Initial D Fifth Stage

5/10 - How the Mighty have fallen.

Since the reviews here are all extremely positive, and since I watched the last two seasons back to back, I'm gonna review them both.

First of all, for anyone who has not yet watched the series:
The first 2 seasons are amazing, and the third one (movie) is very good!
After that the quality drops quickly though.

Where in earlier seasons the anime revels in showing drifts, and mixing up closeups on the steering wheel and pedals with shots of drifting tires and the rear of the car coming very close to the guardrails, all while awesome eurobeat music is playing,
in the last two seasons, less and less attention was put into these cool moments.

Where in the earlier seasons the commentary from former rivals on the roadside was ecstatic and interesting, hyping up the race even more,
in the last two seasons, it is monotone and boring, and much more about pseudo-philosophy than about technique.

The animation quality dropped extremely over the course of the series, after peaking in the second and third season.
This is probably due to harsh budget constraints,
since the Anime was serialized in a very unusual pay-per-view way in the last two seasons.
The clunky 3D-animated cars of the first season are something I longed for all throughout the last three seasons, since it allowed for long, smooth shots of drifting cars, but even this seems to have been above the budget of the series at this point.

Last but not least, the pacing of the races:
Where in the first two seasons there were normal races mixed in with bunny races, starting with the Third Stage, the series was all-bunny race all the way, and it shows in the uncreative ways the races end.
After this point 90% of the races seem to be decided by spin-out, which made every race's conclusion more boring than the one's before.
This coupled with less and less interesting opponents, lead to the last two seasons in particular becoming a drag to watch.

It took a lot of willpower to not drop the series after the fifth season,
but it took even more to not drop it within the sixth one, or skip to the last episode.

When an anime I used to enjoy immensely changes into something I need willpower to sit down and watch, I cannot give it a better score.

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Taking place where 4th stage leaves off, Takumi on his deliveries is practicing at the one-handed steering technique of his final opponent from the last season. Though he is progressing, he still is trying to figure things out. At the same time, his father is giving him props for trying such a technique and acknowledges his progress. So where does this leave Project D after beating the Purple Mountain? Their next conquest leads them to Kanagawa, a prefecture south of Tokyo which is known for having the best street racers in the nation to the point that some of the drivers are trained and active professionals, and its up to Ryosuke, Keisuke, and Takumi to show that there is a world of difference between the track circuits and the mountain passes.

To some extent, you can say this is more or less an extension of 4th stage since the focus is still on Project D. Their new rivals take racing seriously and express the same passion to a more distinct extent than previous rival teams. Because of this, the races are harder with the higher level of competition and harsher course conditions, so Ryosuke always thinks of ways in which they can and will win. Even if the chances are at a small percentage, he will bank everything on it.

I understand the characters from the other teams have more elaboration in the manga, but the anime does enough to express how this character compares and contrasts with either Ryosuke, Keisuke and Takumi. I just feel that they don’t have enough individual exploration and seem to be only used as a comparison tool to our main characters. I guess in context to the anime, it does its job, and this has been somewhat of an issue in previous installments. My only exposure of the manga is through the arcade, PS2, and PS3 games and when I see what is different in how the characters are more fleshed out, it really surprises me.

The rest of the cast for the most part is back. Most of the development is focused on Takumi, Keisuke, and Ryosuke and Ryosuke gets his own brief story arc. As for Iketani, Kenji, and Itsuki, they are still around and they do serve their roles in their own way. But I feel that their purpose is to now show how much Takumi has developed and is beyond them in context to expressing how he understands cars and the physics of racing. But I think at some point, they will get further development. But I think manga readers will tell me I am wrong. Some other past characters do show up and some of these brief returning characters do serve a significant purpose which I really thought did an excellent job for a certain new character.

In addition, Takumi now has a new love interest, Mika, a high school golf star. She is a real interesting character and I personally feels she is better than Natsuki. I feel she connects to Takumi more effectively because of her background and I like her out-going personality a lot more. I am pretty sure the manga at this point already has, but I hope when I watch future anime installments, they develop that relationship more. I thought the anime does its job building a good foundation to that relationship and I look forward to how it develops.

In terms of character design, the most significant change is Ryosuke’s. His hair is more shaggy and is not as well kept as it always has been. I don’t recall his hair looking like that in the manga based on my exposure through the games during that part of the story arc. Then again, this isn’t the first time, they changed Ryosuke’s hair style. In second stage, his hair color was changed to light brown from black and then changed back to black in 3rd and 4th stages. I thought his hair was fine. I guess my concern is on the basis that Ryosuke is my favorite character, but his fashion sense and his facial design and expressions are more or less the same. For the other characters, there are no other alterations to their designs.

