Nowadays, there is a manga or anime about pretty much everything. Scuba diving, camping, biking…so why not have a series about drifting? The brand-new manga series Dricam!!, available in English on the new Manga Plus app, is all about a college auto club that does drifting as a sport. More specifically, it focuses on a college girl named Rin Todoroki, who gets mixed up with this club.
Rin’s father owns an automobile shop that is famous among drifters; so naturally, Rin knows how to handle a car and has a special talent for drifting, of all things. At the beginning of the manga, the members of the auto club see Rin’s insane driving skills and ask her to join. The only problem is…Rin doesn’t realize her own driving ability and actually hates drifting. When the club approaches her, she vehemently refuses because she wants a “comfy and normal” campus life. As the story goes on, the auto club keeps insisting, and Rin ends up in these ridiculous drifting or racing situations.
Before I go on any further, I want to point out the obvious: drifting on public streets is illegal in real-life Japan – and basically everywhere. It’s only legal if you go to a special drifting track that meets specific requirements (insurance regulations, etc.) or if you are a professional driver participating in a drifting event. So far, the manga, however, never really states if street drifting is illegal in their reality. I mean, they have a club dedicated to it, there are supposedly drifting competitions for students, and they refer to it as a sport, so maybe it isn’t. Also, no one in the manga (even Rin’s parents) have said, “You really shouldn’t drift since it’s illegal.”
Legal or not, I am really enjoying Dricam’s story so far. I admit that some parts of it are a little typical, though. A student not wanting to join a club or having an unknown talent is pretty common in manga or anime. And its comedy is also your standard slapstick, over-the-top humor you see in a lot series. But I always fall for that stuff, so it’s okay.
And, overall, the manga has enough unique content to make it enjoyable and fresh. It’s about drifting after all, which you don’t see every day. The car scenes are very entertaining. Drifting isn’t some mundane race – it’s people skidding down mountain roads on the verge of control, risking their lives just to feel a thrill. The manga also teaches you about the science of drifting and cars, which I find very interesting even though I’m not a motorhead by any means.
On top of all this, Rin is an interesting character. Normally, as a reader, you want the hesitant character to join a club. But in this case, I was kind of conflicted. When Rin refuses to join, she is actually making a smart decision, considering drifting is extremely dangerous (and maybe illegal). But at the same time, you want her to join because otherwise they’re wouldn’t be much of a story. Plus, in a weird way, joining the drifting club may help her open up and experience new things.
As of right now, my biggest complaint about the manga is the art. But before I get in the bad, I want to discuss the good. Dricam!! is a vertical scrolling manga. In other words, it’s designed to be read on a smartphone, where you can read entire pages just by swiping down. There’s no need to zoom in on small text like when you’re reading a horizontal manga digitally. As someone who likes to read on their phone (especially when I am lying in bed) and has terrible eyesight, this is amazing. I hope more manga like this is created in the future. Oh, did I mention that art is completely in color? It’s definitely a nice touch.
Now let’s get to the bad. Overall, the art isn’t awful or anything like that. It’s just sometimes the manga looks fuzzy, and I know it’s not an internet problem on my end. It’s possible that the fuzziness is a formatting issue with the app and not the art itself; maybe my phone makes the pages more stretched out than the original version. Besides that, the art is pretty good. Yu Chiba is really good at drawing cars – like really good – and also draws nice scenery or foliage. Plus, the characters’ reactions and chibi moments make me laugh.
But despite some of the issues with the art and the kind-of-typical premise, I am really enjoying this manga so far. I want to see what happens with Rin and if she eventually embraces drifting. If you are fan of Initial D or The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but want something a little more lighthearted, you’ll probably like the Dricam!! manga. Just get past the first few chapters, and it starts to get really good.
But if you’re into drifting, please keep your hobby designated to a special drifting track. “But Officer, they did it in a manga…” probably isn’t a good excuse.