Bari Bari Densetsu

Bari Bari Densetsu is an early motorbike racing manga series by Shuichi Shigeno. It was published in 38 volumes between 1983 and 1991 by Kodansha. In 1985, it won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōnen. The story has some similarities to Shigeno's later manga Initial D. Earlier parts of the manga 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, and were seen as a social problem in Japan. It was claimed they were influenced by manga. Later parts of the story revolve around professional motorcycle racing events held on road circuits like the All Japan Road Race Championship. In 1986 the manga was adapted into a two 50-minute episode OVA series. Nippon Herald (now part of Kadokawa Pictures) had Pierrot cut the two OVAs into a single 85-minute movie which was shown in theaters in August 1987 on the same bill as the film Aitsu to Lullaby: Suiyobi no Cinderella, based on a motorcycle manga by Michiharu Kusunoki. In 1989 the manga was also licensed as a commercial video game by Taito Corporation for the PC Engine, under the original title. The character Gun Koma appears as a hidden character in the PlayStation 2 game MotoGP by Namco.