So, I will open by saying I've only watched up until the beginning of the Fifth Stage. I just can't continue, so you can tell me if I'm wrong and the same things don't exist throughout this, and the Final Stage.
I found this anime after deciding to go through every single year on this website and sorting by highest rated. I'd never seen an anime based around cars before, that's something new? I'd also never heard of this anime, but quickly realised, "oh that's where the meme song came from".
The animation through all of its stages I love. It creates an atmosphere of a quiet town which livens up during the nightly street races. There are none of those "anime-esque" over the top unrealistic characters here, which I'm all for. The level of detail when it comes to the cars and what exactly is going on is somehow educational and entertaining. I feel like I learnt a lot about cars watching this. The scene where Takumi turns off the headlights, disappears, then remerges alongside his opponent was cold as f*ck.
Now, for the mostly bad parts. The writing is weak when it comes to creating genuine friction. Almost every anime needs some sort of friction, unless it's wholesome then it just needs great characters. Hell, even comedies need a bad guy to feel good over laughing at. In Initial D, there are no bad guys. Just lots of nice racers who were initially mean and then chilled out? First antagonist was Keisuke, who then became one of the best characters through being a good dude. Second was Nakazato another good dude. We finally have an actual asshole in Shingo, which was great to watch but instantly after losing he becomes neutral, or even good.
We have this same formula through all of the seasons where no one is really a bad guy. Considering the release year of Initial D, maybe they can be considered one of the pioneers of the "everyone has a reason for being a meanie sometimes" trope. Now, I rated the first two seasons well even despite this, because, well, I thought it was going to eventually lead to something. That's the classic writing, right? If you're going to have multiple seasons of an anime, you can use the first one or two to build up your good guy and the safe feeling of the world, and then BOOM, some assclown comes along to ruin it all. That is just basic storytelling. But, it never happens in Initial D. The same formula continues on every season. In fact, what makes it even more grating is Takumi's impossibility in losing. The way he won against the God-Hand was so lame.
Now, how do writers usually have good storytelling without friction? Usually you get heavily invested in the characters and enjoy watching them. Problem here is, there aren't many good characters in this anime. Takumi is as wooden as they come. Ryosuke is very one dimensional as is most other characters. Itsuki was one of the only people you actually had somewhat of a connection to because he felt like a genuine person. A lack of strong characters makes the episodes focused on their dating lives excruciatingly slow. And on that topic, I wish they gave more time to Iketani. As a character he was basically a better Takumi. Honestly, maybe he should have been the main character. I don't think we even once seen him race despite talking about it the entire time, being a part of SpeedStars team, and being the one who got Takumi into street racing.
Some of the love interests were intriguing but seemingly were stop-gaps to break up all the racing scenes. So yeah, all those dating scenes felt like filler due to a lack of interesting characters, or simply them being written poorly.
Another huge issue by the fourth season was you kind of realise that Takumi is never going to lose. He's just the best racer in the entire world, and funnily enough his writing goes along with how I believe talent works. You've either got it or you don't, practicing or experience are nothing if you don't have the talent. But, this does make for boring viewing because all suspense is killed when you know they're winning all the races. Kinda funny that Ryosuke is revered by everyone but lost to Takumi in what was one of his first races before he even learnt the majority of his techniques.
So overall I'd say it was a great concept, but the lack of strong interesting characters, friction, and overall predictability of it is what keeps it from being a great series imo. So my rating here is for the overall series.
65/100