Madoka Koya is a professional freelance photographer, but a certain traumatic event led to him becoming unable to take photos of people.
During one seemingly unassuming assignment, he is tasked to cover a race of Super GT, one of Japan's top racing series. Completely new to the racing scene, circumstances lead him to learn more about the realities of motorsports, and he eventually meets Haruka Asahina, a young driver in Formula 4, racing under a team called Komaki Motors, and watches Haruka's race unfold dramatically.
Spurred on by his newfound curiosity in motorsports, and impressed by the talent and dedication demonstrated by Haruka, Koya overcomes his trauma of portraiture, and becomes so enthused with the idea of supporting Haruka and Komaki Motors, that he pledges support right then and there.
But what will it take for an overly enthusiastic photographer still making ends meet to support a budding race car driver in a team with more potential than they have financials?
Overtake! is a 2023 original Gaming and Sports anime produced by Kadokawa Corporation and animated by Troyca. Ei Aoki is the director and Ayumi Sekine is the writer. In Japan, it aired in various TV stations. Crunchyroll streams it in North America with Ani-One for most of the Asia-Pacific (except Oceania).
Ex-Formula One driver/journalist Naoki Hattori assisted Troyca by ensuring the depictions of F4 racing are done as realistic as possible.
The anime contains examples of the following tropes:
- Artistic License – Sports: Toru Asahina's car catching fire after his crash isn't that much of a stretch. What is a stretch is that the fire was allowed to grow to the point where it engulfed the entire car and burned Toru to death, without anyone making any attempt to stop it. In a real race, marshals would have been on the scene with fire extinguishers in a matter of seconds.
- Not that it means fire is not a danger. When Romain Grosjean crashed, marshals' extinguishers were able to slow down the fire, which enabled Grosjean to escape, extracting his foot from a trapped shoe. The car entirely burnt afterwards.
- Audience Surrogate: Koya jumps into the world of F4 without knowing anything about it, or motorsport in general, and spends the early episodes constantly having to have things explained to him, which helps inform any viewers who aren't familiar with motorsport either.
- Brick Joke: In Episode 8, Haruka arrives at Koya's apartment to check on him and finds the door unlocked (Koya himself isn't home). In Episode 10, Koya is busily practicing his photography when Sae walks in, bemused, and points out that he forgot to lock the door again.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Alice has an obvious crush on Satsuki but is too flustered around him to ever actually confess to it - a situation not helped by Satsuki's many female groupies.
- Chekhov's Army: The local business owners that Kouya tries to persuade to sponsor Komaki Motors in Episode 2 eventually return in Episode 11, having changed their minds after watching Haruka's near miss in the previous race, and collectively stump up enough cash to allow the team to thoroughly overhaul the car and allow Haruka to win.
- Close on Title: Every episode ends with the title card except Episode 9 and (oddly) the final episode, which display their title cards halfway through.
- Cool Car: Several, as expected for a motorsports show:
- The racing series Haruka participates in is Formula 4 or F4 whose cars may be similar looking to but are several leagues below Formula 1 in terms of performance. They are still dedicated racing machines that take a lot more skill to drive than they look.
- The Super GT cars for which F4 is just a feature series. The cars may resemble road-going sports cars such as the Toyota GR Supra and Honda NSX on the outside, but underneath are monstrous, non-road legal race machines several times faster than F4.
- Noritsune Ena, owner of Belsorriso, drives a Lancia Stratos as his personal car. In "Enthusiasm and Spirit", we also see several F4 chassis and two Super GT-spec Toyota GR Supras in the Belsorriso headquarters.
- Didn't Think This Through: At the end of "The Man Who Races", Koya pledges sponsorship to Komaki Motors, but is very quickly brought back to reality come the next episode when Haruka estimates their expenses incurred in racing racking up to 11 million yen per year, while Koya has yet to even fully pay off his own camera.
- Failure-to-Save Murder: Played with. While it's clear that there's absolutely nothing Kouya could have done to save Momo from the tsunami that killed her, that still hasn't stopped her family among others from blaming him, claiming that if he had time to take a photo of her, he had time to save her. Even Kouya himself feels guilty about failing to save her, and the trauma of witnessing her death left him unable to take pictures of people for twelve years.
- Finale Title Drop: The final episode is named "Overtake!" Oddly for a series that usually goes with Close on Title, though, the title card is shown midway through.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: With Satsuki injured and his replacement driver struggling, Belsorriso approach Haruka and offer to sign him. After two episodes of deliberation, Haruka refuses, as he still has unfinished business at Komaki Motors (namely, winning a race for them as his father did).
