NERD ALERT: Why I'm Looking Forward to Speed Racer

The following post could be an example of my personal obsession with cartoons that spans a wider range than just their dealings with cultural satire. If anything, it will exhibit my design knowledge (or lack there of depending on how reads this).

To start things off, let me just go ahead an show you the trailer for the upcoming Speed Racer movie, produced by the team that brought you The Matrix.



Anyone familiar with the anime genre (or even the original Mach! GO! GO! GO! anime, as it was called in Japan) probably spotted several things that are right out of the shows aesthetic. You have Trixie in her 60's hip pink helicopter cockpit; Speed's very primary blue shirt and Superman flip. You also have several contemporary anime shots in there. Racer X's new suit, for example, as well as that one racer with the feathered white hair in the locker room shaving. There is also a brief shot of a woman with a long red scarf/train that is flowing ever-consciously like any anime cape capable of producing its own wind.

These elements are straight out of cosplay culture. And what's interesting about Speed Racer is that these elements are more than just costuming elements but a budding fashion aesthetic. This is where I bring in this video from Japanese Pop/Rock star Gackt. I don't know when this video was produced, but it was definitely in his early career, as lately he's gotten more dark both in how he's been dressing and in his music in general. I'm not a fan so much as I'm familiar with him and how he portraying the Japanese rock scene to the Western Audience through the use of cosplaying.

By the way, if you don't like Ska or anything that sounds like it, you may want to turn your sound off before hitting play.



I want to point out his hair and his costume in that music video.

You don't really get a good look at it until the last quarter of the video, but his outfit is pretty much more fashionable (and wearable) version of a character from the anime, and now live action movie, Death Note. This is the way cosplay enters the fashion industry, or rather a way it can. Gackt only wears a black pleather pants and shirt, both of which are practically skin tight, under a black leather jacket with feathers or fir on the seams that are very pronounced around the shoulders. I've seen faux fir jackets sold in Dillard's this past winter with the same design, but their aesthetic was more make it look cute rather than mimicking something that could have had a design origin in a cartoon.

Now there is the argument that if this was even close to cosplay, the outfit would be more detailed than this, to include gold belt buckles and loops similar to the belted pants that some members of the high school goth culture would wear at my school. The thing is, there's a definite but fine line between cosplay and fashion. While bother are artistic, one has to be functional while the other is for costuming reasons. Barring, of course, those strange European designers that think the next wave of fashion will involve plastic clothing and hats with a brim you can land a plane on. There's a picture in the book I have from the library showing this difference. It has a picture of the UltraMan costume on one side, and another of an UltraMan inspired silk PJ that uses the same red and silver pattern and lining. One is designed for costuming purposes and establish a character's iconic presence. The other to sleep in while being more fashionable than the UltraMan PJs you can find on eBay.

His hair, at first glance looks like Cloud's from Final Fantasy, but also has a hint of Goku from DragonballZ. Either way, it's in your generic spiky style that is often associated with anime. This is an example of how anime sometimes fails to translate very well into the fashion world. For cosplayers, getting the hair to look just right is the make-or-break point of a costume. Oh, sure you can be anal about what color trim your Clone Trooper armor is, thereby exhibiting your rank in the army, but to get something like the specific length, style, and texture of a character's hair is often what separates a good costume from someone who is just phoning it in. And in most cases, hair shaped like this doesn't look good outside of the costume you're wearing to go with it.

There are some cliches in anime that do translate well as far as hair goes, but they are all from characters with a more realistic design to them. Revisit the Death Note human character in the image above. His hair is pretty much your contemporary mop-top. If you look at the character he is playing form the anime, you'll see that he has a similar kind of hair style, only with more of a bed-head ruffle. There was a time when that bed-head look was popular, but it seems that most celebrities and those that mimic them have opted to actually look groomed, so they style it upwards instead of just all over the place. That's not a far cry away from how Bart Simpson has his hair drawn, just to offer some perspective.

In regards to Speed Racer, you can't really ask for a better balance between these two polls. You have Trixie loosing her 60's flip (even though Mom Racer kept hers) to give her a more fashionable character aesthetic. She may single-handily bring pink back as a fashionable color rather than one that is associated with bubble gum pop music and Hello Kitty. You have Speed lacking the over-accented eye lashes, but he still has his little Superman flip in his hair. The casting director also did a very good job with casting something with really captivating eyes, which were the dominating facial feature in character design in anime from that time. Spritle and Chim-chim keep their trademark target pattern beanie, but instead of just red, you have more than one color on there. They also seem to be closer to the ears so that it actually is wearable rather than looking like the religious cap from the Jewish faith. Even Pop Racer's mustache is done in a way that is iconic to the original character, yet not unrealistic to the point where the handle-bar curls would cause everyone to break out laughing.

So there you go. My observation on cosplay, fashion, and why they apply to Speed Racer. The reason I posted this? Personal research into a potential couture idea I've been thinking about since I saw that UltraMan silk PJ in my research Friday. Don't know what I'm going to do, but Speed Racer and Gackt's music videos seem like a good enough reference point.