How is Nick's Speed Racer?

[Joe Tully]

For some reason, I missed Speed Racer during the premiere weekend and I more or less forgot about it soon after. I'm going to try to catch it this weekend (Sun. at 4, right?) but I was wondering what the opinions on it are. I've done a search and don't find much discussion on it past the premiere. So, is there anything I should know about the story, is it good, etc.? Is Nick even doing anything to promote this show? I've already read about the dub being typical DIC work, but is there anything else people can tell me? And of course, feel free to use this as a general discussion thread of the series so far.

[zimbach]

Originally posted by Joe Tully
For some reason, I missed Speed Racer during the premiere weekend and I more or less forgot about it soon after. I'm going to try to catch it this weekend (Sun. at 4, right?) but I was wondering what the opinions on it are. I've done a search and don't find much discussion on it past the premiere. So, is there anything I should know about the story, is it good, etc.? Is Nick even doing anything to promote this show? I've already read about the dub being typical DIC work, but is there anything else people can tell me? And of course, feel free to use this as a general discussion thread of the series so far.

It's an awful lot like the original show. There seems to be more attention to continuity, the vocal performance is more natural, the cahractrs are styled a bit more realistically, and the animation is smoother (but that isn't hard to do). Apart from that, it seems like more of the same, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

[MattThomasM2B]

You mean this is a NEW Speed Racer!?? Crap! I thought it was just reruns! *Marks down Sunday at 4*

[Digu Volz]

It's pretty much how zimbach said, although Racer X is fairly ridiculous looking like a superhero. In this more modern, realistic setting just a mask would have worked fine.

[Barb Gordon]

I've only watched it a few times, and though it's all right, I much prefer the original. Why couldn't they have put that up again instead of a new version?

~Barb

[sl4]

No, you must be mistaken:

Nickelodeon was too cheap to purchase the royalties for the real Speed Racer, so they named theirs "Speedy Racer" and created new episodes themselves. It's not even Japanese, for god's sakes!

Actually, I just made that up, but judging by how badly Nick's screwed up lately, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that's how it turned out.

[mbaker]

Actually, the new Speed Racer is from Japan. It wasn't too bad from what I saw. It's pretty faithful to the original series, and that's A good thing.