MACH GO GO GO!! And The First HD-DVD Season Set Is $55.95!! Herc's Season-Box DVD Vault!!

I am – Hercules!!

What a gracious age is this that allows one to own all 52 episodes of the original 1967-68 “Speed Racer” on shiny plastic discs for less than $66. (Less than $47 if you’re willing to buy used.) “Speed” was violent and fast-moving, with exciting multiepisodic plotting and lots of audible gasping. There’s a giant “M” on the hood of James “Speed” Racer’s car and helmet, but it doesn’t stand for “Mach,” baby. The “M” stands for Mifune. As in Team Mifune and Toshiro Mifune. Because “Speed Racer” is just the retarded American title of Fuji Television’s “Mach Go Go Go,” the tale of young Formula One driver Go Mifune (and yes, he was named for the great Japanese film actor). Go started life as a manga character. Go has a superhot helicopter-pilot girlfriend named Michi Shimura and a mechanic named Sabu. He is close to his mother, Aya, and father, Daisuke, who was a sumo wrestler before he turned to car-building. Go also has two brothers. Pre-teen Kurio keeps the company of a chimp named Senpei, and enjoys stowing away in trunks. Older brother Kenichi Mifune, by contrast, is estranged and secretly watches over Go as the fearsome Fukumen, a masked racer whose outfit bears a disturbing resemblance to the one worn by Slim Summers of the X-Men. (There’s even a fricking “X” on his forehead.) Kenichi and Daisuke had a falling out after Kenichi crashed one of his father’s cars, and Daisuke told Kenichi his poor driving did not bring honor to Team Mifune. Kenichi Wah! So Go has a complex legacy, and so much more. His storied vehicle has automatic jacks that can make it jump short distances, deployable tire grips that allow it to climb the steep mountains, rotary saws that can clear foliage in its path, a transparent envelope that can make the car airtight and bulletproof, miniwings that let the car glide short distances, an oxygen supply and periscope that allow the car to operate underwater, and a bird-like “homing robot” that can deliver messages or distract evildoers. When the American rights to the series were purchased for syndication by Trans-Lux, a New Yorker named Peter Fernandez not only wrote the English-language dialogue but also personally provided the voices of Speed and estranged older brother Racer X. Was “Speed Racer” American TV’s first major brush with anime? It was not, as NBC Enterprises had already adapted the animated sci-fi series “Tesuwan Atomu” into “Astro Boy” in the mid-1960s. But “Speed Racer” was the nation’s first major brush with color anime. This final set of episodes includes “The Great Car Wrestling Match” (The Mach 5 enters a demolition derby), “Motorcycle Apaches” (Speed transports nuclear material through the American Southwest), “The Car With A Brain” (Speed must contend with a driverless “thinking car” that kidnaps a little girl), “Junk Car Grand Prix” (a very rich man holds a race with only of 17-year-old girl drivers), “The Car in the Sky” (the Mach 5 becomes a dirigible), “The Trick Race” (Speed learns his brother is Racer X), and both parts of “Race Around The World” (James “Speed” Racer becomes racing champion of the world).
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