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
