>>10974319It's not good in that the plots are pretty simple and occasionally nonsensical, and that goes for the characters as well. If you're expecting modern complexity and deep characters, Speed Racer will probably trigger you hard because it's basically just a dumb show about racing cars.
But it's a really great dumb show about racing cars. The melodrama inherent to this era of anime combines wonderfully with the overambitious, silly writing and the borderline comical dub to produce something that's really, uniquely, frenetically entertaining.And the animation itself, while rough at first glance, is actually one of the best earliest examples of selectively using limited animation, in order to focus effort and budget on other scenes. The show is full of all kinds of automotive action that you'd never see in an action movie at the time, and the amount of detail, shading, and highlighting is gorgeous, especially in the backgrounds. It really was one of the best looking cartoons on TV in the 60s, in any country.
Also, this show was a huge revolution for automotive enthusiasts who wanted to see the things they like depicted in animation, basically the Initial D of its era. That alone isn't enough to make the show "good", but it does mean that a big portion of its fanbase will always appreciate it extra, just for that.
