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Yes, it's cringeworthy by today's standards.However, when I first saw Speed Racer in the US, it arrived at a time when American animaters had stopped doing decent artwork for the small screen. This was a godsend - lighting effects, shading, backgrounds - all superior to what we were getting in the states and a throwback to the awesome work that could be seen in earlier Warner Brother's Merry Melodies, Tom and Jerry and Disney theatrical animations. This anime even had multi-part episodes and an underlying plot. All the animation shops you mentioned were doing slop work for TV at the time Speed Racer came to the US. Hannah-Barbera was, in my opinion, one of the worst offenders, second only to the harribly animated Marvel Comics cartoons of Spiderman, Hulk and IronMan. By the end of the Crappy American Cartoon Era, even Disney coughed out some lackluster animation features. They didn't turn things around til The Little Mermaid (theatrical) and Duck Tales (TV). The small screen was a different story. By then more Japanese imports were trickling in, and still making the even the newer small screen animations in the US look like re-treads. While US animators seemed stuck, Japanese anime was improving. Yes, there is crappy anime too, but I dont think animation in the US improved until faced by the challenge posed by stuff like Speed Racer.Now there is a lot of great stuff available from both sides of the Pacific. This is a classic, bad dubs and all.
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