. Character designs: I'm not a fan tbh. Idk who these designs appeal to but not to me for sure. Fanservice: The racing cheerleaders still exist and they're still sexualised underaged or barely of age girls. They kinda toned it down a bit but I would rather they never mentioned it ever again. Overall experience: I think season 2 is still worth watching. If you watched season 1 you are invested already and the races are still pretty high quality. They showcase the differences in cars that are in focus and comment a lot on driving techniques. Even though many times it's just how good the main character is, there are definitely real driving techniques being showcased which are pretty fun to watch. (7.8/10) Would recommend watching.

Merchandise

Links may contain affiliate references

Studio

Producers

Themes