Retro Sci Fi TV: A look at shows from the past that may not have stood the test of time and/or that are relegated to their era, but many of us still have fond memories of them.
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What Is It? Speed Racer is a young race car driver who drives the super-fast and super-advanced Mach 5. His racing adventures often find him pitted against other high-tech vehicles or drawn into espionage plots involving the secret agent who doubles as a race car driver known as Racer X.
Aired: 1967-68, Syndicated, 1 Season Totaling 52 Episodes
Starring: Peter Fernandez, Nelly Valverde, Jack Curtis, Corinne Orr
Developed By: Jinzō Toriumi, Peter Fernandez
Is it Must-Watch Sci Fi TV? No. It’s worth a look as an example of early Anime that made it to the U.S., but for the most part it only has nostalgia value these days.
The Skinny: If you were a kid growing up in the late-60s through the ’70s (and even into the ’80s), then Speed Racer was likely your first exposure to Anime, and also a pretty fun series if you were a young sci fi fan. A few other Anime entries had made it over to the States earlier in the ’60s like the original Astro Boy and Gigantor, but neither proved as popular nor had the same staying power as Speed Racer. The adventures of Speed and the Mach 5 were marketed in syndication and became a staple for kids television for years after it debuted. It was much more of an action-adventure show than a sci fi entry, but it worked in plenty of genre elements with its high-tech vehicles and espionage stories and appealed to the young fan who had a preference for sci fi.
The show did go through some editing for the American market (it was titled Mach GoGoGo in Japan), but it was not “kidified” nearly as much as later Anime imports such as Battle of the Planets and Voltron. It had plenty of violence and explosions and non-regular characters meeting an untimely death (heck, Speed sends another racer to his demise when he bumps him off the road in the opening credits!), but not too much more than what was found on other action cartoons or the Gerry Anderson Supermarionation shows at that time. And even though Speed Racer inspired an entire generation of young cartoon and sci fi fans, it does not hold up that well today as the animation was rather crude and the stories have much more appeal to kids than adults. But this is one that many have fond memories of watching when they were younger and they still likely can find much in the way of nostalgic joy when revisiting the original episodes today. (And if you watch the intro from the YouTube video above you are going to have the theme song stuck in your head the rest of the day.)
Cancelled Too Soon? No. This one did not reach the 65+ episode threshold that the syndication market prefers for an animated series targeted at younger viewers, but that is because the Japanese market works differently (especially back then) and 52 episodes was considered enough for the show at the time.
Should It Be Rebooted? It already has, multiple times. In 1993, the American-made New Adventures of Speed Racer debuted in syndication but was not well received and only lasted thirteen episodes. A modernized reworking of the original was produced in Japan in 1997 and ran for 34 episodes. Eleven of those eps aired in the U.S. on Nickelodeon, but not the full series due to a rights dispute. In 2008, a live-action revival of the franchise was attempted on the big screen but turned out to be a Box Office flop. And currently another live-action reboot is in the works, coming from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions, which will be racing to the Apple TV+ streaming service.
Interesting Fact: The “M” on Speed Racer’s car and helmet is usually assumed to stand for Mach 5, the car’s designation, but it actually stands for Mifune, the name of Speed’s family in the Japanese version. The often parodied fast pace of the dialogue in the U.S. version was due to the necessity of cramming the complicated plots into the show’s run-time as well as the short time they had to record the English dub.
Where Can You Watch It? The entire original series has been collected on DVD and Blu-ray, and it is also available to purchase VOD. It is currently streaming on Funimation.
Read More About the Show: Wikipedia | IMDb.com
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