BW Media Spotlight

I love when YouTube gives me opportunities like this.

In America, people know about Speed Racer, the Japanese import animated series about a race car driver who gets caught up in some kind of dangerous adventure everywhere he and his friends go. That show might have gone into nostalgic obscurity if not for someone at MTV finding the show and airing it on their channel as they started moving away from just being Music Television. What was a product of its time, with the strange dialog to fill in the mouth movements, because kind of fun to watch. Parodies, sequels, and remakes would follow, and in its native Japan it would get something of a resurgence.

In Japan it’s known by another name, Mach GoGoGo, the story of Go Mifune and his amazing car, the Mach 5. In the US his name would change to Speed Racer in the 1960s, gaining the first name Greg in NOW Comics to explain the G on his shirt. It was based on a manga by Tatsuo Yoshida.

Tonight we have something I don’t get to do often enough, two videos comparing the two versions for your viewing enjoyment. The storiest took place in two-part episodes, but I’m just showing the first episode, so part ones all around, courtesy of Shout Factory TV and YouTube. “Mach 5, Let’s Go” and “The Great Plan” have different names but the same plot. An engineer ruins Go/Speed’s dad’s attempt to produce a new engine because he wants to betray the company and become rich on his own. Meanwhile, our hero wants to become a race car driver, which we later learn led to his brother’s apparent death, so dad is against it. Can our hero, his friends, his little brother, and the brother’s pet chimp protect the plans and get dad to let his son race? Well, you’ll have to get to the episodes themselves, but I’ll link to the YouTube playlists so you can. This is just a comparison sampler. Enjoy.

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