Let me preface this by mentioning that I am very biased. I have been a fan of the sport of Formula 1 since I was 10 years old. Seeing then the poster of an upcoming anime with a young boy in an overall with a silhouette of an F1 car in the background gave me incredible hopes to actually watch a shonen sports anime dedicated to singleseater racing. Now the anime actually does not go all the way to F1. Far from it. I didnt expect it to as the licensing would have been a nightmare for the studio to acquire and pay for. In fact most of the anime is spent in the karting days of the main character with the final third in a Formula 4 equivalent. But I appreciated nonetheless how much time was spent building the career of Capeta with all its ups and downs as it is a pretty accurate representation of a racing career. Story Our boy Capeta is 10 years old at the start of the series likes to play with toy cars and is being raised in a povertystricken household by his single parent father. One day his fathers construction job calls him to a job at a karting track where he can take home an old kart frame. He equips it with an old generator motor and invites his son to take it for a spin at the track where he impresses instantly catching up to the seniors encountering his lifelong rival Naomi for the first time. He begins to enter kart racing. In the second third of the series Capeta is 14 years old and suffering from bad finances and beaten up karts that he only manages to get average positions with. A later race in the season is his last chance to stay in the championship and rain in that race gives Capeta the opportunity to let his talent shine and attempt to score a win. The final third picks up from his impressive performance in the torrential rain which managed to get Capeta into the Formula Stella training program. Capeta struggles hard with the F4 machines but the instructors are looking at his growth rate. Mild spoiler: Animation Music and Sound All of the racing is made in CGI looking ok for its time 2005. Racing anime is one of the best use cases of CGI in my opinion as animating cars in hand drawn 2D animation always looks strange and lacks the fluid motion that race cars need to exhibit. The cars look decent the backgrounds recognizable as later even the real Fuji Speedway has been remodeled. Most of the time the cars move realistically across the asphalt. The music sounds very standard and is incredibly repetitive only a handful of scores are being used. Strangely enough I found them memorable enough that they got me pumped in the latter third. The sound design of the engines is perhaps the greatest weakness as it seems random engine noises were used which dont really match up with the revs and gears the cars would be using at certain points such as downshifts on a straight. Characters These are very standard shonen characters. The ambitious and kind hearted main character Capeta his rebellious friend and manager Nobu the nevergiveup female lead Monami the cold and calculated main rival Naomi. More interesting are the side characters and other rivals many of which are underdogs themselves until they come to shine in a battle with Capeta. I found all the characters similar and accurate to real racers. Their actions and outbursts are all some that I have seen F1 drivers do which made me fever along with them. Verdict Perhaps the best thing about this anime is just how damn well it does as a sports anime reflecting kart and single seater racing. One of the main advantages sports anime have is that the protagonist can lose and this show constantly reminds you of that as Capeta only wins a fraction of the races shown coughunlikeTakumicough. Constant curveballs and twists are shown all of them similar to things that I have seen happen in motorsports so by the races in the middle of the series you have absolutely no idea who is going to win and begin to legitimately cheer for Capeta. Despite the anime having glaringly obvious faults and on the surface being nothing more than a bogstandard shonen sports anime rewatching some of the races gets me incredibly hooked and hyped again. As mentioned in the beginning I am incredibly biased here. But if there is an accurate sports anime about the sport I love I cant help but to leave a glowing score.