Speed Racer

The role of economics in the industrialized North American market must have always been theorized in the homelands of the engines creation. Persons and industrialist such as Mercedes Benz and the Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) surely realized the opportunity of the North Ameircan market with the purchase of fuel and number of automobiles purchased per household. This type of economic phenomena sparked the concept of Speed Racer.

After the new constitution of Japan the industrialization of the isolated island nation of Japan must seek opportunity once again via economic partnerships with its global neighbors. This also helped spark the economic opportunities in the European and North American market if not the global market.

Speed is a young avid driver who without knowing any better is driven by his demanding father Pops Racer who has challenged himself his whole life to make a better machine better at winning races. It was in fact Pops Racer who drove his first son Rex Racer to the brink of destruction with his strategy of how to best use the technology he developed. As a mature Racer, Rex, finally realizes his own inherent values and becomes independent but still feels obligated to his younger bother Speed.

The exact relationship of Rex Racer to persons such as the Inspector are never really clear, but put into dramatization. Rex is eventually accused of being a type of agent for a country or organization due to his ability to be in places at times when there is no other explanation to how he would have known Speed was in trouble. Or the fact that the situations involved some types of illegal activity were his secretive knowledge is leveraged against an evil plot. This brings a level of cloak and dagger romance to Speed Racer.

The mixture of Speeds innocence with Trixy, Sprital, and Chim Chim brings a level of comic human nature. This concept is a good form of rhetoric to balance the themes and plots as they are played out from episode to episode. So, instead of a dry detective story the thrill of international race car driving, romance of cloak and dagger, and comedy of human nature is put into one story, Speed Racer.

When I was a kid, Speed Racer was the show I would never miss when I came home from school. Sure it was violent, but the action was what made this show what it was. Also, the variety of villians gave the show some color that was lacking from the American cartoons that came out at the same time. The action and the characters of Speed, Trixie, Sparky, Sprytle and Chim Chim that made this show a classic.

Nobody in my group of friends watched it but I loved it. It was on UHF so it was obscure for sure. Kimba the white lion, the three stooges were all on Channel 52 on California.

Arguably the greatest of all anime shows, Speed Racer is by far the best combination of the varied qualities of anime - goofy humor, nerve-packed action, and superior character interplay. Many fans' introduction to anime was in viewing of this show in 1970s syndication.

The original version, titled Mach Go! Go! Go!, reflects the greater violence of Japanese anime, violence toned down for the US broadcast of the show but still at times unnerving. Peter Fernandez and Trans-Lux were given the task of "Anglicanizing" Mach Go! Go! Go! and succeeded perhaps beyond their own expectations; the show remains fresh and engaging even as the passage of time has displayed some of the anarchic racing practices portrayed in each episode.

The show betrays some of the Gerry Anderson influences common to anime, influences even better shown by Battle Of The Planets' Thunderbirds-meets-Captain-Scarlet copycatting. The presence of the chimp Chim-Chim as pet for Spritle is a direct copy of the chimp used in Anderson's first Supermarionation show, Supercar, which served as something of a template for Speed Racer overall.

The Racer family is as tightly knit as any family, headed by patriarch, ace motorsports engineer Lionel "Pops" Racer, his loving wife - never named in the show beyond Mom - and his two sons, Greg James "Speed" Racer and toddler Spridle. Pops, however, has an older son, Kenneth Rexford Racer, known as Rex. Years earlier Rex was entered in a major race against Pops' wishes and crashed heavily in winning; a furious Pops refused to let Rex race until he was older, but Rex refused to be pigeonholed and ran out on the family to become a racing champion; he has never been seen again by the family.

This estrangement of Rex from his family, while not part of the show's pilot two-part episode, is nonetheless the real starting point for the series. Pops fears that his second-eldest son Speed will meet the same fate as Rex, but Speed is determined to race, and Pops reluctantly acquiesced to his son's passion. Speed is a special racer, and this draws the wrath of unscrupulous types determined to see that he never becomes a champion. The intervention of these unscrupulous types brings to the fore the mysterious Racer X, aka The Masked Racer - in reality Rex, in disguise, fearing that knowledge of his identity will bring the wrath of his enemies to his family and especially the gifted younger brother he's never known. There is a special chemistry between Racer X and Speed, a chemistry driven by Speed's budding curiousity about Racer X's true identity, and budding suspicion that Racer X is his long-lost brother.

