Manga / Bakusou Kyoudai! Let's & Go!!

Bakusō Kyōdai Let's & Go!! (The Racing Brothers! Let's & Go!!) is a 1994 manga and anime series produced by Tetsuhiro Koshita in order to promote Tamiya's mini 4WD toyline. A Spiritual Successor of Dash! Yonkuro , it did not get an export to America or become very well known compared to other series, but Let's & Go!! was responsible for the Mini 4WD trend in several countries in Europe and Asia, including Indonesia, Philippines, Italy, China, and Thailand. The story lasts four seasons: Let's & Go!, WGP, MAX (a sequel to WGP featuring new protagonists and story), and Return Racers! (which returned the protagonists to Seiba brothers, but in their twenties/thirties). Bakusō Kyōdai Let's & Go!! remains a Cult Classic for many people.

The stories follows the Mini 4WD racer siblings, Retsu and Go Seiba, who are different as day and night, receive a couple of prototype racing machines, Sonic Saber and Magnum Saber, by the Mini 4WD researcher Professor Tsuchiya, under a condition that they will enter and win a series of Mini 4WD national competitions, the seasonal Great Japan Cup. But things appear to get worse when Prof. Tsuchiya's rival, Prof. Ohgami, a researcher who believes in the idea that racing is to destroy other cars, entered the scene. He sent his representatives to bring chaos to mini-4WD racing society by turning them into battle races. Retsu and Go, along with friends and rivals they meet along their racing careers, struggle against the new trend of vicious racing to prove that true mini-4WD racing should be the way it used to be.

The second season, WGP, is a direct sequel where the Seiba siblings and their friends are elected into the first international mini-4WD Grand Prix in Japan. Japan's representative, the TRF Victorys, led by Retsu Seiba, enter the grand prix and meet many competitors from around the world.

The final season, MAX, follows Gouki Ichimonji, a student of Borzoi racing school, where for the students, mini-4WD racing is to battle and destroy each other. Gouki gets sacked for not using his machine, Max Breaker, for battle racing. Gouki leaves the school and his younger brother Retsuya behind and stays with his uncle. In Gouki's racing career, he meets Marina, a mysterious and serious girl who owns a vicious racing machine, Fire Stinger. ^note Marina only appears in the anime adaptation; she does not appear in the manga version. The story follows the journey of Gouki, Retsuya, and Marina to have a triumph over Borzoi academy and their immoral ways of racing.

A new manga series, Return Racers, began publication in 2014 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the series; it returns to the Seiba brothers, but set twenty years after the original series, where Go had became a professional Formula racecar driver, passing the baton of his mini-4WD career to his son Tsubasa, while Retsu, who now works on a space probe, having studied overseas on the suggestion of Professor Tsuchiya, recalls his last race with Go, as well as facing a previously untold menace that could destroy and reassemble cars at will in process.

Return Racers had also spawned a spin-off manga Let's & Go!! Tsubasa: The Next Racers which began publication on CoroCoro Ichiban! magazine from August 21, 2017 to January 21, 2021. Let's & Go!! Tsubasa focused on Team Pegasus, led by Tsubasa (a character from Return Racers) and Shun Daichi, as they participates in the Mini 4WD racing in both real-life and virtual reality.

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The series contains examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Beak Spider. Its Razor Wind blade cleanly cuts through soda cans and trees.
• Accidental Misnaming: A typical exchange between Gouki and Marina
  Marina: My name is Marina! Ma-ri-na!
  Gouki: I got that already, Mariko.
• Adults Are Useless: Zigzagged. Fighter, Professor Tsuchiya and some of the other adults and/or parental figures are very competent and outspoken about how the Mini 4WD hobby drives children's creativity and social interactions. However, the rest of them seem to be either unaware or perfectly okay with their children breaking rules, playing with weapons, role-playing as gangsters, and destroy other people's properties for fun.
• Aesop Amnesia: Gen realizes he can win without using a battle part, but he's back to his Ax-Crazy personality in the very next episode.
• Animation Bump: The quality of the animation is... inconsistent, to say the least.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Go Seiba, Jiromaru Takaba, Chiko Mikuni.

