Rating the Various Incarnations of Speed Racer

Almost the end of June... time is flying this year, man. Gotta a write a June one to keep my skills sharp.... my typin' skills, that is.

Simple format here, this month. I shall be looking at Three incarnations of Speed Racer and devising a powerful analytic system to quantify their greatness (or in some cases lack thereof of greatness).

If you read this on the web version, there is a Intro portion before the articles start... and I know I wrote in there the other month that upcoming articles shall be about Tien Shin Han and then Sonny Tufts.... but I don't really remember where I was going with those.

Alright so, firstly we need a good ranking system for our Speed Racer review. When reviewing other Japanese content, which much of their content I look at as being wild stuff with many campy special effects, I usually go with something like this:

This is a sample review of how I felt about the 1974 show "Ultraman: Leo"...

Story: A

Sound Effects: B+

Fighting: B+

Drama: A

Cinematography: A+

Kaiju: S++

Special Effects: S++

Overall: S (Super)

All of these elements are present and important cogs to be considered whence reviewing an Ultra Man related piece of art... so all of these elements need to be factored-in if a person, myself for example, were to sit down and rate all of the Ultra Man incarnations over time one of these days.

Now, in the case of Speed Racer, we will use a modified version of this Ultra Man rating system... why you ask? Much of what makes Ultra Man cool, fun, and good overlap into what makes Speed Racer cool, fun, and good...

Yet, key components of Ultra Man and Speed Racer differ greatly... and therefore we must make a Rating System which is more tailored and specifized for the Speed Racer universe. It is this:

Story: ?

Sound Effects: ?

Fighting: ?

Drama: ?

Opening Theme Song: ?

Race Car Driving: ?

Special Effects: ?

Overall: ???

As you, gentle reader, can plainly see... "Kaiju" has been substituted with "Race Car Driving." Why the switch? Why, there are no Kaiju in Speed Racer, that's why. Yet, there's a great deal of Race Car Driving in Speed Racer. The alteration makes complete sense.

Well, in one lesser-known incarnation of Speed Racer there were horrible monster men similar in some ways to Kaiju. We shall get to that later... and as amazing as this sounds... points shall be docked and the show in question shall be penalized accordingly for putting monsters in my Speed Racer!

It should be noted that in Japan "S" is way more greater than "A"... "S" means "Super" in their ratings... and it means it is better than great.

The Incarnations in Question are....

1) Speed Racer (1967)

2) The New Adventures of Speed Racer (1993)
3) Speed Racer (The Hit Film of 2008)

Now, we must note that there are indeed other incarnations of Speed Racer... yet I only know of these, now, from reading about them... I have previously never heard of either of them.

These two are "Speed Racer X" (1997) and Speed Racer: The Next Generation (2008). I am wondering if we should get these out of the way first or after. I think we shall get them out of the way, first. I have never seen or heard of these shows so all I know of them are their theme songs from searching for them.

Speed Racer X:

Not really doing it for me, this song. I mean the singer has a bit of sexiness to her voice and her "Oh Yeah" inserted in there is kind of cool... but on the whole... I can't say this song is an improvement on anything. The animation of this show looks very slick though ... so I might have to check it out in the future.

Speed Racer: The Next Generation

I've never heard of this previously, and am surprised it lasted five seasons, because it looks pretty bland for a Speed Racer show. The theme song is not my cup of tea. I would describe the style as "Mall Punk"... which is something of a scornful term to some extent. I grew up with Punk Rock music as my main line of music as a teenager... I was into things like Nomeansno, Jello Biafra, Black Flag, Ultra Bide, Fugazi, DOA, and music like that... it was more wild, you know? To refer to something as "Shopping Mall" punk, as a person more into wilder stuff, isn't to be mean... it's just a term that meant like the kids would listen to this music, this Mall Punk... whilst drinking 12 dollar grass-wheat shakes with their Hot Topic t-shirts ... and thinking they were like bad kids. They might've had those Husker Du X's marked on their hands as well.

I don't want to generalize and say Mall Punk is bad or anything... but just for me personally, my opinion on this whole song in general terms is that... I really think Mall Punking the Speed Racer theme is in poor taste. I do. I truly do. It is. It is in poor taste to do this.

