With self-driving electric cars replacing gas-powered vehicles, sports cars became a rarity. In this future, they are only really seen in a racing circuit known as MFG.
Kanata Livington is a 19-year-old Japanese-British racer who has moved to Japan after graduating one of the top racing schools abroad. He moved to Japan to compete in MFG in order to hopefully attract the attention of his missing father – Ken Katagiri.
Borrowing a Toyota 86 from some family friends, Kanata makes it into the top 15 of racers despite being at a disadvantage in specs with his own overwhelming driving skill.
A spin-off of legendary racing anime Initial D, MF Ghost provides more of those high speed races and dope eurobeats that fans came to love. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like MF Ghost, head on down below.
Anime Like MF Ghost
Inital D
Takumi Fujiwara is a spacey high schooler that works as a nighttime delivery guy. While his friends are car nuts, he doesn’t know a thing about them.
Yet, one night, Takumi driving his old AE86 through the mountain pass of Akina on a delivery manages to blow past one of the drivers in the Akagi Red Suns.
This infamous team of street racers has the plan to conquer every race course in Kanto and they are in disbelief when their aces are shown up by Takumi driving the same tired route he drives every night.
MF Ghost is not a sequel to Initial D, but it is very much a spin-off of it. So while you can watch MF Ghost without any knowledge of Initial D, it does leave you tons of little treats if you are an Initial D fan. The tracks, the characters, the fact that Kanata is trained by Takumi, the main character of Initial D – it’s got a lot of little references that you will enjoy more.
If Initial D and the older animation puts you off, you can still enjoy Initial D through the New Initial D movies. They aren’t as detailed, but they offer you the story of Initial D with newer animation.
Wangan Midnight
The Wangan is the longest, straightest stretch of Tokyo’s Shuto Expressway. As the straightest road in the entire country, it has made the Wangan a prime target for the street racers of Japan.
When high school senior Akio Asakura and his Fairlady Z (Z31) is challenged by local doctor Tatsuya Shima and his Porsche 964 Turbo, he invites his friend and two girls to come along for the ride in the race. Try as he might, he loses to Dr. Shima and determines he needs a better car. After finding a Fairlady Z (S30) in the junkyard, Akio fixes it up and finds it both unnaturally fast, and with a reputation for killing its previous owners.
Both MF Ghost and Wangan Midnight are fully dedicated to the amalgamation of motorsports racing with realistic cars and having a great soundtrack while doing it. However, while MF Ghost is akin to Initial D in that it is more about mountain racing, Wangan Racing is street racing on less terrain-rough motorways.
If you have a lust for motorsports anime, Wangan Midnight is one of those must-watch series.
Overtake
After a traumatic event, freelance photographer Kouya Madoka has trouble taking pictures of people, and his career is suffering for it. However, while working on a story at the Fuji International Speedway, he becomes enamored with the world of F4 racing thanks to the trials and tribulations of high school racer, Haruka Asahina.
After managing to take a picture of Asahina crying after he has to drop out of his race, Kouya dives head on into F4 racing in order to support Asahina and his small F4 racing team, Komaki Motors.
I guess someone decided that Fall 2023 was the year to bring motorsports anime back into vogue. Both MF Ghost and Overtake aired in the same season and are both about motorsports racing, following protagonists who have a sort of mysterious trauma or motivation behind their passion.
The big difference is that MF Ghost is about motorsports racing in a world where luxury cars are now a rarity and Overtake follow F4 racing. Overtake also differs in that the main character is simply a photographer who developed a passion for the sport, but isn’t actually a racer like in MF Ghost.
Capeta
After losing his mother, Taira Kappeita put on a tough front for his father, but was actually lonely.
One day, his father brings some spare parts home and builds a go-cart. The pair decide to head to a circuit and take it for a test.
There, they discover the frame is bent, yet despite this, Taira’s technique managed to not only drive it, but almost surpass the fastest cart driven by Minamoto Naomi. Seeing this, Naomi’s mother encourages him to enter the official race.
While both MF Ghost and Capeta are racing anime about young racers, they are about two different kinds of racing. Capeta is focused on go-kart racing rather than the luxury car mountain racing of MF Ghost.
Both are great racing anime, but MF Ghost does follow an already trained racer while Capeta follows a young boy who grows up in the sport.
Future GPX Cyber Formula
At 14-years-old, Kazami Hayato is the youngest driver in the Cyber Formula, a race where each car is equipped with a computer to aid in the race.
In Kazami’s car, the computer Asurada provides sophisticated cyber-navigation to him and his team Sugo. However, in this race, Kazami has to learn that being the best racer isn’t just about driving the best machine.
While Future GPX Cyber Formula is a much older racing anime from the early 90s and occasionally smacks of some Speed Racer silliness, it has a lot of the same plot points as MF Ghost.
Both series follow a teenage main character whose racing motivations can best be summed up as “please notice me, long-absent father” and they do so while driving subpar machines, but still win by driving skill alone.
That said, MF Ghost is steeped in realistic racing cars while Future GPX Cyber Formula is more about fictionalized F-series cars.
Yowamushi Pedal
Although otaku Sakamichi Onoda hoped to join the anime club to make friends in high school, he sadly finds it disbanded. To cheer himself up, he decides to bicycle to Akihabara – a 90km round trip he has been doing since elementary school on his mommy bike.
When determined, competition-minded cyclist and fellow first year student Shunsuke Imaizumi is practicing peddling up an incline at the school’s rear entrance, Onoda’s effortless skill at climbing on an inferior bike it baffles him enough to challenge him to a race.
It is this race and the fire it ignites that fuels Onoda to put his dreams of reviving the anime club on the back burner in order to join the school’s cycling club.
Both MF Ghost and Yowamushi Pedal are excellent racing anime, but about completely different kinds of racing. While MF Ghost is about racing cars, Yowamushi Pedal is about cycling.
Both series enjoy their mountain tracks and do well to make the races feel particularly intense. However, as cycling is a physical sport, Yowamushi Pedal does take a lot more time to focus on physical conditioning, but also takes a lot of time to focus on technique and equipment specs – something MF Ghost spends more time on.
Sk8 the Infinity
High school student Reki Kyan is passionate about skateboarding and board-making. While he works part-time in a board shop after school, his real interest is the underground race that happens at night.
S is a competitive skateboard race where participants are encouraged to win at all costs. Unfortunately for Reki, his most recent race came in at a loss.
The next day at school he meets new transfer student Langa Hasegawa who was a snowboarder when he lived in Canada. After a series of events that led both of them to an S race, Reki discovers that, despite having no experience on a skateboard, Langa’s experience snowboarding is unexpectedly useful in an S race.
Unlike MF Ghost that follows street racing in a world where gas-powered luxury cars are reserved only for racing, Sk8 the Infinity follows a fictional racing sport done on skateboards.
Both series capture racing intensity well with slick modern animation and a decent soundtrack. However, Sk8 the Infinity has a much large focus on the personal relationships between the characters.
Do you have more anime recommendations like MF Ghost? Let fans know in the comments section below.