The quality is not too different from 4th stage but has brighter resolution with the colors. The races are more back to a CG feel in comparison to the more cel-shaded feel of 4th stage and excellently does its job of bringing out the intensity and excitement of the races.

As for the races, the races are still done in a cat and mouse set of rules like in 4th stage. They do bring a sense of danger and risk to a higher level than previous installments, but I don’t think it’s to the level of that in Wangan Midnight or Shigeno-sensei’s previous manga, Bari Bari Densetsu. I suppose with a street racing manga, you want those factors, but in considerations to how well they organize and coordinate the street races, they can limit those risks so those factors justify that lack of them. I know accidents have happened in previous installments, but I just didn’t feel that danger. But this time, they do bring in weather and course conditions into a more specific and emphatic level in comparison to previous races and how they can appropriately customize the cars to prepare as well as actual physics to race in such conditions.

The races are planned with very intricate strategies that takes every possibility into account which is what I like about them. Even though this was also done in 4th stage, this quality is taken to a new level of technicalities in this season. The game plans Ryosuke comes up with is what makes touge racing very distinctive and makes me interested in it in a realistic point of view. For example, when Takumi invented his blind attack in 4th stage, this tactic is further elaborated and developed in a physics point of view. Also, some races focus more on effective breaking, and some are emphasized on carefully planned accelerating. Also, they do bring in very clever game planning which you may think is playing dirty, but considering this is the street, anything goes. But even though I don’t feel the danger, these new qualities does make it refreshingly exciting and educational. For that, I give the art and animation.

If you have been following my reviews of Initial D, then you know I always give the music and voice acting a 10/10. The voice cast is still the same and still bring their respective qualities to the same excellent performance they always have. Takumi is becoming nearly as articulate is Ryosuke and Miki Shinichiro does a great job of giving us that. The new voice actors also do a great job of capturing their characters. The music, the reason why I became an Initial D fan, is still unchanged. MOVE still does the songs though the hook is more of heavy guitars which perfectly reflects the more intense atmosphere of this installment. And if there is just one song that justifies my perfect score, it is the song “Wait for You” the Dancefloor mix by Ace from episode 11. It is just an amazing song you just have to hear. I can listen to this song over and over. It’s that song that makes you wish you were with that special someone in your life and it fits the mood of when the song was used. It is probably on my top 10 Initial D songs if i were to make one. So look that song up when you can I promise you’ll love it.


And the ending of the series perfectly sets up the last stage.

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Fifth stage is another low point of the series. The races and their outcomes were some of Initial D's the least interesting ever. There's hardly any racing anymore, it's this pull away style that generally concludes with someone making a mistake and/or spinning out. The drama was hard to take serious, particularly Ryosuke's arc. This tragic romantic aspect of him felt forced, out of place, and out of character. Takumi's friend's continue to undevelop as characters. Their hardly even his cheerleaders anymore; they're just dudes who work at a gas station and wallow in their singleness. Natsuki is non-existent at this point; they just introduce a new love interest instead.

The art and cgi mostly the same as it was in fourth stage, maybe slightly improved. It's some of the best visuals so far, but it looks outdated compared to other anime released at the time. The music and voice-acting is still solid as expected.

I found this season to be one of the least enjoyable of the series. Season 3 or 4 would have been fine stopping, now it just feels like the show is dragging on for no reason, tarnishing what good points it had.

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*Spoiler-Free for the entire Initial D seires* *Meant-to-be-short-but-fun review :P*
See, I am a fan of the Initial D series. So why have I given this one just a 7? It's not all bad depending on how you take it. You'll get what I mean:

(1) This stage is more dedicated to the development and growth of Keisuke. Since Takumi's unpredictable talent and dynamic races was what I loved, I felt a bit bored now and then. Not that Keisuke's races weren't interesting, they were all pretty good....but I guess you can't compare any other racers with Takumi. I did enjoy his character development. (Also Keisuke looked rather ugly this season but he comes back to normal in Final ;-P)

(2) Thankfully there weren't any cheesy love-drama-heartbreak idiocy this season and just when you think things will be normal, a different side of the enigmatic Ryousuke's life is shown, which was actually quite interesting. So you get to see Ryousuke race once more.

