Speed Racer: The Next Generation

A young man, somewhere in a desert, anxiously awaits his first day at the Racing Academy to become a great car racer. He immediately becomes the new guy- he's always picked on, makes only two friends, and arrives with no racing car of his own. Then he discovers the remains of the one and only Mach 5 in a near-by junkyard! With his rebuilt Mach 6, unusual racing talent, and mysterious lineage, the man realizes for the first time in his life that he is Speed Racer's second-born long-lost son!

Oh, and did we mention his NAME is Speed? From the beginning?! And he never once suspected anything before?!

Speed Racer: The Next Generation is the third consecutive television adaptation as a Sequel Reset taking place 40 years from the original storyline to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the entire franchise, making it also a Revival. Nicktoons Network aired the 52-episode series from May 2, 2008 to August 25, 2013. If the stiff, Flash-animated characters look familiar, it's because Animation Collective, probably best known for animating the first original Nicktoon Kappa Mikey, produced and premiered this series in conjunction to the wide release of the live-action feature film. It is quite possibly the most successful of the adaptations, considering the first two never even made it past being canceled during their run! Maybe it's because this show took the story forward to the next generation, thereby hopping over whatever scrutiny die-hard otakus would throw. 95% of the characters are brand new anyway, which makes for a more original story, yet when it does get nostalgic, the tributes are amazingly accurate. The late Peter Fernandez, the producer of the dub of the original show, as well as the lyricist for the English theme song and the voice of Speed, was brought in to voice an adult Spritle.

Toonz Entertainment in India took over the outsourced animation for the second season, since Animation Collective had financial problems. Speed Sr. reveals more about his motives for going into hiding in this season, and we get more information about the Committee. After his death, the voices of Peter Fernandez's roles were replaced with another voice actor.

Tropes used in Speed Racer: The Next Generation include:

