Tokyopop

Tokyopop is an American company that distribute, licence and publish manga in English. They were the first company in the United States to maintain the original right-to-left format in all of their manga releases.

Tokyopop gained the rights to translate and publish the Initial D series in 2002.

Manga
Tokyopop released 33 volumes of the Initial D manga from 2002 to 2008. A 34th volume was planned to release in April 2009, this never saw light of day however as Kodansha let their license with the company expire in early 2009. Kodansha USA would later reuse this translation of Volumes 1-33 in their own digital release.

Anime
Tokyopop created and released dubs of First, Second and Extra Stage. They created a subtitled version of Third Stage and screened it at the Big Apple Anime Fest in 2003, however it was never released.

Despite Third Stage and Fourth Stage releasing before they lost the license to the series in 2008, Tokyopop never released a dub for either stage, leaving them without a western release until Funimation released dubs for both in 2010.

Mountain Vengeance
Tokyopop commissioned the company Canopy Games to develop an Initial D branded game for them. The resulting game was called Initial D Mountain Vengeance. The game was poorly received, and has faced a lot of criticism from fans, a lot of which stems from its basis on the Tokyopop release of the series.

Trading Card Game
Tokyopop partnered with AEG to release a trading card game based on the series. Alongside purchasable starter sets and booster packs, cards were also included in certain volumes of the manga and in the DVD release of the anime. Around 231 cards were released.

Localisation Differences
When bringing Initial D to the west Tokyopop made many changes to the series to widen its appeal, these include:

Name Changes
A majority of the characters were given nicknames that were used instead of their names, with a couple of characters having their names completely changed. Unless stated otherwise, these names were present in both the manga and anime. In the manga, characters stopped being renamed after the Emperor Arc, with Kyoichi Sudo being the last character receiving a nickname, however in the anime they continue until the end of Second Stage, with Wataru and Kazumi Akiyama being the final characters to receive nicknames.

Most of the names were used in the localised versions of the Arcade Stage games, with additional nicknames being given to those who had not received one. The use of nicknames in the arcade games is likely due to the name length limit of six characters which would not fit the full names of most characters.

Censoring
As Tokyopop were trying to target Initial D to a younger audience than it was originally intended to be for, they had to censor several scenes, including all nudity present in the original.

Soundtrack
The eurobeat soundtrack present in the original Japanese version was removed, instead being replaced with a rap and hip hop soundtrack created or curated by Stu Levy, Tokyopop's CEO, under the name "DJ Milky". Their subtitled version of Third Stage was reportedly unchanged.

Translation
Tokyopop's translation of Initial D had street slang added to it to make it appeal to younger audiences. Their translation also featured many errors when it came to car terminology. Some examples of this are the extra chapters Waste Gate and Waste Gate 2 (Featured in volumes 30 and 33) which were both mistranslated as "West Gate", and the motorsport event Gymkhana being misspelled as "Jim Carner".

Visual Edits
Tokyopop made several edits to the anime, adding effects or cuts that were not present in the original version. This can be circumvented however, as the DVD release allows you to select the audio and visuals separately.

Merchandise
Tokyopop made a deal with Jada Toys to create a line of licensed diecast cars and action figures based on the Initial D property. Toys included in the line are 1/64 scale models of the vehicles from the series and 1:24 scale vehicles including the AE86 driven by Takumi. The models even came with figures of the characters.