It's funny. Speed Racer was absolutely bizarre to me as a kid. It still is, really. The art style, the voices. It feels like some kind of postmodern absurdist

It's funny. Speed Racer was absolutely bizarre to me as a kid. It still is, really. The art style, the voices. It feels like some kind of postmodern absurdist art. I like it in a way but, man, wow. Star Blazers always just felt normal to me. The designs and dialog were more grounded in reality. I realize "reality" is a relative term here, since we're talking about a space opera starring a WWII battleship (lol) but it definitely aspired to some sort of a "hard sci fi" aesthetic. Like a Robert Heinlein novel or something. If you look at isolated cels or something they're pretty close, and of course they share aesthetics like "big anime eyes". But man, they hit me completely differently. The English dub voice acting for the first two seasons of Star Blazers was actually pretty admirable in places. They hired non-union, off-Broadway actors as opposed to hiring the typical kids' cartoon actors such as the Speed Racer dub gang. Both as a money-saving move and because they wanted people that would try and take the roles seriously. The first few eps are tough but once the actors settle into their roles, there are some really credible moments. The overall result is highly uneven but I think it was revolutionary in its own way. Hilariously, for the third season of Star Blazers, the original cast had scattered to the wind so they hired the Speed Racer cast lol. The results are a farce.