“He’s Gaining On You, So You Better Look Alive!”
And now he’s dead. The moral of the story is, no matter how many lives you influence, it happens to us all, dammit.
I always thought Speed was an annoying, gaspy little sh*t, who should move over and let Sexy Rexy/aka Racer X have a whole lot more screen time (GAH-rrrowwwlllll). But who listened to me? Being an A-type personality (NOT to mention that fact that, in sister’s world, the BLONDE drives the f*ckin’ car, yo.), I consoled myself in my later years launching my ’74 Javelin skyward (sans airborne button), with Bingley performing the duel roles of annoying, gaspy, whiny little sh*t ~ a part you’ll notice he’s perfected ~ AND monkey sidekick. (Some people are born play-yahs, I give him that.)
Acknowledging what Speed Racer, Astro Boy and (now-in-my-head-for-the-rest-of-the-day-music) GIGANTOR meant to the middling of my youth, I wish most fervently that your track flag may always be green, Mr. Fernandez. Vaya con Dios.
Fun, Life | tree hugging sister | 
July 16, 2010 9:30 am
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I’ve never seen speed racer before. Man, that is some crappy animation.
Sky – the whole show, by today’s standards, is fairly lousy, save for the nostalgia value. When we were six, this stuff was the absolute BOMB. But yeah, Star Blazers and Battle of the Planets were both far better.
Part of this is the editing, I suppose, but wow… there’s a scene where the Mysterious Racer X (who is secretly Speed’s older brother!!!1!one!) talks about his mysterious origins in a voice-over… and then the next shot reveals that he has been standing in the Speed family’s living room the entire time. They see him, and he just wanders off. Nobody seems to care or be even mildly curious WHY the Mysterious Racer X who is secretly Speed’s older brother has been standing in their house for five minutes.
And did you know that Racer X is really Speed’s older brother??!?!?
Sorry, Fly. That cartoon had lousy animation by 1940s standards. Sometime in the 60s or 70s, someone somewhere decided the kids couldn’t differentiate between quality cartoon animation like Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, or Tom and Jerry and the less-frames-per-second cheaper cartoon animation like Spiderman, Captain America, and Speed Racer. We could tell the difference but we liked the new cartoons anyway. Bugs rules.
The “lousy” animation was due to the fact that anime studios of the time had budgets that weren’t even big enough to qualify as shoestring. As such, animation ran at 12 frames per second (known as “limited animation” pioneered by Osamu Tezuka, creator of Astro Boy). For what the animation itself lacked the characters and stories more than made up the difference.
Marine Boy and Speed Racer were the first anime I cut my five year old teeth upon and I was hooked, crappy animation not withstanding.
Nice tribute to a contributor to pop culture, THS! Fans of “Office Space” might remember that one gangsta-rap song that references Racer X. . .
Cartoon voices are fascinating to me. I love that Mr. Opportunity (a.k.a. Yakko Warner) is back.
“Cartoon voices are fascinating to me. I love that Mr. Opportunity (a.k.a. Yakko Warner) is back.”
Rob Paulsen
Yay!
Honestly that holds up pretty well to the other stuff coming out of Japan these past few decades. Sailor Moon, whatever, even the ‘quality’ of the animation in ‘spirited away’ is not much advanced beyond this.
amazing, really.