Speed Racer returns

[Drtooth]

While there is going to be a new Speed Racer anime in Japan that's currently in development, this isn't the news I'm bringing.

As you may or may not know, following the disastrous run of the live action movie, Speed Racer Enterprises folded and the rights wound up reverting to it's home production company, Tatsunoko Productions. Since then, other than it still being availble to watch online, the characters disappeared (other than a backhanded cameo in The Lego Movie). Much of it because the movie killed interest, but mostly legal reasons.

Funimation to the Rescue!. The original series is schedule to be rereleased on DVD and Blu (and assuming streaming). But here's the best part. The original Japanese version of the show might actually be released as a result. Hard to say how this will be handled. The American version's kinda chopped up and therefore can't be synched to the original footage. Either way, the characters are no longer in limbo and the original version will be available in the US for the first time ever.

 

[mr3urious]

I think it will be like Samurai Pizza Cats and have separate DVD releases for both the dub and the original.

 

[Drtooth]

Forgot to mention that, actually. But yeah. I can see them either having both as separate video entries (like just adding extra episodes) or just breaking down and releasing Speed Racer for fans of the Americanized one and Mach Go Go Go for the subtitle only crowd. It would be cool for them to do a dub closer to the original dialogue, but I don't see how that could have been done unless Tatsunoko gives them the original music track, and the dub is way too iconic.

It's like when they released Shin-Chan. They couldn't synch anything up since they cut the episodes up too much to rearrange the episodes (though they totally could have tried), but they only gave like 1 original Japanese episode. And I don't think that even carried over to other sets besides the first one. Shin-Chan has confounded the US and some of Europe because of the "too inappropriate for kids" and "not adult enough for adults" culture barrier (other countries in the world, sure. No problem...here? WAAAAY problem). The only way it even could get into the US was a Family Guy style humor dub. I don;t think the audience of that style would have liked the original Japanese version much anyway.