What do you get when you cross 1960s James Bond inspired car technology with a villain who looks like an Emo Mark Hamill?

You get this two part episode of Speed Racer, Race for Revenge. Those of you unfamiliar with Speed Racer because you’re busy with your flashy new Code Geass’s and To Love Ru’s should know that it’s one of the pioneering works of Anime in colour, and though the Wachowski Brothers seem to have butchered the show with their new movie, the charm and melodrama of the series could never be matched by 21st Century sensibilities. That kind of Saturday Morning cartoon mindset just doesn’t wash with today’s generation.

Unless of course you watch one of the few episodes of Speed Racer which are absolutely horrifying. The Most Dangerous Race three parter saga of car related mayhem is nothing compared to what this Emo Mark Hamill villain Flash Jr. is capable of unleashing on the roads. I’m talking Grand Theft Auto car violence, before there was Grand Theft Auto, in what was meant to be a children’s cartoon.

The premise is straightforward enough. Emo Mark Hamill, or Flash Jr, had a father who died in the Danger Pass race years ago driving a car called the Mellage or however you spell it in French, named after Napoleon’s horse. So Flash Jr. has a plan for revenge on the Three Rose/Roads club (I never figured out which one of the two is the real word used, this IS an old audio dub after all) by making his sister drive the X3 car, a remastered version of the Mellage, in a race for revenge. Speed Racer has to use all his wits to beat the X3, and as usual there are thrills and spills, as seen in the first part of the episode where there’s car wrecks everywhere…

[Edited to say: My screenshots have vanished and I cannot find them, so I will have to capture them again because clipboard is annoying!]

Anyway, the episode is entertaining, but also chilling. This is the first time in the series where Speed Racer is faced with an opponent not motivated by greed or money or glory in racing, but a complete psychopath who is willing to kill Speed Racer to get revenge for his father who was killed in the Danger Pass race. Looking into the guy’s eyes at a police lineup, you would know from the start he would be capable of something like that.

Also it is the first time Trixie has had to deal with another woman who is a possible threat to her boyfriend/girlfriend relationship with Speed, and I would have started chanting “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” in homage to that certain trash TV show where troubled couples fight in front of hundreds of thousands of viewers, had the fight lasted longer. Lily, the girl who gets pushed away by Trixie from the wounded Speed, meant well and becomes both Speed and Trixie’s friend at the end of the episode, despite what Flash Jr. did before he died in a helicopter wreck trying to destroy Speed.

I think it was worth watching.