Let's start the main article now....

Speed Racer (1967)

Speed Racer, the original, the show itself. The real deal. High Octane's High Octane. This IS Speed Racer in its most original and iconic form.

I used to watch this show as an early teen (13/14-ish) at 3:30 AM.... and it lit a fire under me each time this song came on the television. A literal fire was lit under me. This song does not have a bad SECOND in it... even a bad millisecond in it. It is completely good from the start to the end. It is simple yet perfect.

You see that Red Car going off the track and exploding in an insane lake of fire and smoke? That happened all the time on this show.... it was from Japan so people were allowed to perish horribly on this show. Genzo/Skull-Duggery/Zoomer-Slick (inconsistent translations) used to run cars off the track ... they'd blow up... and you'd be there like... that driver could not have survived that!

This show's run on the channel that I used to watch it at 3:30 AM... ended the show's run on a cliff-hanger... a LITERAL cliff-hanger... where Speed had to drive his car (the Mach 5) over two tight-ropes connected to two mountains. The show ended running on that channel half-way through the two-part cliff hanger and I didn't know if Speed ever made it... until a few years later where I had a DVD, a cool one with tire indentations in the DVD's cover... where I finally saw the end to the mountain race. They make it over the chasm/gorge... yet Racer X crashes and breaks his legs... if memory serves.

Racer X, spoiler warning, is actually Rex Racer, Speed's supposedly long lost brother. It is possibly unintentionally comical that Speed never figures this out even though X talks like Rex and it is disconcerting that Speed cannot recognize his own brother... or Pops his own son for that matter.

I've seen this parodied even more ridiculously on Kinnikuman where RamenMan gets horrible brain damage after WarsMan performs his screw-driver claw-attack off the top rope... and RamenMan despite grabbing the ring-bell and placing it in front of his head... cannot stop WarsMan's finisher as the spinning drill claws pierce the ring bell and RamenMan's skull... leaving RamenMan permanently brain-damaged and in a vegetative state.

RamenMan returns as the masked wrestler MongolMan... yet no one knows he's RamenMan despite MongolMan looking EXACTLY like RamenMan!

We're getting off topic now... so let's get to the review portion, shall we?

Story: A

Sound Effects: A+

Fighting: B

Drama: A

Opening Theme Song: S++

Race Car Driving: S

Special Effects: B+

Overall: S! (Suuuuuuper!)

The fighting is ok, the special effects are ok too... but this show really brings it to a higher level with its theme song, its dare devil race car driving, and its sound effects. Let us look now at the Mach 5's jumping sound effect.

Waneeeer.... Chaaaa-chaaa-chaa-chaa-cha.

The layered, fading out, sound of this car jumping is very beautiful to the human ear, I must say. To be perfectly frank with you readers... Everything that car does is beautiful.

The high rating for the sound effects is very warranted in this case. Chaaaaaa-chaaaaa-chaaa-chaa-cha, alone is worthy of A+ not to even mention the other totally wonderful sounds on this program.

So a Solid "Super" rating for this incarnation. It is absolutely just stalwart in its nature as a whole.

Nextly,

The New Adventures of Speed Racer (1993)

Mach 5 roarin' like a Jungle Cat!

"Hey Speed Racer, winners take the future... and evil forces are in play."

Oooooh, I get chills from this song. It lights an absolute fire in the inside-of-myself deep beneath my stone-like exterior's stoic disposition. This song melts my heart in such a passionate way. It is a very passionate song.

This song is a masterpiece. Yet, with "New Adventures" the greatness ends at this amazingly soul-intensifying ditty....

Story: C+

Sound Effect: C+

Fighting: C+

Drama: C

Opening Theme Song: S+

Race Car Driving: B

Special Effects: C

Overall: C+ (Ok)

This is the one that will need to be docked for putting monsters and all kinds of un-Speed like things in this show. It feels more like any other 90s show, almost cookie-cutter, in nature. This could easily have been called James Bond Jr. (I HATED THIS SHOW'S THEME SONG SO MUCH!), or Captain Planet, or a thousand other cookie-cutter 90s cartoons. No originality compared to its peers of the era... I mean if I were to watch a concoction montage of these 90s cartoons like this... I honestly probably wouldn't be able to identify them individually. They were very similar.

