Jesus, Speed Racer well and truly sucks

[665 aka The Semi-Christ]

I'm astonished that I actually used to sprint home from elementary school so as to be sure that I wouldn't miss a single minute of this show.

It's now being shown on Speedchannel and the other day I watched an episode. Well, 5 minutes, 'cause that's all I could stand.

Where do I start?

Shitty animation? Check.

Shitty voice overs? Check.

Appalling racial stereotypes? Check.

Plots that are unbelievable even when deeply stoned? Check.

It seemed so much different and better back when I was a kid, but I guess that's the fog of time working it's magic again.

Just awful.

[Mazikeen]

Don't forget the "catchy" theme song.

It's been a while since I've seen Speed Racer though. Even as a child I wasn't all too thrilled with it and could only stomach a few episodes of the show.

[Master Wang-Ka]

When I was a child, I thought "Speed Racer" was cool beyond cool.

As an adult, I sat there openmouthed with the sheer insanity of it. It actually worked rather well as comedy.

Furthermore, I could see why I liked it. Fantastic body count. Snappy theme song. Violence. Had a kid and a monkey in it. And best of all, it was fast-paced enough to operate well within my infant attention span.

Bad plots? Pfft. Show me an episode of Scooby Doo that had better ones. Lousy animation? It was 1966. Aside from Disney, who was doing better in 1966? And Disney was in the process of going downhill around then, too...

[don Jaime]

It's a Japanese cartoon, circa 1965. Of course it's horrible, and that's 90% of its charm. And Japanese animation is still seen through the lens of Speed Racer in the USA.

I loved this show as a child. My mother hated it, and it became the only show I was ever forbidden to watch. The less violent alternative? "Tom and Jerry" shorts. May be the only time they were considered slow-paced and wholesome. I remembered where my real interest lay, and treasured my one white spork-like Hot Wheels that resembled the Mach 5.

Then I saw it as an adult. My God. You're quite right, you have start enjoying it as a kid to come close to enjoying it as an adult. One minute saccharine Spritle and Chim Chim are throwing fruit at each other, the next Speed and Racer X are kicking a villain off a cliff to his death. It'll make my head whirl. And I almost said, "No kid should ever see this." But that wouldn't be any fun. And it would make the Dexter's Laboratory spoof pointless.

[NDP]

I never cared for Speed Racer. Even when I was five, there seemed something off-putting about the series to me. Also, the fact my local station bumped a half-hour of Warner Brothers' cartoons so they could replace it with this stupid show didn't exactly lessen my resentment.

[blowero]

It's a pretty awful cartoon ah and it is only entertaining for its campiness and bad voiceovers hmmm with run-on sentences that drone on and on with no changes in inflection eh because they are trying to overdub things that don't translate well by adding random words and grunting noises huh.

The only cool thing about it is the clever Japanese to English pun when they say "Go Speed Racer, Go", where his car is the Mach 5, and "go" means "5" in Japanese.

[Philster]

So why does Speed Racer have a "G" on his outift?

[furryman]

Speed Racer's "real" name (in japan) is Go Mifune

[Curate]

If "Go" means "five," does "Mifune" mean anything?

[Gatopescado]

Originally posted by Curate
If "Go" means "five," does "Mifune" mean anything?

With no disrespect to Toshiro, judging from this cartoon, I would guess "steaming shit-pile".

Even as a kid I had the sense to avoid this show like the clapp. My buddy (Hi, Steve!) seemed to enspouse the damn show as some kind of religion and base his life around it. He's kinda screwy.

[Cliffy]

I like how when Spritle was happy he'd do backflips -- which proved that his center of gravity was somewhere near the top of his head.

As a child I thought it was boring (nothing transformed, unless you count the transformation of the Mach 5 from a goofy-looking racecar to a goofy-looking racecar on stilts). As an adult, I find it insipid. As a drunk college student, I loved it.

--Cliffy

[rocking chair]

i only watch the ones with racer x.

i'm still amazed that no one caught on that racer x and rex racer were one and the same. didn't he ever fill out forms last name first? that would be a give away of gigantic proportions. x racer? rex racer?

good grief, no wonder he ran away from home.