If there was ever a single piece of homegrown media responsible for making drift racing popular outside of Japan, it was Initial D. It’s a Japanese street racing manga by Shuichi Shigeno that was serialized from 1995 to 2013. The manga was adapted into an eleven part anime series, beginning with First Stage in 1998 and ending with Final Stage in 2014. The series also spawned several video games, the most important being a series of arcade games by SEGA. There are also several live-action movies.

Initial D famously takes place around Mount Haruna and Maebashi in Gunma Prefecture. Other real-world togues and routes from the anime, manga, and games are from all across Japan.