The theme song of this show is more than respectful... it is totally perfect and great. It blends guitar wails, pump-up lyrics, and off-hand random lyrics in such a way that one might even have to say that this song is a completely perfect 90s theme song... it could even be an Anthem of a country if it wanted to be... the Country of Being Cool.

There's a New Wave sort of rock to it, too. The band Devo, actually has, a song called Speed Racer in their repitoire... it is not a cover of the Speed Racer theme though... it is a sort of eclectic sarcastic song. It is a very nice song, too. New Adventures has a hint of this tongue-in-cheekness to it.

I find the line in this New Adventures number.... "Hey Speed Racer, winners take the future... and evil forces are in play!" as being so disjointed with the song.... it's almost utterly silly and pointless to the point of taking you out of the song... but the guitar wails and the pump-lyrics married around this line just seem to fit in perfect unity. The singer needed to break the fourth wall for a second to just to say "Hi" to Speed Racer in this song is what I'm guessing is happening here and it gives the ditty a sort of personal touch to it.

It's as if, it seems, Speed's theme song singer, felt the need to phone him up and ask him how he is and give 'em a heads up on the situation, while singing his song... like,

"Hey Speed, just calling you up to let you know something."

"Oh hey man, ok cool cool, what is it?"

"Yeah Speed, just so you know... winners take the future! Oh and... evil forces are in play!"

"Really? Wow. Ok cool. Yeah, for sure. You're so right, man. Thanks for calling me during this song."

"Oh no problem, Speed."

"Ok, bye."

"K, bye."

All in all, it is a general cookie-cutter from the 90s this show... but the theme song is simply divine.

Speed Racer (the 2008 smash-hit film)

I saw this in theaters when it came out back then. It is a fun movie for theaters because of all of the colors and spinning things and stuff. I liked it. I think J. Goodman was a very good Pops. I think C. Ricci was exceptional in this and is one of the most under-rated actresses of the current age (her portrayal of W. Addams stole the show in that Addams Family film).

As for the theme song? I don't really get it. It's a mash of old sound-bytes, techno beats, rap, foreign rap... and other things. I think it's kind of a mess... and cookie-cutter on top of it all... because if you played any top 40 hit on the radio next to this... formulaically ... who would know the difference? All pop music has become conveyor-belted to the point of total redundancy, I think. The Japanese language rapping part is cool.... the take on the original song is ok... it's just... as a stickler to the olden times... I can't see this concocted mess as being better than the song they are covering. That's just me, though..... and I can't see this song as being distinguishable, even with Japanese rapping, from any other song that's been on the radio in the last 20 years.

Not like the Mall Punk version ... the top 40 pop spin on the Speed Racer theme is not in poor taste as the Mall Punk version is... which is in definite poor taste... I think the top 40 pop Speed Racer number just misses the mark in trying to do too much, too fast, and in a very formulaic style.

The movie itself is pretty cool... though for audiences in 2008, this "Tokusatsu" style of live action film that was popularized in Japan was not well-known by the Western palette and it was kind of ignored by people for the most part. I like Tokusatsu... I think it is totally wonderful and inspiring. In some cases the campier it is the better... but when you go for full-out big-budget Tokusatsu style... it can be hit or miss. Personally, I think Speed Racer from 2008 was a HIT... I think it did Tokusatsu very well in a big budget way. I think it is an under-appreciated film... though I wouldn't necessarily consider it as a Tokusatsu classic, for that matter.

Story: B+

Sound Effects: A

Fighting: B

Drama: B

Cinematography: S

Race Car Driving: S

Special Effects: S

Overall: A

Conclusion

So, the original is the best incarnation. The movie was a great live-action version of something difficult to do live-action of. The in-between other incarnations are forgettable with the exception of the New Adventures theme song which is totally and completely good.

Thank you.

(Edit: This 2008 concoction of pop/rap is growing on me. It's a better song than I originally gave it credit for).