The show gets off to a good start in the first two cliffhanger episodes as well as the two-part "The Secret Engine," but by far the most popular and best episodes are the two that reach the show to its apex - the rousing Mob/racing actioner "Race Against The Mammoth Car" and the show's only three-part episode, the genuinely scary "The Most Dangerous Race."

The Mammoth Car, highlighted by a sharply distinctive echoing whine as well as unforgettable music cue, is a 600-foot-long train-like monster owned by an infamous mobster who is suspected of stealing millions of bars of gold, a theft that Speed and his spunky girlfriend Patricia "Trixie" Shimura get swept into in the course of racing the Mammoth Car.

The Most Dangerous Race is the Great Alpine Race, a race through mountains that becomes even more dangerous when heavy rains collapse weak overhangs and force racers to try a dangerous jump over chasms. Spritle has given Speed a small Mexican doll as a good luck charm, and this leads to the most genuinely terrifying moment of animation - when Speed slides into the chasm, the soundtrack fades into an echo, and we see nothing but tire marks, some debris from destroyed racecars, and finally the small good luck charm half-buried in the mud, seemingly dead - and Speed nowhere to be found. Never has a cliffhanger more effectively frightened a viewer more than this indelible image.

Though the show could never reach the emotional height of these two episodes, excellent stories followed in the harrowing revenge tale "Race For Revenge," and follow-up stories; as the show proceeded stories switched to one-part episodes instead of the two-part cliffhangers used most often but never lost their punch of superb character interplay ("Man On The Lam," "The Car Hater," and "Most Dangerous Race's" one-part late-series sequel are the best of the one-parters), goofy charm (most of the villain names are straight out of Dick Tracy central casting), and the revved-up power of the show's signature mode of transportation, the Mach Five, which went from the enriching Bimmer-esque hum of the first 11 episodes to a pre-1995 NASCAR-flavored growl for "Race For Revenge" to the unsatisfying mixture of high-pitched whine and cheesy growl of the show's balance.

It is this combination that makes Speed Racer a race winner and champion of all time in anime.

Imagine that you're 17 years of age,had the cutest girlfriend and drove a car that could vault over a bridge and land on a pile of rubble without suffering a scratch---also his car was equipped with gadgets no one ever heard of including flying through the air and submerging underwater while winning ever race he was ever in.

The show was called "Speed Racer" and what kid during the mid-1960's and throughout the 1970's didn't yearn to be like him? Having all the fun while taking control of his state of the art car---the Mach V(Five) along with Pops Racer,girlfriend Trixie,and mischief tag alongs Spiral and pet monkey Chim-Chim and mechanic Sparky. Lets not forget Speed's mysterious brother who helps out too---Racer X.

Its original title was called Mach A Go-Go,and this show was on every kids mind when it came on every weekday afternoon and especially on Saturday mornings when you tuned in to the adventures of Speed Racer and his friends to see what exciting thrills to expect next,and with this show you'll never know what to expect or expect the unexpected.

Speed was the ideal high-velocity hero,a morally just teen who knew a karate chop from a judo kick and settled his battles behind the wheel of the world's coolest car which was the main feature of this show,and it was something to watch. No one it is one of the greatest Japanese cartoons ever made and set the standard for the rest of competition for the next three decades. It all started in 1967,and after 35 years later its continues its reign to this day.

Though animated by artists at Tatsunoko Production Co.,(which produced other Japanese cartoons like "Kimba The White Lion","Marine Boy",and "Belle and Sebastian" and this series)there is a gung-ho American sensibility to this Japanimation hit that has made the toon's U.S. dubbed version a success story that was repeated in 1994 as "The New Adventures Of Speed Racer"(which was absolute failure with the main stream audience: mostly children) as well as a upcoming theatrical live action feature that is coming to theatres very soon. An inspiring favorite that inclues real-life Speed Racers Michael Andretti and NASCAR's Jeff Gordon and actors Tom Cruise and Matt Damon. Speed Rules! Go Speed Go!