Initial D Fifth Stage

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 activeprofessionals, 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.

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 introducea 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.

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 reallytake 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.

*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 lookedrather 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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