Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go

AUTHOR:Yoshida, Tatsuo

ARTIST: Tatsuo Yoshida (illustrator); Daryl Kuxhouse (letterer); Geoff Porter (letterer); Tawnie Wilson (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Shueisha (Japanese); Sun Wide Comics (Japanese); Fusosha (Japanese); NOW Comics (English); DC Comics (English); Digital Manga (English)

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION:Mahha go go go,1966-1968 (partial English translation, 1987-1990, 1992)

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1966-1968 (English translation, 2008)

Publication History

Tatsuo Yoshida was a pioneer of anime but began his career as a manga artist. To build support for his second anime series, Mahha go go go, released in English as Speed Racer, Yoshida drew and wrote a manga with the same title. In developing his characters and initial episodes, Yoshida drew heavily on his earlier manga series featuring car and motorcycle racing themes, in particular Pilot Ace (1960-1964). Mahha go go go first appeared in Shueisha’s Shonen Book magazine in June of 1966 and ran until May of 1968. The individual episodes were collected in tankobon books by Japan’s Sun Wide Comics beginning in 1966. In 2000, long after Yoshida’s death from cancer in 1977, Fusosha reprinted all of the episodes in a two-volume box set.

In the United States, Speed Racer debuted as a fifty-two-episode anime series that first aired from September, 1967, to September, 1968. Beginning in 1987, NOW Comics published select translated chapters of the manga as Speed Racer Classics. DC Comics’ imprint WildStorm published more episodes as Speed Racer: The Original Manga. In 2008, Digital Manga published the entire original series in two volumes based on the 2000 Fusosha edition. Titled Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go, this edition is considered the canonical version in English.

Plot

Tatsuo Yoshida created Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go in the hope that the manga would build a fan base for his planned anime series of the same title and convince potential sponsors to support the anime. Because car racing was popular in Japan in the mid-1960’s, Yoshida thought that young male readers would enjoy a fast-paced, action-packed series centered on this theme.

The first episode, aptly titled “Speed Racer Arrives!!,” introduces the protagonist, Speed Racer, and his friends and supporters. Speed Racer’s vehicle is the Mach 5, a superb racing car with an engine developed by his father. The special abilities of the Mach 5, which enable the car to jump over obstacles, drive underwater, and race on ultrajets, are introduced gradually in the series.

Initially, the plot of the series focuses primarily on car racing. Every race featured is marred by foul play. Speed shows an absolute desire to win and dreams of becoming a professional racer. However, his father, Pops, is adamantly opposed to his son’s chosen profession. When Pops, an engineer, quits his job to develop a special engine on his own, thugs try to steal his plans. There is a violent showdown, and Speed wins thanks to his girlfriend, Trixie, who intervenes from her trademark helicopter.

Next, Speed enters his first competition, the Sword Mountain Race, hoping to support his father’s engine research with the expected prize money. Typical of the racing episodes of the series, Speed is pitted against both an official competitor and some thugs who try to manipulate the race. Outracing and outwitting all of his opponents, Speed wins his race. However, the race is disqualified for irregularities.

The second chapter introduces Racer X, a masked racer who challenges Speed to a private race but is secretly supportive of him. When Speed and Racer X are pitted against Captain Terror and his minions, the Car Acrobatic Team, they win the race together. After Speed is temporarily blinded in an accident, Racer X takes the copilot’s seat in the Mach 5 and directs Speed to victory.

In chapter 3, Flash Marker Junior, the son of a car racer killed by thugs fifteen years previous, tries to kill his father’s criminal enemies with a remote-controlled racing car. Speed’s overriding sense of justice prompts him to intervene, which he does successfully. Flash Marker Junior and the surviving criminals surrender to the police. The next chapter, which includes fantastic and supernatural elements, focuses on a race in Central America. To save a remote tribe’s independence, Speed impersonates the tribe’s injured champion, Demon Kabala, and wins a race inside a volcano.

Back in Japan, Speed and Racer X are pitted against a young racer who is supported by organized criminals. The private match between Speed and Racer X from chapter 2 is repeated, in almost identical panels, before the official race begins. The race is won by Speed, but only because Racer X lets him pull ahead.

The three subsequent chapters shift the focus from car racing to outlandish capers in exotic settings. First, Speed battles both a young prince and a court conspiracy in Arabia. In the desert, Speed and his trusty Mach 5 survive sandstorms, attacks by rifle-wielding camel riders, and the crumbling of the Palace of Doom. The next chapter features a group of criminals trying to find the last secret of Henry Ford, which is hidden in a Ford Model T. In another chapter, the Kante Race in northern Mexico is a pretext for a story in which a gang of international criminals tries to steal a doomsday atomic element. Speed and Racer X, who enters the race as Chinese driver King Hu, defeat the criminals and save the world.

