Takumi's first race stops being about winning the moment you see how the animators draw it, every downshift, every apex, every bead of sweat on the steering wheel rendered with the precision of someone who actually understands what's happening on that mountain. The hand-drawn sequences move like live-action racing footage, not cartoon cars. It's a love letter to the original that replaces nostalgia with technical mastery, but it ditches the Eurobeat for something forgettable, which is a wound that never quite heals for anyone who lived through the series the first time.

Takumi Fujiwara has no interest in cars or racing, unlike his friend Itsuki Takeuchi, who is obsessed with both. Before dawn he makes tofu deliveries for his father in an old AE86, and those runs up and down Mount Akina have taught him every hairpin, brake point and turn better than anyone. One foggy morning, a black and white AE86 blows past Keisuke Takahashi's Mazda RX7 on the mountain. Keisuke comes to believe he has seen the ghost of a racer who died there. To draw this phantom out and settle the score, he brings the Akagi Red Suns to challenge the local Akina Speed Stars to an exchange race. The Speed Stars accept, then realize they are hopelessly outmatched. Their only hope is to recruit the driver of the panda-colored AE86. Koichiro of the Speed Stars later learns that the mystery driver is his own co-worker, Takumi. With some coercion, Takumi heads up Mount Akina to defend the pride of Akina's racers. The film is the first of a three-part theatrical remake of Initial D First Stage, a street racing sports drama.