Forza Horizon 6’s best Initial D reference is a cup of water

Thanks to its Japanese setting, Forza Horizon 6 is denser with Easter eggs and references to pop culture and car culture than any previous game in the series. Perhaps the simplest and most resonant of the lot comes in a surprising form: a cup of water.

Initial D looms pretty large over Forza Horizon 6. The manga, anime, and game series has shaped so much of our understanding of Japanese street racing, drifting, and tuner culture — especially of Touge racing on hairpin-riddled mountain roads. It also connects directly to real locations in Japan with real racing scenes, like Mount Haruna (Mount Akina in Initial D, home of protagonist Takumi Fujiwara and the Akina Speed Stars). There’s no way Playground Games could not represent it in the game.

So, yes, as eagle-eyed fans spotted when the original map was revealed, Mount Haruna is in there, as are other drifting hotspots represented in Initial D like the Hakone Nanamagari route. The food delivery story missions in Tokyo City include one where you have to drift your vehicle while delivering tofu — a tip of the hat to Takumi’s day job delivering tofu for his father in the mountains, which he would use to perfect his driving skills.

And, of course, Forza Horizon 6 would naturally include the real-world cars featured prominently in Initial D, including Takuma Fujiwara’s 1983 Toyota Sprinter Trueno. The Sprinter Trueno is the most famous variant of Toyota’s AE86 series, a legendary car in Japanese drifting culture. This cheap, unassuming car boasted a front-engine, rear-wheel-drive layout and near-perfect 50/50 weight distribution between the front and the rear, making it ideal for grassroots motorsport and for modifying for the nascent sport of drifting. For Initial D‘s purposes, it was credible both as the Fujiwaras’ humble workhorse and as Takumi’s drift battle steed.

You can buy a regular AE86 and modify it yourself easily enough in Forza Horizon 6. But deep into the game’s Discover Japan progress track — with 5,000 points in Master Explorer, no less — you unlock the Toyota AE86 Forza Edition, a ridiculously fast, souped-up special edition of the car. And if you drive the AE86 FE using the in-car view, you’ll notice a cup of water in the dash-mounted cupholder, animated so the water tips and rolls around in the cup under the G-forces as you drive.

It might seem like a curious level of effort for Playground to go to, and a strangely irrelevant detail. But Initial D fans will recognize it instantly. In the anime, Takumi’s father challenges him to deliver tofu on the twisty mountain roads without spilling any water from the dash-mounted cup, emphasizing a smooth driving style, so the tofu won’t be spoiled. It’s a memorable prop and an emblem of Takumi’s determination and skill.

Playground Games faced a huge amount of anticipation and scrutiny when it finally decided to bring the Forza Horizon series to Japan. It has certainly gone the extra mile. Even the superficially showy “Gundam” race turns out to have a deeply layered significance. And this cup of water is the final proof of its sincerity and love: a needlessly carefully realized detail, in a car many players will never obtain, only visible using a camera most people won’t use, that drives straight to the heart of the greatest racing anime of all time.