• Alpha Bitch - Annalise.
• Back for the Dead: The Mach Five is revived, only to end up truly totaled.
• Badass Driver
• Big Man on Campus - X... SOOO much... after he stops being a jerk to Speed.
• Break the Haughty - Annalise gets dumped by X, and the main characters give her what-for several times.
• Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough - Headmaster Spritle and Zile Zazic, respectively. In scenes they share together, you can just feel the tension.
  • Same goes for Professors Winn and Aniskov, respectively.
• Chekhov's Gun - Speed's red bandanna, the only item from his parents that he kept his whole life. Becomes very important during the final arc of Season One.
• Changeling Fantasy - The show appeared to be going this way by the last episode.
• Chick Magnet - First X, then Speed and X. And they're reunited brothers. Quite the Mr. Fanservice!
• Cool Car
• Cool Loser - Speed... in the social food chain, that is. On the track, he usually wins.
• Daddy's Girl - Annalise's father is head of Zazic Industries, which designed the school track, and the wealthiest person on the campus.
• Dented Iron - Stan, quite possibly. He was part of the Car Acrobatics team, and as such had to have been an ace driver.
• Do-Anything Robot
• Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud - Used in the episode "The Dance", may be justified in the fact that it's virtual. Doesn't change the fact that This Troper was terrified when Speed was sucked up into the tornado seeing as how she had tornado safety drilled into her head since she moved to the infamous Tornado Alley.
• Extreme Graphical Representation
• Face Heel Turn - X Racer in "Racing With the Enemy"
• Fan Boy - Conor
• Hard Light - In the third part of The Fast Track, various elements from the Virtual Track cross into the real world to wreck havoc, including Conor's gigantic caveman version of himself that he initially programmed for fun!
• Heel Face Turn - X Racer.
  • And Annalise Zazic.
• Hey, It's That Voice! - Michael Sinterniklaas as Jared and Jesse, and Ronald Multon, and the late Peter Fernandez as Spritle and Speed Sr. in Season One only, Sean Schemmel as Dickie Ranford, and Jeff Gordan as Turbo McCalister.
  • And in season two Greg Abbey voices Spritle and Speed Sr.. Talk about voices giving out super strength!
• Generation Xerox - Speed, Conor, Lucy and Chim-Chim = Speed, Sparky, Trixie and... well, Chim-Chim. With X standing in for Racer X In more ways that one.
  • Especially since in "The Beginning" during the qualifying race, when the racing announcer mistakenly calls X by the name of Racer X.
• High School Dance
• Holodeck Malfunction - The source of all the problems in the 3-parter, The Fast Track. It includes the return of The Mammoth Car and the Melange.
• Holographic Terminal - The start and finish points to the Academy's virtual track.
• Hostage for Macguffin - Zile intends to steal the Mach 6, but gets Conor instead, and sees the opportunity to lure his friends to him so he can get the car.
• Ho Yay - Conor's ... "date" to the school dance. *shudder*
• Jerk Jock - X Racer starts out as this.
• Laser Blade: The Mach 6's saws.
• Lazy Artist - The Flash characters are stiff, with outlines that have no life to them, interacting with Conspicuous CG environments and race cars (the Maya models aren't even rendered with a finished look)! In the pilot movie, two shots have badly-mixed shading over the characters, prompting the studio never to use shading on them again except for extreme cases.
  • That is, until the second season, when the shading returns only it looks slightly better due to actually having an animation budget.
• Long Lost Sibling
• Luke, I Am Your Father - Obviously, Even though Speed never actually meets his father until the last episode. With Spritle, it's more of a Luke I Am Your Uncle!
• MacGuffin - The canister that holds the final ingredient to making the Mach 6 run at the speed of sound.
  • And the hourglass shaped part that lets the Mach 6 time travel
• Made for TV Movie - Several episodes can be grouped into 5 three-episode-long movies. The first 3 of these movies were released on DVD.
• Missing Mom - Speed's mother is never mentioned. It's a good chance that Trixie is his mother.
• Mythology Gag - Speed's new high-tech racing suit has "Go" and "Daisuke" written on it. Daisuke was Pops Racer's given name in Japan, and Go was Speed Sr's.
• No Budget - Oh my Lord!
  • The original anime appears very dated and scratched up by today's standards too, but for its time, its budget was a regular one for Japan.
• Non-Human Sidekick - This time, the monkey's A ROBOT!
• Not Me This Time - When Ranford was trying to sabotage Speed, Speed and his friends thought at first that Zile was behind this.
• Older and Wiser: Spritle.
• Only One Name - Though Spritle and X both have last names (presumably Racer for both of them), no one ever uses it.
• The Other Darrin - With Peter Fernandez dead, they replaced him with another actor for Spritle and Speed Sr. for Season Two.
• "Previously On..."
• Proud to Be a Geek - Conor's self-esteem is unwavering.
• Reasonable Authority Figure - Spritle
• Red Eyes, Take Warning - Used in "The Hunt for Truth" Part 3, when everyone is hypnotized by Baron Von Monocle.
• Shout-Out - Countless... all to the original show.
  • Well... almost all... But the ones that aren't to the original show do have relevance to the plot twist in season 2 (the time travel) (with the exception of Star Wars... That was relevant to season 1). Back to the Future and Jurrasic Park are two great examples.
  • Conor makes a reference to the I Am Your Father moment from Star Wars when hypothesizing that the original Speed may be Speed's father. He turns out to be right.
  • An entire episode includes a car with speech capabilities in a shout-out to Knight Rider.
  • In response to various viewers pointing out the show's similarities to Harry Potter, Ron, Harry, and Hermoine can be seen in a second-long shot during an assembly meeting about disobeying strict new school rules.
• Status Quo Is God - Particularly jarring in a show like this, where continuity seems to be present underneath individual arcs but cannot surface.
  • Annalise was established as one of the antagonists by the end of the first season, and is dumped by X, yet in the second season, she's still a student at the Academy, and is one of X's circle of friends, and Speed and Lucy are fine and dandy with it!
    • It doesn't start out that way, though. X, Speed and Lucy are all initially shocked and appalled that Annalise is back and even go through somewhat elaborate measures to get rid of her when they're forced to be on the same team. Only after Annalise sacrifices her car does the gang trust her. But it's still a bit fast paced. She did attempt to asphyxiate Speed, after all.
  • Speed's goal in the third three-part movie is to win a major corporate car company (whose founder and main owner bet it on the race) that will give him enough money to finally leave the Academy, and develop the gasless engine! Of course, they win. Then in the last two minutes of the third episode, reporters rush in telling him that because Ranford was a fraud, the shares were all dumped, so the company went belly up and their prize is now useless!
• Steven Ulysses Perhero - Really, why did he not see his fate coming?
• Tagalong Kid - Conor follows Speed wherever he goes.
• The Reveal - A flashback in Episode 16 shows that Captain Terror and Zile Zazic have... similar head forms... to say the least. In Season Two, it's silently confirmed since they wear these outfits.
  • Dr. Andre Chezcko reveals himself to be an older Sparky!
• The Rival - Conor has one by the name of Ronald Multon from his middle school days.
• The Von Trope Family - Baron Von Monocle.
• Those Two Guys - Two girls who fawn over X, then Speed.
• Two-Teacher School
• Tyrant Takes the Helm - While Spritle is discharged from his post as headmaster, Zile pulls strings to hire a new puppet, who Speed and his friends hate.
• The Unfought: Season One ended before anyone even got to find out the identities of "The Committee".
• Viewer-Friendly Interface
• Villain Decay - Zile and Stan spend most of Season Two under arrest, while the main characters deal with new threats. Additionally, Zile's status as a mogul has left his hands tied in ways they weren't when he was Captain Terror, leader of the Car Acrobatics Team. And the Tough Ranger SUV has poor mileage and can't maneuver nearly as well as his old racing car.
• Visible Invisibility - Speed and Chim-Chim become invisible when accidentally getting caught in Conor's invention for the Mach 6. To help the viewers, their silhouettes are embossed on whatever they're moving over, with a wave distortion inside them. Of course, the other characters cannot see them AT ALL.
• We All Live in America - The writers failed to observe the fact that the characters from the original show were, well, Japanese. In this show, Speed, Spritle and X are American. It takes place in a desert akin to Arizona, with truckers and country hicks! Did they not realize Speed Sr. traveled all over the world?!
• Weaponized Car's Child - the Mach 6
• Who Names Their Kid "Dude"? - His name is "X?" Really?
  • Apparently it's better than Preston dePedal, an alias X has to use to gain access to Alpha Academy.
• You Fail Logic Forever - Various scientific explanations could never possibly occur. How would you make "inertial dampeners" in racing suits?!
• Your Mind Makes It Real - Crashes in the Virtual Track are not fatal, as any racer who does crash immediately gets dispensed back into the real world unharmed. However, the faculty can program any obstacle to injure a student, which is rarely done. Also occurs when Conor's giant doppleganger runs loose.