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Just wanna start off by saying that a 5 for me means it wasn't very good. My personal ranking system works pretty weird but it's consistent.

MF Ghost is a lazy show and to be completely honest it should've probably just stayed a manga until a studio with better direction/CGI skills can adapt it. My main complaint about MF ghost is that it tries so hard to capture that Initial D feeling and re create it in a modern way but it just constantly fails at it. The main character sucks. He's a professional racer from the get go so you don't feel like he's ... the underdog even though he drives a critically underpowered car. He does very well in the races and as a viewer you aren't surprised at all. You just brush it off as "oh yeah well he trained all his life at racing so of course he's overtaking people". Speaking of overtaking people. I get he's the main character but come on. There's no dimension where a GT86 overtakes a Mercedes GTR. That green GTR driver has to be the worst driver of any racing anime cause he's finishing barely in the top 10 in all his races when he's driving the most overpowered car there. And yeah I get it's kinda the whole point of the where like in Initial D, you have someone who's driving an underpowered car winning the race. But where Initial D is different is that the races where almost always downhills where an underpowered car is much more evenly matched with the more powerful and on top of that you actually feel like there's some skill and strategy involved like the gutter trick or the inertia drift. In MF Ghost? Skills? Nah, here you have a 200hp notoriously slow car in real life somehow overtaking cars known to be track weapons on an open road like it's nothing and most of the time it's just the other driver slipping up causing him to get overtaken. Wow so exciting...

The races. They're just not good in my opinion. They feel slow and they're way too long. 6 episodes of a 12 episode season will be a race with another 3 episodes being qualifiers. The tracks are too long and feels like it's just little bends and straight aways most of the time. It's just not exciting. The camera work is also lazy and makes the race feel very slow paced. There's always random B roll during the races that just take you out of it completely. You'll be watching MC in an intense dogfight and it will just cut to a freeze frame of his dad drinking coffee on the couch at home for 5 seconds while the Eurobeat is still playing. Who greenlights this stuff. It's like the edited this in one sitting and posted it as soon as they were done without proof watching it.

The CGI. OH MAN IS IT EVER TERRIBLE. Now yes I know CGI in anime isn't really known for it's high quality but for MF ghost it's shockingly bad. Every single car has INSANE body roll. When that white GT3 takes a corner it literally looks like it's gonna roll over. And it's funny because all the drivers keep talking about how important it is to tweak the suspension set up before the races only for their car to look like it's riding on spaghetti for springs and that they weigh 4 tons. CGI nowadays cannot be that hard to produce. I'm seeing independent content creators on TikTok and YouTube every day posting CGI animations that they made alone with no help and no budget that look infinitely better than MF Ghost. I don't care what others think about this but the CGI in initial D even in the 90s was somehow better.

I'm also not gonna talk about the non racing aspect of MF Ghost because let's be for real I don't think a single person actually cares the non racing stuff in this show. Actually from what I've been hearing a lot of people tend to skip those parts and just go straight to the races.

Overall MF Ghost for me isn't something I would recommend to someone just finishing Initial D. They might as well just quit at the peak and be happy there. MF Ghost really feels like the Disney trilogy of star wars films where they try so hard to be good but objectively are just bad. Rarely do I ever feel compelled to write a review about something but after watching this season I feel like I just had to share the thoughts that have been going through my mind every episode.

Anyway, that's all I've got for today, go away now ...

Let me start off by saying that yes, I think this is one of those sport animes that you can compare to Haikyuu. I find that for a lot of people they view Haikyuu as the "standard" for sports anime cause it's the most heard of or it's the first one that they watched but let me tell you that their are others out there just as good.

Ace of Diamond has a bit of everything ; Quirky characters, interesting opponents, intense game arcs etc... The characters are really diverse and you really feel like your watching them grow as baseball players and as a ... team. I wanna say that the team aspect of this anime is probably one of it's best qualities. At no time during the show I felt like they we're singling in on one particular character. You see the change in Eijun and Furuya's skills as well as Haruichi throughout the show at equal pacing. The characters also change a lot throughout the show. Eijun at first is extremely cocky and kind of annoying but gradually gets better and it's almost like you want him to succeed. The game arcs are really enjoyable to watch and almost every episode ends on a possibly game deciding play. I was never bored watching the games. Like Haikyuu, I think Ace of Diamond really nailed the team aspect and the rivalry's. Whenever they play against Inashiro you can feel the tension and it's like watching a Karasuno vs Nekoma game.

*SPOILER AHEAD*
I saw a lot of people shitting on the show because they lost in the tournament but to be honest that's a pretty bad reason to hate a show. Ace of Diamond is like 170+ episodes long you can't expect them to win every single game. They're by far not the best team in their league and just barely made it out of a few games. This ties in to the same argument of giving the show a bad rating because your favorite character died. The arc after they lose the tournament is actually one of the better ones in the season in my opinion because you get to see the new team and also the retirement game against the third years. Basically what I'm trying to say is don't hate the show because Seido didn't win, it just isn't a good reason to give Ace a bad rating.

I didn't want to make this review super long so I'll explain why it's only an 8. It's a bit lengthy and will need some commitment finish but feels very rewarding once you do. I recommend chewing at it 3 or 4 episodes a day for the best experience. The soundtrack and animation quality was a bit lackluster in my opinion. I guess I was expecting a little more since it's animated by Prod I.G and Madhouse but it was made in 2013 so I guess it's reasonable given the era.

All in all if your looking for a sports anime to watch this show will not disappoint.

NOTE : I HAVE NOT WATCHED THE ORIGINAL SHAMAN KING

Ever since ep 1 I have been enjoying watching this show. It's honestly not bad. I've been on forums and comment sections often and I can't seem to find why people hate it so much. Every week I see the average score here on MAL drop (6.66 by the time of this review).

The story is alright, nothing more nothing less. There are some memorable characters like Ryu of the wooden sword and Ren. The action is good although it would be nice if the animation was better. The soundtrack is also pretty good and I ... find myself listening to it sometimes.

I think that Shaman king 2021 is a perfect example of people hating on something just because it is a remake of an original. I think people should view remakes in a more positive light and be more considerate and lucky that a franchise they love is being brought back after many years. Look at the cowboy bebop live action on Netflix for example. I've watched the original anime and it's also in my top 10 all time and I have no idea why people hate the live action so much. its really well made and I think they do a good job of re creating the different aspects of the show. Same thing with the demon slayer movie recap. A lot of people will give it a lower rating because they say it "wasn't necessary" or something and I just don't agree. But that's also not to say that they're some bad remakes out there but I'm sure you get my point.

I just think that we should all be thankful for remakes and appreciate that the thing we love are getting second chances.