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The Speed Racer media franchise of animated
cartoons started as the 1967 Japanese
anime Mach Go Go Go. The central character was a young stock
car driver named Mifune Go. The M logo on the hood of his race car and the
front of his helmet stood for his family name Mifune, and the given name
Go also happens to be how the number of the race car, five, is said in
Japanese, and this also appears to explain why he has a letter G
embroidered on his shirt.
English language rights to Mach Go Go Go were acquired by an
American syndicator a few years later where major
editing and
dubbing were undertaken. When the series emerged before U.S.
television audiences as Speed Racer, fans were quickly drawn to
its sophisticated plots involving fiendish
conspiracies, violent action, and hard-driving
racing.
The Mach Five, the car Speed Racer drove in the series, is a
technological marvel containing useful equipment such as (among other
things) jacks that can be used to jump over obstacles, buzz saws for
negotiating jungles, a canopy that is both watertight and bullet
resistant, batteries and oxygen systems that allow the car to be operated
underwater, and tire enhancers that allow it to go into four-wheel-drive
mode.
The central character, now named Speed Racer, had a younger brother
named Spritle who along with his pet
chimpanzee Chim-Chim constantly got into mischief. Other regular
characters included Sparky, the company mechanic; Speed's father, Pops;
and his mother, Mom; and also Speed's girlfriend
Trixie.
A frequent recurring character, driving car number nine, is the
enigmatic Racer X, a mysterious
soldier of fortune whose
secret identity is that of Rex Racer, Speed's older brother, who years
earlier had a falling out with the family, and left for undisclosed
reasons.
There was a brief revival of Speed Racer in 1994 with new episodes set
contemporaneously, and also a more recent series, Speed Racer X,
bearing a date of 2002. (Source: IMDB).
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