anonymousjoe

As a child i would watch the dub and loved it. I recently rewatched it as an adult and couldn't help but laugh at the horrible plot lines and script. But iit wasn't ment for adults it was made for children. I think most children would like it for some of the outdated humor and really really rallly bad puns. The childlike drama of it makes it great for children in 6-10 age range. Its a classic, thats pretty much all you can say about it...

literaturenerd

Of all the anime ever to be brought over to the United States, very few have become household names to non-anime fans and have dominated America's stereotypes about anime. Speed Racer was one of the first anime ever brought over along with Astro Boy and it is still 50 years later probably the anime that best exemplifies the view middle aged Americans have of the medium. Hell, Tarantino's character even wears a Speed Racer T-shirt in Pulp Fiction! This was actually the first anime I ever saw on TV as a kid when I was about 5. It is also probably the reason I wasrather reluctant towards anime until Dragonball Z and Pokemon came out. Speed Racer may be an oldie, but a goody it ain't. The art is absolute crap, the dub is LEGENDARILY horrible because the US studio didn't want to change the lip flaps and ordered the voice actors to talk ridiculously fast to match the animation. I was considering writing this entire review with no punctuation of any kind to emulate what listening to the show felt like, but I decided against it. The plot is formulaic, although the episodic plot twists are often absurd. The characters are very shallow. Is there anything good about this anime? Well....the opening theme was catchy! The reason it was successful was that it actually did offer American audiences something different and did several things totally new on this side of the Pacific. Speed Racer was quite different than the American cartoons of the 1960s that were mostly still 6 minute shorts like Loony Toons. The concept of a 30 minute cartoon that had a continuous story was rather new to Americans at the time. There were a couple 30 minute episode cartoons like Scooby Doo and the Flinstones, but those were shows where each episode is completely independent. Rocky and Bullwinkle had multi-part episodes, but Speed Racer upped the ante by not only having multi-parters but also a somewhat continuous plot. An event that happened in one multi-part adventure might be referenced in another one, unlike Rocky and Bullwinkle where each multi episode "story arc" is independent and never referenced again. This radical change in cartoon storytelling allowed young audiences to forgive Speed Racer's many flaws. Overall: 3/10 Is it fair for me to rate something this low despite its age and historical impact? There are several anime that are about as old as Speed Racer and have aged a LOT better, so I would argue that age isn't the problem. Lupin the 3rd is from the early 1970s and despite the VERY limited animation, the comedy is great, the characters are fun, and it is a joy for people of all ages to watch in 2015. None of those compliments could be said about Speed Racer. I appreciate Speed Racer for its historical value, but I sure as hell don't like it. I guess that sort of makes it like the anime "Birth of a Nation" in that last regard.