The "D" in the title stands for ‘drifting', a motor racing technique of putting a car into a controlled slide around bends without losing any speed. It is a technique used to great effect by the Night Kids, an illegal street racing team who are keen to pit their skills against the mysterious "Akina Racing God", a driver who has unwittingly perfected the art of drifting around the notorious and deadly hairpin bends of Mount Akina.

Unknown to everybody, including himself, the mystery driver is actually a teenage student named Takumi (played by Taiwanese hearttrob Jay Chou), who uses drifting merely as an insanely high-speed method of returning home after delivering tofu for his father's takeaway business. Uninterested in racing, Takumi is more concerned in pursuing his relationship with a cute fellow student, Natsuki (Anne Suzuki). But when his identity as the racing god's is eventually revealed, Takumi is convinced by his father, himself a former racing driver, to take part in a series of perilous illegal downhill races. For Takumi the adrenaline and fame soon become irresistible as he accelerates towards a full-throttle three-way showdown against the best of the best.