Manga
Tatsuo Yoshida's Mach GoGoGo manga.
Top Row:Volume 1,Volume 2
Bottom Row:Volume 1 (Reprint), Sun Wide Comics release
Selected chapters of Tatsuo Yoshida's original Mach GoGoGo manga series were reprinted by Now Comics as Speed Racer Classics and by DC Comics/Wildstorm Productions as Speed Racer: The Original Manga (ISBN 1-56389-686-9). In 2008, a hardcover box set of the complete manga series was released by Digital Manga Publishing as Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go(ISBN 978-156970731-9).
The characters and storylines originated in Japan as the manga and anime series Mach GoGoGo, from the anime studioTatsunoko Productions.
Mach GoGoGo was first created and designed by anime pioneer Tatsuo Yoshida (1932–1977) as a manga series in the 1960s and made the jump to TV as an anime series in 1967. The actual manga was inspired by Yoshida’s earlier, and most popular automobile racing comics, Pilot Ace.[2] Pilot Ace’s main storyline would be lifted onto Mach GoGoGo, which followed the adventures of an ambitious young man who would soon become a professional racer.
When Yoshida had plans for a newer project, he took the popularity of Pilot Ace to his advantage. The characters’ designs in Pilot Ace would set the main ground for the character design in a newer project entitled, Mach GoGoGo. Yoshida got his idea for his story after seeing two films that were very popular in Japan at the time, Viva Las Vegas and Goldfinger. By combining the look of Elvis Presley's race-car driving image, complete with neckerchief and black pompadour, and James Bond's gadget-filled Aston Martin, Yoshida had the inspiration for his creation. Soon enough, Mach GoGoGo hit shelves in the early 1960s. The central character in the anime and manga was a young race car driver named Gō Mifune (Mifune Gō).
The name of the series, Mach GoGoGo is actually a triple pun:
"Mach-gō" (マッハ号?) is the name of the car, where gō is a suffix attached to the names of vehicles. The Mach 5 in the American adaptation stems from the interpretation of go (五?) being the Japanese word for the number 5.
It is the name of the main character, Gō Mifune. (Speed Racer in the American adaptation)
It contains the English word "go."
Taken together, the program's title means, "Mach-gō, Gō Mifune, Go!". This is what the saying "Go, Speed Racer, Go!" comes from, taking out Gō Mifune and replacing it with his English name.
Also: "Gogogo", is used as a general Japanese sound effect for "Rumble". The names themselves constitute a multilingual word play of the kind that had started to become part of the Japanese popular culture of the time.
The manga (which was compiled into two deluxe volumes for Fusosha's re-release) has several storylines such as "The Great Plan", "Challenge of the Masked Racer", "The Fire Race", "The Secret Engine" and "Race for Revenge" that have been adapted to the anime, each story having similar storylines.
However, minor changes occur between both the original manga and the anime series. Differences include minor changes in some storylines and back stories of several characters and places.
A few years later after the volumes were released, Yoshida decided to release his manga series as an anime program, adding new and heart-pounding plots in addition to the original stories in the manga. 52 episodes aired in Japan, each one emulating the fast-paced action of the manga.
Anime
Main article: List of Speed Racer episodes
The manga spawned an anime adaptation which became a bigger success than the manga which was created around the same time as its appearance. In 1997, Tatsunoko produced a modernized version of Mach GoGoGo which aired on TV Tokyo and lasted for 34 episodes. An English adaptation of this remake was produced by DiC titled Speed Racer X, which aired in 2002 on Nickelodeon, but only the first 11 episodes were adapted due to licensing disputes between DiC and the Speed Racer Enterprise.
Mach Girl (マッハガール Mahha Gāru?), a web based series by Tatsunoko Productions, and created by Tatsuo Yoshida's daughter, Suzuka English adaptation
The English rights to Mach GoGoGo were immediately acquired by American syndicator Trans-Lux. Speed Racer premiered on American television in the fall of 1967. In the series, Speed’s full name was Go Mifune, in homage to Japanese film star Toshirō Mifune. His name, Americanized, became Speed Racer. His adventures centered on his powerful Mach 5 car, his girlfriend Trixie, his little brother Spritle with pet chimp Chim-Chim, and his mysterious older brother, Racer X.
For American consumption, major editing and dubbing efforts were undertaken by producer Peter Fernandez, who also provided the voices of many of the characters, most notably Racer X and Speed Racer himself. Fernandez was also responsible for a rearrangement of the theme song's melody, written byNobuyoshi Koshibe, and subsequently wrote its English lyrics.[6] The theme was performed in the opening and closing titles (uncredited) by Danny Davis and the Nashville Brass.
A cover of the show’s theme song "Go Speed Racer Go", performed by Sponge, is included on the 1995 tribute album Saturday Morning: Cartoons' Greatest Hits, produced by Ralph Sall for MCA Records.
In a 2008 interview with Chicago Tribune DVD columnist Louis R. Carlozo, Fernandez recalled that he landed the job working on "Speed Racer" after ghost-writing scripts for Astro-Boy and Gigantor. Simultaneously with "Speed Racer," Fernandez also voiced the main character and wrote scripts for another anime series, Marine Boy, sometimes taping both shows in the same day in New York City. Fernandez also said he could not possibly have predicted Speed Racer's lasting appeal at the time or in the decades that followed. Reflecting on the series' staying power, he commented: "There was the family relationship. You knew about Speed's family, you knew them well. They were all involved in each race. And we all play with cars as little kids, we love cars. The Mach 5 was a hot car, and there were all sorts of cars throughout all episodes. I still think the Mach Five is ahead of its time."
In an effort to squeeze the complicated plots into existing lip movements, the frantic pace of the dubbing made Speed Racer famous—and famously parodied—for its quirky "fast" dialogue and constant gasping.
The series also reached areas beyond the United States. At about the same time the American series was aired, a Latin American adaptation of the series named, Meteoro, aired on Argentinian TV screens.
In the early 1990s the series made a comeback as reruns on MTV broadcast in the early morning hours.
In 1993, the series was rebroadcast in syndication concurrently with a new American-created remake courtesy of the newly established "Speed Racer Enterprises," with distribution by Group W's international unit. In this version, much to the annoyances of fans of the original version, all references to Trans-Lux were removed, with the opening sequence including a recreated logo, and the episode titles and closing credits were re-created. But the re-created closing credits sequence includes three typographical errors: Jack Grimes is misspelled Jack "Crimes," Hiroshi Sasagawa is misspelled Hiroshi "Sasacawa," and "Yomiko" is misspelled "Yumiko." This is the version that later aired on the Cartoon Network in the late afternoon (and later on in late night/overnight) programming, and it is also the version released on Region 1 DVD. The News Corporation owned motorsports-centric network Speed Channel also aired this series during morning hours in 2003. This version can also be seen on the streaming video service Hulu where the entire series is available.
IGN ranked the original Speed Racer series at #29 on its "Best 100 Animated Series" list.
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