Living on the East Coast of the US, I don’t get to go to West Coast conventions very often, but I had the rare opportunity to attend Anime Los Angeles 2026 in conjunction with a trip I was taking to California for other reasons. I wanted to submit something to their contest, but everything I had handy was either ineligible (length, non-anime, freshness time, etc.) or in my opinion, not strong enough to compete, so I needed to come up with a new idea with not very much time to complete it.
Seeing the Commercial category as the most promising option, I went looking for amusing commercials that I might be able to parody. After a decent amount of digging through YouTube, I stumbled back across the FreeCreditReport.com commercials I remembered from the late 2000s. They were catchy, evocative, funny, and ripe for a quick “get in, do the joke, get out” video. Of the nine options (I was surprised at how many there were, too), the “New Car” one immediately reminded me of the first season of Initial D and Itsuki’s lemon of an AE-85 Levin.
There aren’t a lot of episodes it appeared, so scrubbing the footage and assembling the pieces came together pretty quickly.
It did get selected as a finalist and got some laughs from the audience, so I’m counting that as a win for myself. I should do more silly things like this in the future, this was fun to make.
Video – Initial D First Stage
Audio – FreeCreditReport.com “New Car” commercial audio
Completed November 2025
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