Wangan Midnight

From dusk until dawn, street racers gather on a Tokyo highway—the Wangan Route—in search of only one thing: speed. Among them, a newcomer attracts the attention of the route's veterans after he purchases a Nissan Fairlady Z, a car infamously nicknamed The Devil Z. The newcomer ignores the warnings of Eriko Asakura, who lost her brother, Akio, in an accident involving the same vehicle. The Devil Z's new owner, who coincidentally shares the exact same name as Eriko's brother, becomes bewitched by the car's mysterious power—even after crashing twice.

Now a high school dropout who works to pay for his car repairs, Akio befriends regular street racers of the area: the legendary owner of the Porsche 911 Turbo, a car known on the streets as "Blackbird;" the genius surgeon Tatsuya Shima; and Reina Akikawa, who works as a model by day and displays unparalleled skill in her Nissan Skyline GT-R by night. Thanks to these connections, Akio manages to find the retired designer of The Devil Z's engine, a solitary man named Jun Kitami. Following his meeting with Akio, Jun resumes building overpowered yet dangerous engines. Meanwhile, the racers of the Wangan Route are caught in a desperate race against The Devil Z with no clear end in sight.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Asakura, Akio Main

Oguri, Shun Japanese

Shima, Tatsuya Main

Miki, Shinichiro Japanese

Akikawa, Reina Main

Suhou, Reiko Japanese

Kitami, Jun Supporting

Miyake, Kenta Japanese

Kuroki, Takayuki Supporting

Takase, Akimitsu Japanese

Ota, Rikako Supporting

Tanaka, Rie Japanese

Ishida, Yoshiaki Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Asakura, Eriko Supporting

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Kijima, Kouichi Supporting

Horikawa, Jin Japanese

Hiramoto, Koichi Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Tominaga, Tsuneo Director

Mima, Masafumi Sound Director

Tokumoto, Yoshinobu Episode Director

Kimura, Hiroshi Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jun 21, 2025

oipi

Recommended

The animation is gorgeous, so good that each frame during the races can be screenshotted, printed and hung up on a wall. The car models are accurate and the physics are pretty realistic as well. The intro music is a banger and keeps you wanting for more car action.

The story on the other hand, is boring, bland and repetitive, Every 3-4 episodes a new character is introduced with a similar backstory and they let their opponents win at the end of the race everytime, stating some pseudo-psychological as the reason when they let go of the gas pedal. The first 6 episodes and the last ... 2 episodes were really fun. However the same thing can't be said about the rest of the series.

The "Devil Z" having a will of it's own was a nice touch and had the potential to be expanded greatly into the story, but I have no idea why the authors decided to never elaborate on that. The same goes for BlackBird's dead friend, his sister and a lot of other plot-points which felt important to me but were deemed redundant by the people behind this anime. Another thing that irked me was the crashes. They felt really unrealistic and not to mention, infrequent. If a car is going at 200 km/hr and loses control and hits another car, the only thing that will be damaged is not going to just be the taillamp glass.

Overall, not even kidding, this show is hard to binge. It was a struggle sometimes but, in the end, it was worth it for the visuals and the soundtrack. If you're interested in car-tuning and interested in the early 2000s JDM scene, this anime is recommended for you.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jan 26, 2026

Purlox

Mixed Feelings

If you're coming in to watch another Initial D, then I'll have to disappoint you. It's very different in focus despite both being about racing. While Initial D focuses on the races almost exclusively, WM (Wangan Midnight) focuses a lot more on the characters, tunning, improving your car and making it as fast as possible. There are still races, mind you. But in WM they seem to be way more about who has the better car than about driving skills or drifting. At first, the races are very short and you barely see anything before the race is over. But after about 1/3rd of the ... way through, the races started being longer and have captivated me despite them feeling simpler than in ID.

The story is fairly simple. It's about Akio, Tatsuya and various characters racing for the title of the fastest on the Wangan. Every few episodes focus on improving a different aspect of their car(s) to make them perform better or be faster. I'm not a car enthusiast, so I can't say how accurate all of those bits were, but they were interesting and kept them going forward. Usually WM explained decently well why changing certain parts of the car helped improve the car's performance and in what way, but sometimes the anime didn't explain enough for me to understand that.

The characters were pretty simple. The main characters the show focuses were somewhat developed, letting us see a bit into their motivations and why they are doing this or what they do besides car racing. But other characters usually suddenly appear in the show, only to leave in 2-3 episodes without much character development happening or them being interesting in any way. They are pretty forgettable and not interesting.

The visuals were nice, but also had nothing special to them. You could see the races just fine, but they didn't make them more interesting with interesting angles or shots. Sometimes the composition outside of the races was quite nice, e.g. when showing the characters and their cars.

One of the main ups of the anime for me is the music. It was quite good and energetic and made watching the races more fun. There was one track that was a little overplayed, because it played almost every other episode. But even then, I quite enjoyed it and there was a decent amount of variety besides that.

Overall, the show itself is nothing flashy, but it still is a nice watch that can captivate your attention.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 19, 2025

xshiraori

Not Recommended

I saw this series on a Youtube video about Wangan-sen and Japanese street races. Heard there is an anime featuring the infamous road and just gave it a go.

First few episodes are interesting, you see that the MC's car is almost made to be a main character throughout the story, sadly for this series none of the characters get the same development as that car does. They feel like NPCs in those cheap RPG games.

The plot is very much predictable, for about 20 episodes you are going to watch a guy racing and crashing then fixing or improving his car just for everything to ... happen all over again.

It has good animation for its time and kinda gives that nostalgic vibe as I was watching Bleach during my childhood so that part was sweet. Sadly that's the only good thing I can say about this show.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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	Poll: Wangan Midnight Episode 4 Discussion Static - Nov 21, 2007	11 replies	by bakakisima »» Nov 20, 2025 8:47 AM
	Poll: Wangan Midnight Episode 3 Discussion Static - Nov 21, 2007	15 replies	by bakakisima »» Nov 20, 2025 7:44 AM
	Poll: Wangan Midnight Episode 2 Discussion Blazingluke - Jun 27, 2007	21 replies	by bakakisima »» Nov 20, 2025 7:20 AM
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	Poll: Wangan Midnight Episode 15 Discussion -Euphoric- - Mar 3, 2013	10 replies	by SpiritGT »» Sep 11, 2025 4:48 PM