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.