(3)The opening song was pretty fun and the ending song was just \m/ awesome; and then -_- they were like, lets put a slow-love-ish-boring-sugar-fairy-princess-singing-no-one's-even-going-to-bother ending song that sounds like evERY OTHER SLOW-LOVE-ISH-BORING-SUGAR-FAIRY-PRINCESS-SINGING SONG IN A FRIGGIN' FAST-PACED RACING ANIME!!!

*ahem (4) THIS demotivated me even further coz now, I had to drag myself to the next episode. Although, I was able to keep patience during an episode. It's not as bad as it sounds. Plus, the curiosity of wanting to know 'who's gonna win?' will always be there. All-in-all it's good. (Anyway, anything is better than that horrendous third stage :P)

(5) I guess I should see Fifth and Final Stage as one because this stage is entirely a build-up for Takumi's race. And Boy! is that a race!! My review for Final Stage is filled with exclamation marks XD
All I will say is that, if you wanna get to the really good part, you can sit through this one.
(Actually, if you wanna, just skip this season because story-wise it doesn't really matter. All they are doing is racing every group in the Kanagawa prefecture. Final Stage is just a single race of 4 episodes.)
Your Choice ;P

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Gone are the days of experts sitting on the sidelines discussing technique, strategy, and the characteristics of the road that Takemi is racing on. Gone is the under-dog feel. The Speed Stars side cast have been discarded for a bunch of guys who shop at hot topic and put more money into hair gel than they do car parts.

It's like someone took all the race theory that was great about the previous installments and threw them away; then took the story and put a bird on it. Holy Moley, I'm surprised they didn't put undercarriage neon lights and flashers on the AE-86 in the process of this anime.

And what the hell is up with Ryosuke's past? This is a complete character re-write. I hate how much they've fumbled the character development and interaction.

The art is the only saving grace, and even then it isn't as fun or exciting to watch the races as previous installments. This series should have ended with God-Hand and God-Foot being beaten by a younger generation of racers.

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I'm getting out of Fast and Furious references...

All right this Fifth Stage was boring.

Don't get me wrong. I like it but it has a lot of problems that I can't hide.

Let's start with the good things.
I really like Takumi and Keisuke "final form" they do it amazingly and this is all the hard work they put trough out all the past stages and that's pretty much it.
The art is very pleasant but I kinda miss that clunky CGI and some shoots of the cars doing crazy stuff like going 1 cm of the guardrails. Overall they still have that weird looking sometimes and I'll take it I guess.
The Eurodance it's ok, not perfect or amazing, just ok.
And I don't have more good things to say.

The bad things...
The races feel off, doesn't feel like a good win. We know that Takumi and Keisuke are beast when they are driving and also I miss that underdog feeling.
The Ryousuke story doesn't fit well. I mean yes, trough all the stages we see him like a "cold" guy with a lot of knowledge and I can't forget a phrase of one of the rivals, "he has a sad look". This is actually true, we see him like a cool dude but we know he's hiding something. And that something is a love story with a sad tragedy and a rivalry.
It was a good attempt to know Ryousuke better but it was awkward and way too forced. They could build it up trough several stages but they just put up all in here and doesn't feel good.
Now, some of the secondary characters are just comedy relief and I really hate that. Why? I really like Itsuki and Iketani but we only see them in the gas station doing nothing. The Akina Speedstars doesn't exists and I really wish a big race between Iketani and Itsuki having Takumi has a teacher but no.
The relationship of Takumi also feels awkward, I mean, a girl slaps my face and boom, love. But not gonna lie, I was actually fine with that, finally a relationship is official and doesn't end because the "lonely racers" meme.
I have mention the Eurodance and was weak. I really like the bops from the first and second stage but it gets weaker and weaker and in this stage is really weak. I kind hoping that they recycle some songs like "Deja Vu", "Back on the Rocks" or even "Dancing". They fit so well here specially "Dancing" with that spooky intro and "Back on the Rocks" is the Nissan Skyline GT-R theme song.

Overall this was ok, extremely boring but ok. It is the weaker stage with the third one and the final stage was... lets save that.

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!!!WARNING!!! THERE MIGHT BE SPOILERS !!!

I love Initial D. It reignited my passion for cars and also taught me a lot about driving techniques. While the previous four seasons were exciting and had a good balance of character development and racing sessions, Fifth Stage is anything but.

