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).

Stayin' Up All Night? Oh, That's All Right....

The great ham radio enthusiast Jean Shepherd once said,

"night is the time people truly become individuals because all the familiar things are dark and done; all the restrictions on freedom are removed." -Shepherd, J.

Jean hosted a radio show late at night where he said whatever he felt like saying and developed a following of other "night people" who listened and called in to the program. I think I happen to agree with his assessment on "night people" because it it really does seem to be the case.

I think there's a lot of people who finish their daily trials and tasks in the heavily constrained hierarchical red-taped "outside world" and then come home to their little corners they have carved out in this crazy place. The little corners that are the only place on this earth which is all to themselves with no distractions. It's in these secret little corners that these night people read quietly and think about stuff.


I Like to Stay Up All Night Myself...

For as long as I can remember, I have been a night style person. I've been thinking hard to try and remember my first self-aware "all-nighter" and I think I got it.

It still works to this very day...

When I was 3 and a half years old back in 1986, my paternal grandfather (who referred to himself by the self-monickered title "Paw Jack") gave me an Atari 2600 and it was the hands-down highlight moment of my third year on this world.

I had some cool games for it like a baseball one (I threw a no-hitter to my next door neighbor once in this one), one where some bear collected precious gemstones, and this one where a little white triangle shot little dots at different colored shapes which exploded into smaller different colored shapes.

The Legend: Scott Safran

It was the little white triangle game that kept me up all night for the first time in my life. This game (if you haven't guessed yet) was called Asteroids and it was as addictive as all heck. How addictive was that silly game? Well, for example, according to the internet a guy once played Asteroids for 3 straight days and racked up an unheard of 41,336,440 points. This man's name was Scott Safran and this name will forever be remembered through the ages. Sadly, Safran passed away in 1989 while trying to save his cat Samson from a third story ledge. Safran is a hero in every sense of the word. RIP Scott...

Anyway, I got pretty good at Asteroids myself back in 1986, certainly nowhere near the level Safran played at, but for my age I wasn't too shabby. I clearly remember going to the basement to play it while everyone was asleep and playing it all night long. When my mom woke up the next morning and came down to find me already awake and playing Atari 2600, I totally straight up lied to her and said I just woke up fifteen minutes ago. Not only did I successfully stay up all night, but I didn't even get in trouble for it thanks to my expert 3-year old lying skills.

By 1991, I was doing it regularly. There were two cartoons I wanted to watch saturday mornings, Fantastic Max and Mr Bogus to be exact, and they started at 4:30am and 5:00am respectively. I noticed I was having trouble waking up at 4:30am on Saturday and was missing the opening end of the cartoons...so my idea was to stay up all friday night and that way there was no way I'd miss Fantastic Max and Mr. Bogus.

I used to play videos game all night long when I was a kid. I developed good cover up techniques to get away with it too. I remember later on in the Super Nintendo era it became a problem because there were games that needed to be "saved" before you could shut it off. One technique I developed was to have a pillow near by to put over the blaringly bright and very noticeable red power light that shone when the SNES was on. I certainly didn't want to lose my progress by shutting off the machine before I shut off the TV, and jumped onto the couch to feign sleep. The pillow (or sock sometimes) kept the red light hidden in the dark and the SNES powered up so no progress was ever lost.

My parents constantly developed and deployed anti-stayin'-up-all-night-counter-tactics against my stealth procedures and eventually they succeeded in thwarting my endeavors roughly around 1994. Subsequently, the year 1995 was probably the only year in my life that I was ever on a "get up in the mornin' and go to bed at night" style regimen.

Then in 1996 I got right back into stayin' up all night. During a holiday from school, I managed to stay up and catch an episode of a show called Late Night with Conan O'Brien and there was a cliffhanger going down on this show that implored me to see the conclusion of it. The next day was once again a school day but I had to stay up to 12:35 in the morning to see if Conan and Andy had resolved this issue that captivated my attention the night before.

What implored me to once again become a night person? What could possibly have been so edge-of-yer-seat exciting that I had no choice but to develop new stayin' up late stealth methods?

The search for Grady Wilson....




Yes, call me insane, odd, or even dumb but I gradually regressed into not sleeping again because I had come down with an extreme case of the Grady Fever.

Conan had many old obscure celebrities on his show like Abe Vigoda and Nipsey Russell. It seems he wanted to get Grady on his show too but to his dismay, no one knew where Grady was. Was he okay? Was he dead? What happened to Grady? It was too much for me to handle, I had to know where Grady was. I had to stay up each night and follow the Search for Grady. The search for Grady went on for 47 days, and I managed to stay up (despite all efforts to stop me) for each of those 47 nights.

The show ended at 1:35 in the morning, so then I thought, "hey now, I hafta be up for school in like 5 hours, what the hell is the point of going to sleep for 5 hours?" Naturally, the sanest thing to do was just to stay up all night long. After Conan, I'd switch to the cable channel 18 who had the GREATEST all night programming I'd ever seen to this day...

1:30 am to 2:00 am: Rocky and Bullwinkle (this show had class)
2:00 am to 2:30 am: The Young Ones (starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson)
2:30 am to 3:00 am: Bottom (also starring Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmonson)
3:00 am to 3:30 am: Speed Racer (oh man, this song was so catchy!!!)
3:30 am to 4:30 am: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show (with Captain Lou Albano!)
4:30 am to 5:00 am: Muppet Babies (shit's tight yo...)

Shhhh be quiet...Toshiro is sleeping.

Then I'd go to school and sleep with my eyes open in class. I heard of that technique in a late night movie once where Toshiro Mifune and Charles Bronson were walking through a desert. Mifune said he can sleep while he walks...so I figured if he can do it while he walks, it shouldn't be too hard for me to sleep while faking to pay attention in class.

When I was sixteen years old, the first job I got was an 11pm to 7am shift at my local greasy shitty Tim Whoretons donut shop. I liked that shift because I was the only one in the store and I could do my duties myself and my way without any other people or "managers" around.

Slowly I started to notice that the world was full of night people and they all seemed to hang out in bars, drink, and have fun. Staying out late and getting into zany adventures around town with other "night people" is a nice break from quietly absorbing data from time to time.

Hey, it's like Neil on the Young Ones once said...

"Listen, man. Sleep gives you cancer. Everyone knows that." -Neil (Young Ones - Oil...(listen here))

Why Would Night People Do This?

I dunno, maybe it's like that movie Lawnmower Man and we're just trying to absorb as much data as possible into our brains with books, tv, radio, and internet and become really smart or something. Or maybe there's something more to it than that.

I mean life is pretty short, why would you want to waste time sleeping? It seems like a bit of a waste, no? That guy from the film Roadhouse put it best when he said,

"I got plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead..." -Guy from Roadhouse (hear it: here)

Patrick Swayze's bouncing mentor from Roadhouse is dead on with that statement. You will have more than enough time to do sleeping when you are dead in the cold ground, so what's the big rush to do sleeping while you are alive?

End

Grady...