Speed Racer (1967)

Speed Racer is the americanized version of Mach GoGoGo, an animated television series created by Tatsuo Yoshida and produced by Tatsunoko Productions.

Manga
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 more popular automobile racing comics, Pilot Ace. Pilot Ace's main storyline formed the structure for Mach GoGoGo, which followed the adventures of an ambitious young man, who soon became a professional racer. The characters’ designs in Pilot Ace set the main ground for the character design in Mach GoGoGo. Yoshida got his idea for the 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 DB5, 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 has a triple meaning: "Mahha-gō" (マッハ号) is the name of the car; the name of the main character is Gō Mifune; and finally, it contains the English word "go". In the American adaptation, the Mach 5 stems from the number 5 on the door. Although, in Japanese, go (五) is the word for the number 5, the Kanji character gō (号) which is used in the car name actually means "item number" (i.e. it is an ordinal suffix). In addition, gogogo, is used as a general Japanese sound effect for rumble. Taken together, the program's title means, "Mach-gō Gō Mifune Go!" The manga (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 were adapted to the anime. However, minor changes occur between both the original manga and the anime series, such as differences between back stories of several characters and places. A few years after the volumes were released, Yoshida decided to release his manga series as an anime program, adding additional plots. 52 episodes aired in Japan, each one emulating the fast-paced action of the manga.

Anime
The manga spawned an anime adaptation which actually became a bigger success. 52 episodes were produced from 1967 to 1968. In 1997, Tatsunoko produced a modernized version of Mach GoGoGo which aired on TV Tokyo, ABC lasting for 34 episodes. An English adaptation of this remake was produced by DiC titled Speed Racer X, which aired in 2002 on Nickelodeon. Only the first 13 episodes were adapted due to licensing disputes between DiC and Speed Racer Enterprises.

American localization
The English rights to Mach GoGoGo were acquired by syndicator Trans-Lux (which originally was, and still exists as, an electronics manufacturer), and Speed Racer premiered on American television in the summer of 1967. In the series, Speed's full name was Go Mifune, in homage to Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune. His name, Americanized, became Speed Racer. His adventures centered on his powerful Mach 5 car, his girlfriend Trixie, his little brother Spritle, Spritle's pet chimpanzee Chim-Chim, and his mysterious older brother, Racer X, whose real name was Rex Racer. For American consumption, major editing and dubbing efforts were undertaken by producer Peter Fernandez, who likewise not only wrote and directed the English-language dialogue but 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 and composed by Nobuyoshi Koshibe, and he subsequently also wrote its English lyrics. A Speed Racer daily comic strip written and drawn by Mort Todd ran in the New York Post from 2000–2001. IGN ranked the original Speed Racer series at #29 on its "Best 100 Animated Series" list. At Otakon 2015, Funimation announced that it had acquired the license to Speed Racer from Tatsunoko and would release it on Blu-ray for the first time. Funimation gave Speed Racer two separate home video releases: a standard release for the English version on May 30, 2017, and a collector's edition for the Japanese version with English subtitles on November 7, 2017, the first such North American release

Additional Voices

 * Original: Kiyoshi Kobayashi (Three Roses Club)
 * English: Jack Curtis (Announcer, Various), Peter Fernandez (Various), Jack Grimes (Various), Corinne Orr (Various)