• Awesome, but Impractical: Cyclone Magnum, as it (initially) requires a running time to build up downforce and speed. It gets better.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: Not blood, but battery lead. This happens when Carlo's Diospada illegally destroys Brett's Buck Blader during a race, with Go witnessing the deed.
• Butt-Monkey: Tokichi. The catch is, he actually looks and sounds like a monkey; he even wears a monkey suit sometimes.
• Calling Your Attacks: MAGNUUUM TORNAAAAAADOOO!
• Call My Name: There's a tendency for characters to dramatically call their cars' name. Go does it a lot. Carlo also does that in an episode of WGP as he uses Diospada's Adios Dance to snatch a win from Retsu.
• Car Fu: What proponents of battle racing (Ogami and Borzoi) wants Mini 4WD racing to be.
• Chase Scene: The whole Bousou Mini Yonku Daitsuiseki movie is one big chase scene, with the cast trying to stop the berserk Gun Bluster XTO from running away.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Kurosawa always ends up badly when he's cheating.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Retsu has a red shirt, hair, eyes and gloves, and has the red Sonic 4WD. Gou has blue eyes, hair, gloves and boots, and has the blue Magnum 4WD.
• Combining Mecha:
  • Phantom Blade and Vise Intruder can merge together in MAX, which somehow also enlarges them.
  • Word of God stated that the idea of Beak Stinger G - Crusher Jiro's amalgamation of Ogami's three battle racers (Beak Spider, Brocken Gigant, and Ray Stinger) was based on that.

• Crapsaccharine World: What happens when the typical toy combat tropes are viewed as invading forces that get deconstructed.

• Darker and Edgier: Return Racers seems to be going this way, judging by the Chapter 3. The new antagonist for the series, Crusher Jiro and his army, went for a heavy metal look with lots of skulls and spikes, to the point they crucified the Ogami trio.
• Down to the Last Play: Gouki and Retsuya usually end up in a tie even with a photo shoot.
• Dub Name Change: In the Philippines, Italian and Arabic dubs. The Indonesian one simply changes the titles of Tsuchiya and Ogami from doctors to professors, while the English dub changes the Seiba brothers' names to Jet and Joey.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Professor Ogami's laboratory is located around a volcano; the lava pit is used to discard rejected cars and where the original Sabers were destroyed.
• Emotionless Boy: J, before Heel–Face Turn.
• Empathic Racing Cars:
  • They certainly don't communicate, but while the GP Chip handwaves the trope in the second season, the cars do act according to their owners.
  • The advanced GP Chip planted within Gun Bluster XTO has a mind of its own. The car goes berserk and runs away from Rion as it gets frustrated when Team XTO Revolvers is being disbanded.
• Free-Range Children: Especially with Ryo Takaba and his brother Jiromaru who appear to be fending for themselves when they were first introduced.
• Fun with Acronyms: TRF Victorys - Tsuchiya Racing Factory Victorys. In real life, TRF is also the abbreviation for Tamiya's radio control racing team, although they also released Mini 4WD kits with TRF name in it, usually modified from the original (Cyclone and Beat Magnum, as well Max Breaker, plus the TRF Racer Jr).
• Gratuitous English: Loads and loads of them with the cars' names, that is.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • J, Kurosawa, Retsuya - most of them involve Defeat Means Friendship.
  • Kai Okita in the WGP anime.
• Heroic BSoD: When the Sabers and Victory Magnum are destroyed.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Ryo willingly allowed his already damaged Tridagger X be sliced by Kai's Beak Spider so that Go's Victory Magnum could finish second during the Summer Great Japan Cup.
• Idiot Hero: Go (even as an adult in Return Racers) and Gouki.
• Instant Flight: Just Add Spinning!: Magnum Tornado, applying a concept from a fast ball pitching in baseball, Magnum can, with an aid from a wind flow, temporary swirl mid-air at high speed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Go.
• Large-Ham Announcer: Fighter. He gets a woman for it.
• Merchandise-Driven: Tamiya's, of course. Its logo and products are everywhere.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: So many. Considering the company trying to sell their products, it's understandable.
• Mood Whiplash: Many angsty moments are cut short and turned into something funny when the angsters accidentally mess themselves up.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Marina, given her choice of clothing and her Woobie personality.
  • Jun Sagami is infamous for being a paedo bait.
• My Little Panzer: They're supposed to be toys, and they are, at least with the Seiba brothers and most other kids. Professor Ogami begs to differ with those weaponised cars he comes up with, however.
• National Stereotypes: WGP is on par with Mobile Fighter G Gundam when it comes to stereotyping foreigners, especially since the Japanese seem to be the only people to have any significant variety among themselves - apart from the TRF Victorys, only one member of the Light Scorpion team (Huan) have a significantly different car from the other members.
• Nitro Boost: Buck Blader's Power Booster.
• One-Letter Name: J, and his sister R, the user of Dragon Delta, with aircraft-style front wheels.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Ame in the Super Famicom game Power WGP 2 (a game revolved around a second World Grand Prix tournament), which is actually Rei Hijikata.
• Product Placement: Zigzagged, Tamiya's trademark logo appears regularly but Tamiya is almost never referred to by name.
• Playing with Fire: Fire/Phoenix Stinger.
• Racing Commentator: Fighter, and Professor Tsuchiya for racing analysis. Sometimes Ogami also analyzes the racing too.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Strange enough, Go, the hotblooded younger brother, has a blue motif, while Retsu, the level-headed, older brother, is red.
• Rollerblade Good: In WGP, most characters glide on roller skates instead of running.
• Running Gag: Whenver Go's teacher, Manami, enters a free race, there will be a track that leads into a male toilet.
• Serious Business:
  • Ogami definitely wants this to happen throughout the racing scene, but the heroes pride themselves on playing it clean and not taking their hobby too seriously. Not to mention that they won't mind spending time racing for fun in the filler episodes.
  • The existence of the governing bodies for Mini 4WD racing (Japan's MSAJ, which was repeatedly influenced by Ogami, and the worldwide FIMA) makes it an even more serious business. Then again, real-life radio control racing (and other hobbies for that matter, be it scale models or doll collecting to name a few) do have their own governing bodies or collectors' clubs, though they clearly don't take their hobby as seriously as what is shown in the anime.

