Formula 4 anime “Overtake!” announced

Formula 4 is getting the anime treatment. On Friday, Kadokawa Corporation and studio TROYCA announced the original anime Overtake!, which will follow a fictionalised F4 Japanese Championship. The GT Association, who organises Super GT and Japanese Formula 4, is also involved with the project. A release date was not immediately announced.

The F4 Japanese Championship was founded by the GT Association in 2014, and all of its races are held as support events to Super GT.

The series stars Anan Furuya as Haruka Asahina, a high school student who competes in F4 for Komaki Motors and has a part-time job as a newspaper delivery boy. Opposite Furuya will be Katsuyuki Konishi as Kōya Madoka, a freelance photographer who hopes to turn around his struggling career. The two cross paths when Kōya attends a Super GT race at Fuji Speedway in which Haruka is participating, and the former sees it as an opportunity to partner up to pursue their dreams.

Haruka will be Furuya’s first time voicing a main character in an anime. Most of his voice roles had been in supporting capacities like Dawn of the Witch, Futsal Boys!!!!!, and even background characters in the Japanese dub of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. His biggest role prior to Overtake! was Jutta Qasim, the protagonist of the mobile game Mobile Suit Gundam U.C. ENGAGE.

Konishi is a major personality in the anime scene, with his most popular characters including Kamina in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and Laxus Dreyar in Fairy Tail. He has also appeared in beloved shows like Bleach, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and One Punch Man. Overtake! will be Konishi’s second sports role in the past year after the ongoing football series Blue Lock.

The show will be directed by Ei Aoki, who was director for Fate/Zero and Aldnoah.Zero with his most recent work being Id:Invaded in 2020. TROYCA, behind series like Aldnoah.Zero and Bloom Into You, had never worked on a sports anime until Overtake!. Co-founded by Aoki in 2013, the studio intends to use the show to celebrate its tenth anniversary, especially as most of TROYCA’s staff from its début with Aldnoah.Zero has returned for Overtake!.

“The ten years went by in the blink of an eye, but in the end, a lot of coincidences happened and the staff who were close to me have gathered again,” commented TROYCA producer Toshiyuki Nagano.

Kadokawa’s Sayaka Ueda added, “I also really like Aldnoah.Zero. I think that you won’t regret watching (this either).”

Auto racing is a fairly niche subgenre of sports anime and manga, with Inital D and Speed Racer being popular but to the point where they are virtually the only properties in said group that most could quickly name. Unlike those, Overtake! intends to focus on organised and contemporary motorsport, a formula that was notably used by Capeta about karting and Formula 3.

Overtake! is the second anime announced in the past six months to follow professional racing after HIGHSPEED Etoile, which will be a futuristic take on the sport but is being produced in partnership with Super Formula. An anime adaptation of the street racing manga MF Ghost, a sequel to Initial D, was also revealed in early January.

Overtake! teaser trailer