XXXVI: "Speed Racer: The Next Generation"

Ugh... look what they did to you, Tatsunoko. To those who don't know, Tatsunoko is a production team responsible for Gatchaman, the Time Bokan series, Casshern, and one of my favorites: Speed Racer. After seeing the original and Speed Racer X, I thought that the third series, Speed Racer: The Next Generation, would be something up my ally. Boy... was I ever wrong when I thought that.

Speed Racer: TNG is a cartoon series that is not really based, but stemmed from the original. In truth, this cartoon was made the same time as the live action movie Speed Racer (which is based from the original), and the toon's pilot feature was released before the movie hit films. Now before I somewhat bash this, let's go into the cartoons background a little. To my understanding, the original Speed's second son, Speed Racer Jr., was a orphan, and he serves as the titular character. For some time now, the original Speed Racer has disappeared. He has an older brother, X, and Spritle, the only original character to return initially, serves as his uncle. X and Speed are shown as rivals on the track, much like how it was in the original show. Speed Jr's attire, minus slight changes, is homage to his lost father's wear, the primary difference being Speed Jr's red collar, while Speed Sr. had an ascot. This series does have its antagonist as well, this one being Zile Zazic: an adversary of Speed Sr.'s past, and enemy of Speed Jr. The famous Mach 5 vehicle makes a brief appearance, before Zazic destroys it, only to inadvertently give rise to its successor, the Mach 6: a car based on the previous iconic car that is capable of running without gas, though that is still used.

To be fair, the production that made this was also responsible for Kappa Mikey, something I actually liked. Speed Racer: TNG had a more toon like style that differed significantly from the classic, and the cars were all CGI, something that kind of irked me throughout the series. I won't go as far to say that this series was a joke, but I was really disappointed in the series. I grade it a 3 of 10, because while somethings, like the Mach 6 were introduced, it had animations that were cheesy at best, and the plot, despite how much it may influence a real-time possibility, was laughable. To me, this is one era of Speed Racer better left unheard of.