Next, Speed becomes a test pilot for engineer Mr. Otto, whose son, Speed’s friend Swifty, was killed by thugs working for Mister Condor, a shady businessman. Speed completes the test run, and the criminals are defeated and handed over to the police. The series ends with a chapter in which Speed must complete a three-island racecourse to save a tiny Pacific Island nation. Donning the garb of the injured crown prince, himself a racer, Speed fights evil Prince Sauna and a Japanese racer in his pay, the heinous Reaper. Reaper is killed in an accident he causes, and Sauna is double-crossed by his doctor before the race is over. As Speed wins, his family and friends arrive. They include Racer X, who finally reveals himself to be Speed’s older brother, Rex Racer. Six years before, he left the family in anger over Pops’ refusal to let him race. At the series’ end, the family is reconciled.

Volumes

• Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go, Volume 1 (2008).The English translation of the first four chapters of the series, based on the 2000 Fusosha edition, introduces the key characters and features three races in Japan before moving to a fantastic Central American setting.

• Speed Racer: Mach Go Go Go, Volume 2(2008). The English translation of the final six chapters, based on the 2000 Fusosha edition, focuses on fantasy adventure stories, introduces the Mach 5’s new capabilities, and resolves the Racer family conflict.

Characters

• Speed Racer, the protagonist, is a boyish-looking eighteen-year-old Japanese man with an Elvis Presley-style pompadour and heavy black eyebrows. Completely committed to winning every car race, he also has a strong sense of justice and is fiercely loyal to his parents, girlfriend, and younger brother. His races and other adventures fuel the plot of each chapter.

• Racer X, a.k.a. Rex Racer,is Speed’s older brother and secret mentor. He is a tall Japanese man in his twenties with strong facial features partially hidden by his black mask, which bears a white X and covers much of his face. An accomplished racer, he fell out with his father six years before the start of the narrative but still feels protective of his younger brother.

• Pops is Speed’s father,a portly, middle-aged Japanese man with a short moustache. He is a stubborn engineer who tries to prohibit his sons from racing. He designs the engine of Speed’s Mach 5.

• Trixie is Speed’s girlfriend, an attractive young Japanese woman with a 1960’s-style chignon. Resourceful and devoted to Speed, she is an accomplished helicopter pilot and rescues Speed at critical moments.

• Spritle Racer is Speed’s younger brother, a preteen boy often accompanied by the chimpanzee Chim-Chim. They join Speed in his adventures but often cause trouble, providing comic relief.

• Duggery is a young, arrogant, and ungrateful Japanese car racer whom Speed defeats.

• Captain Terror is a middle-aged Japanese racer who wears a white feather on his helmet and a flowing black robe. He dreams of joining man and machine to create a superior entity. Proud and willful, he loses to Speed.

• Flash Marker Junior is a young man obsessed with avenging his father. His vigilantism is opposed and overcome by Speed.

• Demon Kabala is a middle-aged Central American man who races roughly and unfairly to save his traditional tribe from forced assimilation.

• Zoomer Slick is a young Japanese racer. Arrogant, greedy, and in cahoots with criminals, he is defeated by Speed.

• Kim Jugger is a young Arabian racer. He is arrogant and ungrateful but is saved by Speed from a palace intrigue.

• Tongue Blaggard is a middle-aged man of indeterminate ethnicity. He sees car races purely as opportunities to win money.

• Belda Danke is a young European racer dressed in black. Her maternal love for her blind daughter, Emily, turns her away from evil.

• Mister Otto is a middle-aged Japanese engineer who resembles actor Toshiro Mifune. He isaproud nationalist who refuses to sell his engine patents to international corporations. Speed avenges the death of his son, Swifty.

• Crown Prince is a young Pacific Islander racer. He has a gentle spirit, and Speed impersonates him to secure his royal succession.

Artistic Style

Yoshida drew Speed Racer by himself, without the support of assistants typical of later manga. As a result, his panels tend to focus on the essential, typically featuring a character or machine. Yoshida’s style was influenced by the artwork of the American Superman comics, and this influence is particularly apparent in Yoshida’s drawings of the various villains of the series. Speed Racer and his friends are drawn in a style Japanese critics call mukokuseki, or nationless, appearing more European than Japanese. In contrast with the earlier chapters, the final chapter is drawn in a somewhat blunt, sloppy style.

Speed’s car, the Mach 5, is drawn in great detail and from many perspectives. With its rocketlike fenders and pointy central hood section featuring a stylized M, the Mach 5 resembles cars from the late 1950’s rather than the mid-1960’s, when the manga was first published. Other cars are drawn to resemble actual racing cars of the period, including those produced by Mercedes, Ford, and Aston Martin.

