is an early

motorbike A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by a handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: long-distance travel, commuting, cruisin ...

racing In sport, racing is a competition of speed, in which competitors try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically this involves traversing some distance, but it can be any other task involving speed to reach a specific go ...

manga series by

Shuichi Shigeno is a Japanese manga artist famous for creating ''Initial D''. Shigeno has also created ''Bari Bari Densetsu'', ''Dopkan'', and ''Tunnel Nuketara Sky Blue'' ("First Love in Summer") all prior to the manga that would make him famous in 1995. I ...

. It was published in ''

Weekly Shōnen Magazine is a weekly ''shōnen'' manga anthology published on Wednesdays in Japan by Kodansha, first published on March 17, 1959. The magazine is mainly read by an older audience, with a significant portion of its readership falling under the male hig ...

'' between 1983 and 1991, with its chapters are collected in 38 volumes by publisher Kodansha. In 1985, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen. Earlier parts of the story focus both on high school life as well as street racing. At first the characters are illegal street racers (Japanese: hashiriya) that race on public roads, particularly on the winding mountain roads known as tōge. Those kind of racers were called "rolling-zoku", a type of

bōsōzoku is a Japanese youth subculture associated with customized motorcycles. The first appearance of these types of biker gangs was in the 1950s. Popularity climbed throughout the 1980s and 1990s, peaking at an estimated 42,510 members in 1982. Thei ...

, and were seen as a social problem in Japan. Later parts of the story revolve around professional motorcycle racing events held on road circuits like the

All Japan Road Race Championship The is the premiere motorcycle road racing championship in Japan. It is run by the Motorcycle Federation of Japan (MFJ) (日本モーターサイクルスポーツ協会) – the Japanese affiliate of the FIM. History The MFJ was formed in 1 ...

. Two

OVA , abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV (original animation video), are Japanese animated films and series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the first part of an OVA s ...

episodes based on the manga were produced in 1986 by

Pierrot Pierrot ( , , ) is a stock character of pantomime and '' commedia dell'arte'', whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne. The name is a diminutive of ''Pi ...

, "Part I: Tsukuba Arc" and "Part II: Suzuka Arc." The episodes were later re-edited and released in theaters in August 1987 by Nippon Herald (now part of

Kadokawa Pictures Kadokawa Daiei Studio, formerly is the film division of the Japanese company the Kadokawa Corporation. It is one of the four members of the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (MPPAJ), and is therefore one of Japan's Big Four film studi ...

)

Characters

; : :A motorcycle racer. He rides a Honda CB750 as well as a Suzuki GSX-R. ; : :Gun's girlfriend. ; : :Gun's friendly rival. He rides a

Suzuki Katana The Suzuki Katana is a street motorcycle sold between 1981 and 2006 and then since 2019. It was designed in 1979–1980 by Target Design of Germany for Suzuki. The Katana name was later applied to a range of in-house styled sport touring mot ...

. ; : :Gun's best friend. He rides a Kawasaki Z400GP. ; : :The daughter of the Ichinose Racing Team president. She's in love with Hiro. Miyuki rides a Honda VT250F. ; : :Hideyoshi's sister. She lost her parents in car accident.

Media

Manga

Written and illustrated by

, ''Bari Bari Densetsu'' was serialized in Kodansha's ''

'' from March 9, 1983, to July 17, 1991. Kodansha collected its chapters in thirty-eight ''

tankōbon is the Japanese term for a book that is not part of an anthology or corpus. In modern Japanese, the term is most often used in reference to individual volumes of a manga series: most series first appear as individual chapters in a weekly or ...

'' volumes, released from October 14, 1983, to August 6, 1991.

References

External links

* * * 1983 manga 1986 anime OVAs 1989 video games Kodansha manga Japanese auto racing films Japan-exclusive video games Motorcycle video games Motorsports in anime and manga School life in anime and manga Taito games TurboGrafx-16 games TurboGrafx-16-only games Winner of Kodansha Manga Award (Shōnen) Shōnen manga Pierrot (company) Video games developed in Japan {{manga-stub