Firstly I'm going to begin with the biggest and frankly only hurdle I had to overcome. You are treated to lovely hand drawn animation. The characters look great, the scenes are great and the cars are great. It really is prime animation for it's time. However, when you see the animation for the moving vehicles for the first time, you may be as surprised as I was. Initially I thought, 'what in the name of Sega 1990s arcade cabinets is going on here?'. Very quickly, I got used to it, and by the time I finished this season, I loved it. It really does work towards the end of the season so if you find it off putting, bare with it, it's worth it. To summarise the animation, front to back it's perfection. For it's time, it's perfection anyway. Judging the animation against the animation we have 25 years later isn't fair. Technology has advanced to much since 1998 that technically, it's better now. I would argue however, it has more character and charm back then. Initial D also is a shining beacon of the charm and character of 90s animation I describe and definitely one of the decades best.
Story wise, I'm not sure you need any more than it delivers. Expert pacing, riveting plot, excellent character building, great characters, it has everything. It's really quite funny at times too. Often I find when watching anime over 2 decades old, the 'comedy' doesn't really cut it. Every time this show tried to be funny it made me laugh. Every time without fail. This is down to the superb writing. Very frequently there is comedic relief in amine. Most of the time these characters just arnt funny. Other times they are really over the top and irritating. Both of which fail to serve this purpose. Initial D has Itsuki Takeuchi and absolutely nails it. Not only is he funny he is a genuinely believable character. Itsuki, along with all the other characters are honestly perfect. Brilliantly written and serve their purposes perfectly.
The only negative I have is that the first end credits song is terrible. I am damn sure I would have found this terrible at the time too if my 7 year old self would have watched it. That being said, you can't judge the quality of an anime based on its opening and closing themes. What you can judge it on is the music within the episodes. Yet again, there is not complaints. The music ranges from the cheesy Sega 90s arcade music, for which I challenge anyone to say they genuinely dislike, no one genuinely does, to breakbeat, big beat, 303 tinged goodness. The music fits the show perfectly.
In summary, I scored this show as a 9 before writing this review, the more I wrote, the more I found myself challenging that score, wondering if there is actually anything negative to say. I also have Full Metal Brotherhood and Bebop, among few others, in my 10 rankings. This always makes me measure other 9s against them. Given I can genuinely find no fault with this show, and given their are different levels to the animes I give a 10, looks like my score has changed from a 9 to a 10 whilst writing.
Well done Initial D. Honestly Its one of the most enjoyable animes I've watched and I could watch it again.
