Final film in trilogy featuring new cast debuts in Japan on February 6

The staff of Shin Gekijō-ban Initial D Legend 3 -Mugen- (New Initial D the Movie Legend 3: Half Awake, Half Asleep) — the third and final film in the new Initial D film trilogy — announced on Thursday that the film will premiere in Japan on February 6. The staff also unveiled the first key visual for the film (seen below).

The cast from the first film will return, with Mamoru Miyano as Takumi Fujiwara, Daisuke Ono as Ryōsuke Takahashi, Yūichi Nakamura as Keisuke Takahashi, Maaya Uchida as Natsuki Mogi, Minoru Shiraishi as Itsuki Takeuchi, Junichi Suwabe as Takeshi Nakazato, and Hiroaki Hirata as Bunta Fujiwara. SANZIGEN Animation Studio and LIDEN FILMS will animate the film, and Shochiku will distribute it. Returning staff include: Masamitsu Hidaka as chief director, Tomohito Naka as director, Mayori Sekijima as scriptwriter, Koji Haneda as character designer, and Akio Dobashi as composer.

The first film in the new film trilogy, Shin Gekijō-ban Initial D Legend 1 -Kakusei- (New Initial D the Movie Legend 1: Awakening), opened in Japan in August 2014. The second film, Shin Gekijō-ban Initial D Legend 2 -Tōsō- (New Initial D the Movie Legend 2: Racer), opened on May 23. The second film will ship on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in Japan on November 4.

The film trilogy retells the beginning of the story from Shuuichi Shigeno's original car-racing manga. High school student Takumi Fujiwara works as a gas station attendant during the day and a delivery boy for his father's tofu shop during late nights. Little does he know that his precise driving skills and his father's modified Toyota Sprinter AE86 Trueno make him the best amateur road racer on Mt. Akina's highway. Because of this, racing groups from all over the Gunma prefecture issue challenges to Takumi to see if he really has what it takes to be a road legend.

Shigeno's original manga follows Takumi Fujiwara, a high school boy with a natural talent for driving, in his racing pursuits on the public highways. The manga debuted in Kodansha's Young Magazine in 1995, and Shigeno ended the manga in July 2013. The series has more than 48 million copies in circulation.

The manga inspired several television anime series (including the Fifth Stage that ran in 2012), a live-action film, several original video anime projects, and a successful game line. The manga's final battles have also adapted into an anime series called Final Stage .

Source: MoCa News