Go-Go-Go Dancing

To celebrate the release of the live-action SPEED RACER movie in the country of its source material's origin, the English-language Japan Times features this interview with Ippei Kuri, co-creator of the original MAHA GO-GO-GO, a show that never acheived the success in Japan that its American adaptation, SPEED RACER, acheived on the other side of the world.

The insightful interview reveals that the western look of the cars, home, and even appliances in SPEED RACER was inspired by the admiration Kuri had in impoverished post-war Japan for the magical world of prosperity depicted in American films:

"After the war, we didn't have a washing machine, just a board on a bucket. Our living conditions were just awful. When we saw American home-drama films, we saw electric appliances that everyone has now, but that did not exist in Japan at the time. When they opened the refrigerator, there were ready-made ice cubes inside and people are making fancy cocktails. We felt nothing but longing for stuff like that."


Kuri also drew the family unit in SPEED RACER from American films -- one that looked idylic when compared with his loss of his own parents early in his life:

"There would always be a mom and dad who looked extremely happy. There were friends and pets and a good-looking girl next door. All of these things eventually appeared in 'Speed Racer,' and they all came out of my longing for American home life."

Kuri further theorizes that the success of SPEED RACER in America arose out of American nostalgia for such family unity in the late sixties and early seventies, as the American family unit began to drift apart.