• Spanner in the Works: Chiko, messing up her brother's plans twice, with the second time being a serious matter as Kai's trying to take over Mikuni game center.)
• Spoiled Brat: Tokichi firstly appears a rich and spoiled kid, though he gets better.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Go; the story starts off with the sibling being equally focused, but after Go has created his Cyclone Magnum, he pretty much steals half of the show.
• Stalker with a Crush: Chiko, on Retsu.
• Super Prototype: The Sabers, V Machines, and Proto Saber JB (as well as the successor cars by the Ogami Corps whose names are only known by the color of their cars).
• Terrible Trio: Professor Ogami's students; Kai (super ego), Gen (id), and Rei (ego).
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: Enforced. In the second season, the World Grand Prix was originally going to take place in Colorado, but Professor Tesshin can manage to change the location of the championship to Japan.

• Underdogs Never Lose: Played with in WGP. TRF Victorys doesn't win every race, but whenever a team member has a personal problem and runs dead last in a race, it's very likely that he will be the one who wins the race or at least help the team winning it. Unless he needs an upgrade badly.
• Unobtainium: ZMC, a lightweight yet durable fiberglass ceramic-like material, used in Ryo's Neo Tridagger ZMC; it was originally used in Shining Scorpion, and Ogami chases after it to strengthen Rei Hijikata's car, Ray Stinger.
• Villain Protagonist: Retsuya, before his Heel–Face Turn.
• Weaponized Car: Most cars made by Ogami and Borzoi academy. Diospada also has knives hidden in its front body. During the start of the series, Futoshi Kurosawa's Black Saber had various weapons as well, before his Heel–Face Turn (after finding his weapons weaker against Okita's Beak Spider).
• Word Salad Title: Coupled with Gratuitous English as mentioned earlier, some of the cars' names are either gaudy or just plain weird when you think about it. Brocken Gigant? Gun Bluster?