Fifth Stage brings improvements in terms of artwork and sound quality, but there's pretty much no character development or story. Yes, Takumi becomes better and better at driving, Project D continues to "conqueer" many other regions, but God damn it was slow! I know that Initial D is all about touge racing, but I find it difficult to watch when most of the season consists of 45% racing, 45% discussions between team members and 10% story!

The only important parts of this entire stage were the fake Project D members, Takumi's meetings with Mika, the Ryosuke vs Shinigami race and its story, and maybe the music they used.

Overall I recommend you to skip Fifth Stage, or at least find the Supercut versions of the races and watch the following episodes: 1, 2, 6, 9, 10, 14.

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5/10 Car magic is not what I asked for.

This is the only season in the series I'll be writing a review for, because it was quite the disappointment. The first was awesome, 2nd and 3rd dragged on a bit, 4th was awesome again.

Over the time the art style has been changed a bit several times, but it never improved. In this season it's probably the worst it ever was. The music is not always as extravagant as in the first couple of seasons either, although they do bring back some of the older songs.

I can get over all of that. The 2 things I really take issue with is the story and the way they presented it here. Previously the anime always came up with something new in racing and rationally explained it. Each race the supporting characters explained every little bit of detail about the drivers and their cars. What are the current cars' powers and weaknesses. How the drivers behave. The driving styles, race strategy etc. was all explained in great detail.

This season? Cars are now teleporting mid-corner, because "FUJIWARA ZONE". Even worse, they tried explaining it as a driving style where a rear wheel drive feels like a 4WD. I did expect this anime to eventually run out of ideas at some point and come up with some abstract magical kind of bs, but this is way worse than everything I could've imagined.

Beyond that the supporting characters aren't rationalizing and explaining anything anymore either. It's all just "but Takumi isn't normal, blablabla, believe he will win".

And the presentation? Previously a lot of attention has been spent on showing off someone's technique in detail. Remember when Takumi did the pendulum turn/kansei drift/skandinavian flik for the first time? Or when he used the ditch? Or when he shifted the car's weight to be able to fly over the uncovered ditch to the grass? The focus was on displaying the technique.

This season you just see the cars going by each corner almost identically. They might as well have canned the animations and re-used them. It's a waste of time. There's only one race where this anime regained some of its old glory and that's the Ryosuke vs. Shinigami "race". They did an awesome job of displaying the technique and explaining everything there.

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(Minor Spoilers)

It really hurt watching this season and there was a time where I could think Initial D was there perfect godsend anime that could never dissapoint.

Blatant callbacks to the first 3 seasons were put into place but executed terribly, the magic this series had is gone important characters and amazing races are put aside for crappy character remakes and constant talking about the race INSTEAD OF RACING not once has a series made me more angry.

I tried really hard to love this season and it dissapointed at every turn

+good art
+Interesting cars
+Fresh new characters
+ryosuke race
+Interesting story

-races aren't fun anymore
-annoying talking breaks any sort of immersion
-OST's aren't kickass and exciting
-horrendous takumi ripoff
-somehow made the 86 boring
-important season 1-3 charcters pushed to the sidelines
-most races end boring
-no new interesting techniques (literally at all)

Overall from an anime in general standpoint 6/10
Overall when compared to an Inital D standpoint 4/10

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IMO This anime had great potential, but imo it needs a graphics / art overhaul. Comparing this anime to some of the old animes like DBZ or Naruto which continued to improve their art overtime, you can see it. Whereas Initial D's art becomes stale as I felt the artist got lazy and decided not to improve on the overall graphic quality of the manga / anime. The original is a good standard to set, but comparing it to today's anime / art, it's just not appealing and won't cut it.

Story Telling: 7/10

The story telling is amazing. The plot pace moves along well when it comes the main character and his car racing days. The character develops very quickly when it comes to the art of racing with his innate talent for it. However when it comes to expressing how the the character feels, I feel like he's matured very slowly in learning how to express himself.

One of the biggest issues I have with this manga/anime and multiple mangas/anime are when romance is introduced. The story focuses more heavily on action, but drops the romance in very suddenly and left hanging from time to time. I feel like there is a lack of balance and development in that area. I feel like there are 2 options when it comes to the romance department and that's to either go in-depth and not half-ass it, or to entirely not even put it in there. It's basically like Naruto where Hinata tells Naruto she loves him out of nowhere, and then many chapters or episodes later, not even mention it.

