Blogging Speed Racer Again

While most of you Anime bloggers are covering the Emo antics in Code Geass, I’ve taken a more “classical” approach to my Anime blogging. I blog about Anime that I have access to that may not be the newest Anime out there, but are certainly interesting ones to follow as a series. Speed Racer is one of those interesting ones to blog about, since as far as I know not many people blog about this series and I’ve been watching it recently. Having finished the Read or Die OVA last night I decided to go back to progressing though Speed Racer and his hot rod shenanigans (eww, I might have to rethink that explanation, it sounds so… yaoi…).

Making my way through the entire second disk of the DVD box set, there’s a lot of story to be covered here, but not really. Speed Racer seems to have this formula:

1: The Challenge

A new threat to Speed Racer’s winning reputation (and possibly manliness, which is surprisingly a lot in the three parts of “The Most Dangerous Race”) vows to beat Speed Racer at a race

2: Trixie Whines at Speed/Pops warns Speed not to race

These two theorems of formula are used together to build the plotline that echoes Rex Racer’s disobeying Pops and racing without his permission/crashing.

3: Speed starts out easily enough, but encounters problems when the racing gets tougher.

I have seen this formula in every episode, and even though it has been subverted in The Race Against the Mammoth Car and The Most Dangerous Race, it’s only subverted to shift your expectation of “Speed’s the main character, there’s no way he’ll lose” to “OH NOES! SPEED IS IN DANGER! NOT WANT!”. Compared to other examples of Main Character Syndrome like in Yu-Gi-Oh, where the main character never loses at anything, Speed Racer encounters struggles both external on the race track and internal as he doubts his own racing abilities on occasion. What’s interesting about Speed Racer is that it’s never boring, Speed has many dramas in his life and deals with them with the support of his friends.

4: Speed Racer overcomes challenges, wins or draws race, and learns that his value of the lives of his rivals who are endangered on the hazardous rally tracks is more important than winning.

I like this bit about Speed Racer, he’ll do anything to win but cheat, and when he says that he means it. He even warns other racers who are in trouble with impending exploding engines, despite this possibly destroying his Machiavellian advantage over them. Speed even gets out of his car to help others, and he sees that as even more important than winning races.

In the five episodes I’ve watched tonight, a two parter and a three parter, you learn a lot about Speed Racer’s limitations and his efforts to overcome them. Also, the revelation that the Mach-5 isn’t the best racing car in the world compared to other cars that are more advanced give the show more believability, as the Mach-5 is developed and maintained in order to keep its winning potential. The Mach-5 is actually seen being worked on and redesigned, and Pops is exhausted by the effort to the extent he has to go to hospital. You know he’s going to be fine, but if this wasn’t a kids show I’d be even more worried for him than I was. Thank God Hideaki Anno didn’t make Speed Racer or the show would have been quite traumatic to watch…

Racer X, repeatedly pointed out to be “unbeknown to Speed, he is secretly his older brother who ran away so many years ago” (or something like that to the point of “OK, I GET IT ALREADY!”) is a character who although will do anything he needs to do in order to win, however he loves his brother very much and frequently gets him out of peril, whether it be being his “seeing eye dog” when Speed cannot see for blindness (weirder than it sounds, Speed Racer drives in a race without being able to see in these episodes), or punching up bad guys who try and trash the Mach-5. He’s a masked man who, like Zorro, is an unconventional hero, but unlike Zorro, does not have a sword, hat or cape. He’s one of the most likable characters in the show, because his cool AND he’s thoughtful.

Trixie on the other hand is annoying, but has redeeming noble spirit in caring about her boyfriend Speed and his little brother. Her voice irritates me though.

All in all it was a fun watch, and I’ll be watching another disk of Speed Racer next weekend if I can.

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Speed Racer: First Four Episodes review

I’m going to review some actual Anime for once, instead of just talking about random geeky stuff *gasp!*

Essentially Speed Racer is new to me, I wasn’t exposed to it as a kid, so it’s a completely fresh experience. Not exactly the newest Anime out there to review, but since the new live action movie is out in Australia soon, it’s a timely one to review. The first reference to this series I ever saw was in a Family Guy episode, which really didn’t do justice to what is a great, entertaining show about car racing. There’s a whole family of characters (the Racer family), and the estranged Masked Racer who is Speed Racer’s brother. Considering this is a show that has a little kid and a monkey as comic relief, the interaction between Speed and Masked Racer is pretty poignant stuff, since to Masked Racer, Speed is the little brother that he never knew. I almost cried in some scenes where the poor guy fears he’ll never be able to face the father he disobeyed in that race long ago that went awry, when he crashed the first Mach-5. It really is powerful stuff, more than this show usually gets credit for.

The crashes in this show are horrific however. I heard they had to cancel this show in Germany because of the graphic nature of the crashes, which explode in firey balls of death with mangled car bits everywhere. And they call this a kids show? No wonder the DVD box set has a PG rating (Australian OFLC Rating, not the American classification system). I thought Kimba the White Lion had possibly traumatic scenes that children would be scared by, but Speed Racer, even though the violence was toned down in the American dub/cut, is still quite unnerving.

But don’t let that spoil the fun, really it’s a racing-caper show that has some good laughs and decent racing sequences that aren’t boring, even for a non-car racing fan like me, the wacky sci-fi/James Bond elements of the car racing plot hold your attention, and make the progression of the story more interesting.

It may not seem as deep as Neon Genesis Evangelion, but it’s worth watching this series if you haven’t already seen it, not just because of the live action movie, but because it’s a good show, and chances are you’ll love it. Just don’t get carried away behind the wheel after watching it, ya’ll!

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