Superauto Mach 5

Speed Racer aka "Mahha go go go" has been a well known anime since the Vietnam War era.

It's about the adventures and life of a young man named Speed Racer, who's always dreamed in becoming a well known racer someday. He's knowledgeable about history & is a simple minded kind of guy who only uses violence for the last resort. Speed is also a good fighter.

His father Pops Racer has built and designed a custom made race car, called the Mach 5. The most unique racing vehicle of it's kind. Equipped with power jacks, cutting blades, emulating lights, bullet proof glass, underwater travel, and a BM radio. With this car, Speed can be able to accomplish the races and grand pixes that he competes in. The Mach 5 also makes a perfect getaway vehicle and a greater advantage in escaping dangers.

Throughout the series, Speed will be going through many challenging races and adventures. As well as making enemies with Conspiracies, Mafias, Assassins, Thieves, Burglars, Rivals, & Terriosts. With the Mach 5 to drive in, and a group of reliable friends, Speed will be able to get through many hardships.

Despite it being made 40 years ago. This Japanese animated cartoon really shows it's age. And it has one of the oldest dubs to date. Cool thing about the Dub is, it manages to be the first successful Anime franchise to hit the U.S. shores and all the characters are done by 4 voice actors. Which is less than the average number in today's management of voice choices.

The voice acting is good, but very dated for it's era of time. Since this aired back when Anime wasn't highly known as it is today. But since then it has been admired and inspired by many people. I never seen the original version, but hopefully one day I will to see what it was like unedited.

It's not for everyone, but I think it's a classic for a foreign made, American distributed anime. Due to it's sophisticated scenes, cartoon violence, and car crashes. I recommend it for 6 and up.

One of the most complex early anime series to be dubbed for American audiences. Speed Racer is the teenaged son of a car designer, whose Mach 5 can jump, go underwater, clear a path of trees and do other tricks. Besides winning various races, Speed and his family (girlfriend Trixie, kid brother Spritle and pet monkey Chim-Chim) run into spies, saboteurs, criminals and other bad-guy types.

What raises the show above simple adventure is the family background. Speed's brother Rex, suffering dishonor and shame, adopts the identity of Racer X, secretly aiding his brother and goading him into becoming the world's best racer. The series has its dark moments, and the use of gunfire and explosives kept it off American TV for years ("too violent for kids").

The show is far better than the 1994 version, a simple licensing of the character for a "kid-friendly" racing show. However, a new anime version (under the Japanese title "Mach A Go Go") has been made; it may surface in a well-dubbed English version in a few years.

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.

Speed Racer "Mahha Go Go Go" (1967) is arguably the seminal anime of all time. The only thing in the states that predates it, aside from a feature film like, Alakazam The Great "Saiyu-Ki" (1960-61)and other Peter Fenadez efforts like Asto Boy, Marine Boy, Gigantor etc . . . is a series called 8-MAN "Eitoman" (1963). It was an excellent series about an android, who looks strangely similar to Racer X, that "powers-up" by reaching behind the 8 into his chest and smoking a "Power Cigarette". You can see why that series didn't make it out of the 60's. Speed Racer, however, is and remains a timeless classic. Everything is so over the top, on has to wonder if Peter Fenandez and crew even had a proper translation to work from. Maybe they didn't, but it doesn't matter. The have one of the coolest cars in the world! Right up there with the Batmobile, The Green Hornet's Black Beauty and Mad Max's Interceptor is the Mach 5. You can's drive it and not look cool in doing it, especially with Trixie by your side, not to mention Spridle and Chim Chim hiding in the trunk.

But Speed is impetuous. Always trying to win the race by leaping before he looks. But, luckily for him Kabala of Ka-pe-ta-pek (You have to say it that way or it's just not funny) is really Racer X, who is really Speed'solderbrotherRexwhoranawayfromhomeyearsago. (You have to say it that way too. In fact the stilted and slurred together English as the voice actors try to match the story elements to the Japanese lip movements is part of it's charm. That and the fact that the Mach 5 can drive straight up the side of a mountain with little or no problem at all.

And you can never get enough of all the "Joke Names", like Snake Oiler of the Car Acrobatic Team. Speed Racer maybe one of the few anime that's actually better than the original Japanese. As well as the most violent cartoons since the original Johnny Quest (1964). But only the baddies get killed in them. So there's always that rewarding sense of poetic justice, so it's okay. Sure, The Malange or anything equipped with the GR-X engine may be faster, but they're just too dangerous to drive. So strap yourself into the Mach 5 and hold on! OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

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.