Speed Racer / Guns in cartoons

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six 4 sure

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In a recent trip to Wal-Mart I was browsing through their DVD selection looking for something I didn’t already own or haven’t already seen a 100 times. Lo and behold I see a Speed Racer DVD containing the first eleven episodes. Cool I say to myself, I haven’t seen Speed Racer in YEARS. So I pop in the DVD the other night. While I’m watching I notice the bad guys have guns and actually shoot at people. Now no one was actually shot but I couldn’t help wondering if this kind of cartoon would ever be broadcast today. I know MTV played a few episodes a few years back, but I don’t see this cartoon making it on the air in today’s PC world.

I remember getting up early on Saturday mornings just so I could watch Speed Racer. I don’t think watching it or the old Loony Toons caused any harm other than thinking cars could run underwater, cut down trees, and jump over rocks. Anyone else have any thoughts or do I need to get out more often?

six
 
Ya, American cartoons have become way to PC, thats why Janapese stuff is becoming so popular...
 
Yeah, I still love old cartoons! The Cartoon Network still shows the old Loony Toons with the guns and violence and profane language (nitwit, dummy, etc).

If you're really into guns, check out the Gunsmith Cats anime and manga!
 
I'm showing my age but......... Johnny Quest was my favorite !
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Johnny Quest was my favorite too. Found a few episodes on video a few years back. Still watch them every so often. Cool stuff.
 
Get into Anime. Much more serious cartoons, usually not meant for kids under 13 or so.

Gunsmith Cats (both the video and the manga) full of very accurately drawn guns. You name it and it's probably in there especially the manga.

Cowboy Bebop and Noir are a couple others that are pretty good on the guns. Cowboy features a Jericho in 41, Noir has P99s and Beretta 1934s.

Ghost in the Shell, Battle Angel Alita and Armitage are also good. Futuristic guns, and GitS has a Mateba too.
 
Get into Anime. Much more serious cartoons, usually not meant for kids under 13 or so.
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There is plenty of anime for kids under 13. There's also plenty that's not. Hmm. Good anime with guns in it. You've mentioned several good ones already. One of my favorite character-driven shows with some violence is Patlabor: Mobile Police. Big robots driven by police whose main weapons are a huge stun baton and a gigantic revolver that fires 37mm shells. One that hasn't been released in the US yet is a far-future show called Kiddy Grade (strange name and no, it's not about or for kids). One of the main characters carries a Walter P99. Trigun is another of my favorites. Vash carries something that looks like a Mateba, except that it's a top-break.
 
Johnny Quest was really good. I liked G.I. Joe, at one point in time, too. Hey, it was kind of like the A-Team, don't you think? Everyone gets into a firefight, expends 80,000 rounds and no one ever got shot? LOL.

Speaking of which, I found out something the other day, kind of OT, but did you guys know that the laser rifle everyone had on the G.I. Joe team was actually the Advanced Combat Rifle? The one that fired the flechettes? Nifty, except that the pistol grip was actually the magazine.

Gotta see if I can dig up a picture of it......

ANM
 
I really liked Johnny Quest. Bad guys killed people for their own gain, good guys killed people in self defense and to save the world. It was an honest depiction of what it takes to defend people and their rights.

As for anime I'd recommend watching Gunsmith Cats. It's all available on 1 DVD so you won't get sucked into buying a huge series and it's technically quite accurate for a Japanese production.
 
...and it's technically quite accurate for a Japanese production.
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Pretty much true for most of the current time period anime. Check out Crying Freeman too for accurately drawn firearms, particularly the manga. (An older series from the early '90s.)

And always the favorite, Robotech/Macross.
 
About 5 years ago Cartoon Network was showing a remake of Johnny Quest. Lots of violence, people died, the guns were actually depicted acturately, and Dr. Quest and Race Bannon didn't come off like they were shopping for his and his towel like in the original series.

Anime unfortunately is getting the "PC treatment" when it is shown on American TV. Just watch YU-GI-OH sometime. There are a couple of scenes where guys are standing in weaver stances pointing radios or their fingers at other people who are acting real scared of the motorola. *sigh*

I heard in the Gunsmith Cats manga that they ocasionally drove on the wrong side of the rode or had the stearing wheel on the wrong side. I guess the author had a hard time remembering how we do it in America. The guy sure liked his guns though, we should make him an honorary member of the Highroad.
 
Nah, he didn't forget. Japanese read from right to left, and when the manga gets to the US, the translators have to mirror the frames so that we can read from left to right. Of course, this makes it appear that the steering wheel is on the wrong side, people are left handed, and why guns have their parts on the opposite side.
 
Now that manga is getting more popular there are translated versions that are read right to left through the book so that the graphics aren't goobered up. Takes some getting used to but frequesly helps the action flow better and things not to flip-flop.
 
Another vote for Johnny Quest. The other family favorite was the Roadrunner -- not for the guns, but for the mind-set. Yeah, it was watching Roadrunner that damaged me as a child. :neener:
 
The one thing I always wondered about with Speed Racer was why anyone would want to be in these races where about 90% of the contestants died in horrible flaming wrecks or at the bottom of thousand-foot ravines before the end of the race.
 
I remember Johnny Quest. Made in the 60s, watched it on TV in the eighties.

I saw one episode a few months back, real late at night on Cartoon Network. Race Bannon, Johnny Quest, Hadji, and Dr. Quest are travelling down a river on a small boat in Africa. They get attacked by headhunters, who start throwing spears and such at them. Race grabs a rifle and returns fire.

Interesting, I thought. But then Race yells, "BACK! BACK, you heathen monkies!"

I was like, "NO ****ING WAY! He did NOT just call black people from Africa heathen monkies!" It was hilarious; so un-PC it's not even funny. I can see how that kind of, er, comment might offend people, though.

Which is NOT to say the show had racist undertones. It featured, for example, black doctors, scientists, police officers, and other good guys.

And, of course, Hadji, while not black, does represent what is a racial minority here in the United States. Like all people from India, he can perform magic tricks, make things levitate, and get out of scrapes with his powers. All he has to do is say "SIM SIM, SA LA BIM!" and off he goes! :D
 
I heard in the Gunsmith Cats manga that they ocasionally drove on the wrong side of the rode or had the stearing wheel on the wrong side. I guess the author had a hard time remembering how we do it in America. The guy sure liked his guns though, we should make him an honorary member of the Highroad.
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As someone else pointed out, Kenichi Sonoda drew it correctly every time, but then the manga was "flopped" to get it to read left to right for the US market, thereby swapping them back. Sonoda-San is a major league car and gun nut, his drawings are painstakingly detailed and accurate.

Gunsmith Cats is based around a gun shop in Chicago (so you KNOW it's fiction ...). Sonoda comes to Anime Central in Chicago almost every year, and I've heard that he's had the opportunity to make side-trips to try out the hardware he'll never have a chance to play with in Japan. AR's, AK's, various pistols, full auto etc... and absolutely loves it.
 
After I'd get home from school I'd fly up to my friend Darin's house to watch GI Joe because I couldn't pick up channel 4 at my house.:mad:
My favorite was Snake Eyes and his Uzi!:cool:
 
The early Winnie the Pooh cartoons (made by Disney, no less) had Pooh Bear investigate noises in the night armed with a shotgun. It was loaded with a cork but is was still a gun.
 
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