- Hope Spot: "Suzuka, rain" has two in a row. First, the rain eases off, making it look as though Haruka's gamble for slick tires will work out, only for the rain to suddenly turn heavier than ever. Then, after nearly spinning off at 130R, Haruka throws in the towel, backs off, and pulls into the pits to retire. Disaster averted? For Haruka, yes... but not for Satsuki.
- How We Got Here: Episode 8 begins with Haruka testing for Belsorriso, then flashes back to where Episode 7 left off to explain how this came about.
- Infinite Supplies: Horribly subverted, and made very clear early on that Komaki Motors cannot harness Haruka's talent as much as they want to because expenses in racing consumables such as tires will rack up very quickly just for them to do practice sessions. Belsorriso, on the other hand, have no such problems, and therefore very consistently manage to bag wins and podiums. It's not limited to tires, either: Komaki have been using the same second-hand chassis ever since they entered F4, while Ena offhandedly mentions that it was cheaper for him to buy an entirely new chassis than repair Satsuki's after his crash.
- Opposing Sports Team: Subverted with Belsorriso. Toshiki's initial antagonism towards Komaki sets them up as this, but in fact they're every bit as friendly and sportsmanlike as Komaki, helped by the fact that their owner is a former work colleague of Komaki's owner, and they get almost as much screentime and character development as Komaki themselves. Even Toshiki is antagonistic purely because he's projecting his frustrations onto Haruka, rather than any actual malice, and he softens up by the finale.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The trauma Koya faced while on assignment up in the northern part of Japan prior to a tsunami is based on the 2011 earthquake/tsunami at Fukushima.
- Shout-Out: There's a nod to another formula / open-wheel racing anime, Future GPX Cyber Formula, with the announcer for the F4 Japanese Championship races being voiced by Jun'ichi Kanemaru, who played that franchise's protagonist, Hayato Kazami. Said announcer not only shares hair and eye color with Kazami, but also wears a shirt sporting the blue, white and red color scheme of Sugo Asurada, Kazami's constructor team. In "Chariots of Fire", he can even be spotted snacking on a bag of "Cyber Chips".
- Shown Their Work: Ex-F1 driver Naoki Hattori advised the staff on how to portray F4 realistically, and it shows, even in "The Man Who Races" alone:
- F4 is explained as similar looking to, but very different from F1, as it is in real life: F4 racing series are organized regionally, the cars far slower but far more even in performance than F1, and running and participation costs are far more accessible for a motorsports series relatively speaking, allowing teams like Komaki Motors to participate despite not being very well off financially.
- Fuji Speedway is a real track, and the corner names and how they look like are all true to life. The same goes for Sportsland Sugo in "Enthusiasm and Spirit", Twin Ring Motegi in "How Many Kilometers to the Winner's Podium?", and Suzuka Circuit in "Suzuka, rain".
- Participating in FIA officially sanctioned motorsports series does require a racing license, although in real life, F1 requires an International Grade A License, not B.
- All the motorsports rules, procedures, and techniques explained in the race in "The Man Who Races" are true-to-life. The Turn 1, Lap 1 yellow flag that occurs due to an accident is common in real life racing due to the compact grid and overtaking opportunities at race start. Weaving to retain heat within tires for grip is a very common maneuver during the formation lap and safety car periods.
- The brands and sponsors featured throughout "The Man Who Races" are all very real, prominent names showing up in real life racing.
- Koya correctly explains to Haruka that the photo of Nguyễn Văn Lém being executed during the Vietnam War for allegedly targeting Lt. Col. Colonel Nguyen Tuan brought a lot of international criticism against Nguyễn Ngọc Loan after Eddie Adams took a photograph of it. At the time, Lém was arrested while in civilian clothes and was not carrying weapons. Koya also mentions that Adams did not want credit for the photo and that he wished he documented Lém's actions of attacking Tuan and his family.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- In the F4 feature race in "The Man Who Races", Haruka pushes his car very hard to overtake, but blows out his tires and ends up retiring from the race. Said tires were the same worn-out set he had used during qualifying.
- Haruka may be an excellent driver, but because Komaki Motors has only ever run one car, he's had zero practice at being a teammate, let alone the second driver. When he tests for Belsorriso, he lets Toshiki slipstream him and then overtake him as agreed, but then hounds him in an attempt to get back past until Toshiki ends up running wide. Bear in mind this is a test session, with absolutely nothing on the line. Haruka genuinely doesn't understand that he's done anything wrong until Toshiki chews him out for it.
- Wham Episode: Satsuki Harunaga gets into a crash due to heavy rain in "Suzuka, rain". Madoka tries to get a snapshot, but he's reminded of the girl who died in a tsunami when he took the photo for the press.