I consider Initial D to have great potential to be a well known classic like Spirited Away, Totoro, or Kotachi no koe with balanced elements of storytelling, soundtracks, and animation.

TLDR: Romance department is seriously lacking, character development on how he expresses himself can immensely improve.

Soundtrack: 10/10

I really can't complain much about the soundtrack. I think it's amazing and fits the theme of the anime well, it compliments the story, but the art doesn't do it as much justice as it could have.

Art: 5/10

My issue is that the art becomes stale. There are no improvements and quality stream hasn't improved much despite being a huge fan of the manga. I feel like a movie or anime is like a puzzle. You need all the right pieces of the puzzle for it to fit together. If the art continued to improve overtime, I'd be very happy for it to do the soundtrack and storytelling justice. I just felt like the artist got lazy and did not bother while being stubborn with its style.

If you're selling this anime to the older generation, it's considered a classic. I understand where they're coming from as I was born in the 90's as well going for game design and CG programming. If I were to advertise this anime to the audiences of newer generations, it won't be as appealing compared to the likes of Sword Art Online (1st Half of Season 1) or Fate Stay: Unlimited Blade Works where the art, music, and storytelling is stunning.

If Initial D is looking to become a known classic, I really feel like a reboot would really do the anime justice if the romance is taken out or rewritten and also better character development. Art is outdated and won't appeal to newer audiences. It's been almost 2 decades. Even Detective Conan, which is a year older, looks a lot better visually.

Enjoyment: Good for a first time watch, but leaves you hanging wanting more because you can see the potential it has and that makes it a little depressing. It's not worth watching a 2nd time for the quality it was produced as.

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Quick take: If you like cars, you'll like the story of Takumi Fujiwara, his Trueno 86 and the Probed D team. Fifth stage continues the story of Project D. It does an incredible job with the best CGI bits so far, which feel much more natural to the media than any other stage. While the manga does a much better job of telling the story, you’ll still find a decent plot in this anime.

Fifth stage continues the battles of Project D. Keisuke and Takumi take on new battles and face new opponents, growing from those experiences. Much like Fourth stage, Keisuke is largely ignored and his growth is talked about only in passing. He does get an epic battle, however. Quite a few sub-plots are introduced in Fifth stage that show a depth of growth to some of the characters. This is a huge improvement because I felt we didn’t see much of that since the Third stage. It's hard to separate the character development from the plot as both drive each other forward. The plot is about the development and in turn, the development drives the plot. Keisuke, Takumi and Ryo all experience forward development and it makes for an exciting story.

While I felt critical of the art in Stages 1-3, Fifth stage improves on the gains made by Fourth stage. CGI bits feel incredibly natural and fit well within the movement. Colors outside of the CGI are rich and feel like they have some life and depth to them. The art feels much less outdated than it's predecessors'.

Sound quality is good. Acting is well done and comprehensible. The Eurobeat is great and it helps propel the excitement of the races. OST music outside of the Eurobeat actually sounds and feels pretty good compared to previous stages. Car sounds are good and feel a bit more authentic to each car.

Fifth stage is enjoyable and you’ll find important sub-plots that help complete some characters' personality arc as well as propel them for the next stage after Project D. One of the best in the series. You’ll still find better storytelling within the manga, so I'd always suggest that over the anime, but I did find Fifth stage to be really enjoyable and white possibly, my favorite.

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Let me preface this by saying I am a very big Initial D fan as well as a very big JDM car fan. So the following is tough to say for me...

Unfortunately, I found Initial D Fifth Stage to be the worst stage so far, and by a fairly large margin, as I very much enjoyed stages 1-3 (Fourth Stage, not so much but still enjoyed too). Most of the battles in Fifth Stage except for maybe one (most of you will probably know which one I'm referring to if you've seen the season) were pretty uninteresting and predictable, though there were some little moments in-between races that I enjoyed. There was also a very disappointing lack of Eurobeat in many of the battle scenes, and of the few Eurobeat songs that played, only a few of them were even good in the first place. Also (never thought I'd say this) but I found myself preferring the animation from previous stages over this stage's animation. The CGI in this stage was very static and stiff, whereas the animation in previous stages (especially First Stage) had very interesting camera angles and very active and fun CGI car models. Also, another thing that the previous stages did better was the original soundtrack (songs besides the Eurobeat). This stage's soundtrack sounded like generic rock and disco music with very little originality.

I'm really hoping the Final Stage is better than this.

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