The relative visual realism of the cars is juxtaposed with scenes of fantastic crashes and surreal racecourses. The Mach 5 seems to survive major crashes depicted in bold, occasionally full-page panels. After most crashes, the car is virtually intact when the story continues in the next panel. There is an abundance of graphic depictions of violence—from car crashes to gun battles and fistfights—that shocked readers outside Japan in the 1960’s. Every race depicted in the series features thugs and vicious opponents who resort to violent tricks that send cars crashing into each other or spinning off the track.

Themes

A major theme of the series is Speed Racer’s unbending will to win every race he enters. However, this is juxtaposed with his innate sense of fairness and compassion for his fellow racers. As a consequence, Speed always acts to help others in need, even if they are his arrogant or ungrateful opponents.

Another key theme is Speed’s relationship with Racer X. Long before the final revelation that Racer X is Speed’s older brother, Speed finds himself in many situations in which he joins forces with this other well-respected professional driver. The bond between these two true racers is celebrated throughout the manga.

The series also celebrates individualism. Speed and his father stand up to and confront bullies, be they criminals or representatives of large corporations. Often, Speed must fight opponents who fight in groups, including a horde of evil bikers and the Car Acrobatic Team. Speed’s individual skill triumphs over the mass of attackers.

The manga includes a number of references to Japanese popular culture. For example, the Japanese surname of the protagonist, Mifune, pays homage to Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, who was famous for playing samurai roles. At the same time, it demonstrates the post-World War II American influence on Japanese culture. Speed’s helmet and the hood of the Mach 5 are adorned with the Western letter M, rather than a Japanese character. The series’ Japanese title also plays on Japanese-English interaction: The word go means “five” in Japanese and is also an appropriate racing command in English.

Impact

Yoshida developed Speed Racer in the tradition of early post-World War II Japanese manga. This tradition was primarily established by the influential work of Osamu Tezuka and is best exhibited in Tezuka’s Tetsuwan atomu (Astro Boy), first published between 1952 and 1968. Tezuka’s influence on Yoshida’s earlier works is pronounced, and as Yoshida based Speed Racer on his earlier racing manga, Tezuka’s influence is apparent in the later series as well.

Eventually, though the manga developed a loyal, international fan audience, the anime proved much more popular and influential. It was one of the first color anime and mixed a family story with a car-racing plot in a way that appealed to many viewers. The anime became one of the first to be adapted into English and broadcast in the United States, and its success prompted US companies to dub additional anime into English.

The enduring success of the anime led to the development of three Speed Racer video games in the 1990’s. These in turn fueled a short-lived revival of the manga in 1997, with new, noncanonical chapters created by manga artist Toshio Tanigami. Additional animated adaptations followed, introducing Speed Racer and his family to a new generation of fans. The original manga continued to be revered as one of the most important early manga to reach an international audience.

Films

Speed Racer. Directed by Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Warner Bros., 2008. This film adaptation stars Emile Hirsch as Speed and Christina Ricci as Trixie. The film differs from the manga by developing an original story line focused on racing. It also gives Speed an additional car, the Mach 6. At the end of the film, Racer X does not reveal his identity to Speed.

Television Series

Speed Racer. Directed by Hiroshi Sasagawa. Tatsunoko Productions, 1967-1968. This animated series stars the voice of Katsuji Mori (Peter Fernandez in English) as Go Mifune (Speed Racer). The anime series follows the manga quite closely. However, its fifty-two episodes include events, characters, and cars not featured in the manga. Racer X and Speed do not unite at the end of the anime. The English adaptation was directed by Fernandez.

Speed Racer X. Directed by Hiroshi Sasagawa. Tatsunoko Productions, 1997. This animated series, a remake of the original anime, stars the voice of Koichi Tochika (Dave Wittenberg in English) as Go Hibiki (Speed Racer). Characters were renamed and changed, with new ones added and old ones dropped. The series was canceled after thirty-four episodes. The English version was stopped after episode 11 because of licensing problems.

Speed Racer: The Next Generation. Directed by John Holt, Jay Surridge, Frank Rivera, and Matt Rodriguez. Lions Gate Entertainment, 2008- . This American animated series features the voice of Kurt Csolak as Speed, the son of Speed Racer. The series continues the original story of Speed Racer, replacing his car with the new Mach 6.

Further Reading

Graton, Jean. Michel Vaillant (1957- ).

Tezuka, Osamu. Astro Boy (1952-1968).

Bibliography

Gravett, Paul. Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics. New York: Harper Design, 2004.

Kelts, Roland. Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Maynard, Senko K. “Sources of Emotion in Japanese Comics: Da, Nan(i), and the Rhetoric of Futaku.” In Exploring Japaneseness, edited by Ray T. Donahue. Westport, Conn.: Ablex, 2002.