September 15, 2015 – Go, Speed Racer!
I'll level with all of you reading this: it took me a while to come up with the proper words that would adequately describe Speed Racer, and even now, I'm not sure if anything I say here about it will be good enough. But here goes anyway.
It is the most enjoyably stupid show I've ever seen in my life.
I know Japanese anime from the 1960s aren't nearly as refined as anime nowadays, but even then, that decade turned out some really memorable and substantial shows. Kimba the White Lion is my second-favorite anime, for goodness' sake. I might do a review on that one in the future, but for now, I'm talking about the other show 60s kids remember the most.
Cars are cool. I think that goes without saying. So how about a show about a teenage racecar driver who competes in races around the world and brings down criminals in the process? And also, what if said racer had a car equipped with special functions for certain circumstances, like, say, auto jacks for propping the car up for repairs (when not driving) and for jumping (when driving), grip tires, rotary saws for cutting down trees, retractable bulletproof glass roof, super-headlights, underwater booster, periscope, and oxygen tank, and a homing robot? That is the Mach 5, the fastest racing car in the world, and the car that's as instantly recognizable as its driver, Speed Racer.
That's the show's general premise. From reading that, it's easy to see how it appealed to those who like action shows, since that is what this show is.
But really, why is this show so stupid?
Well, I think a lot of cheesy charm got added to it by the English dub. Of course, this show is just as stupid in Japanese as it is in English, but the English version is especially memorable because of the following things: absolutely everyone talks like Micro Machines commercials (every Speed Racer parody ever made has a field day with this), the narrator is prone to redundant dialogue as well as reminding us in every single episode that Racer X is Rex Racer in disguise, and the voice acting is over-the-top and loud. But that's just the dub. The other aspects of the show's stupidity are in the animation itself: lip-syncing is legendarily awful (it matches up to no language I know of), the expressions are as over-the-top as the acting, and the action is so totally implausible it's hysterical (check out the first four minutes of "The Great Car Wrestling Match"; that had me in absolute hysterics).
Believe it or not, until Sailor Moon and Pokemon got dubbed, this was the show that defined anime in America. It was quite a phenomenon.
And really, that's about all I can say about Speed Racer. I cannot recommend this show enough. Its stupidity has to be seen to be believed. I say this show is not "so bad it's good"; I say it's "so terrible it's awesome."
