Why Redline is an Amazing Movie, and Why That Matters Today

If you were to ask me two of my least favorite shows from this year, my answer would be Studio A-1's Aeromanga Sensei and Studio Gohan's Handshakers. These are two shows I'd consider borderline terrible. But I think what's interesting is the distinct way that each one of them fails. For as much as I dislike Aeromanga, I have to say that its intent and execution is laser-focused. It knows exactly what it is and who it is for, and it's all put together and animated, well, competently. But that is also my exact problem with it. It feels plastic. Something designed to appeal to a very particular audience and not something anyone ever thought was a genuinely good idea in the first place. It's hard to feel that at any point in the show's production there was someone who actually believed in it. That there was any soul to the project at all. And then there's Handshakers. And Handshakers, both in production and story, is a top-to-bottom trainwreck of a show. Watching an episode of Handshakers is like watching a studio go insane. And for as much as I might rag on the show, there's also something I can't help but respect about it. For as broken as Handshakers is, there's something uniquely special in its brokenness. There's seeds of something genuinely different and unique here, and this makes me feel like, no matter how cataclysmically this production went off the rails, there were probably people working on it who really genuinely believed in the project and wanted to make something special. And there's something I find really admirable about that. Even if the end result was... ...unfortunate. The comparison of these two shows brings us to an interesting conclusion, and that is that spectacular failures have far more value than mediocre successes. I think projects like Handshakers are important because artists should take risks. They should try things with no guaranteed success or path to market. Because every time someone does fail in realizing their unique vision, there's someone else who succeeds. For every beautiful disaster, there's a phenomenal success. For every Handshakers, there's a Redline. Redline tells the hyperkinetic story of The Redline, a galactic illegal racing Grand Prix, which is also the largest, most dangerous, most batshit insane racing spectacle of the entire galaxy. If the idea of watching a film about racing doesn't appeal to you, don't worry. Redline is to racing what Dragon Ball Z is to a relaxed class of tai chi. There's a sheer kinetic fury to this movie that blasts it completely beyond any comparison with its real-world counterpart. The movie was released in 2009 and was directed by Takashi Koike, a veteran of the animation industry with 20-plus years experience. Redline, however, was Koike's directorial debut. Up until this point, he had been mostly laboring as a key animator under Madhouse, and you only need to look at his work from this period to see where his passions lie. Koike is a man obsessed with illustrating speed, motion, and velocity. Even in the more simple hand-to-hand sequences he's animated, there's a beautiful feeling of momentum and weight to the way he moves his characters, and this love of speed and velocity is at the core of Redline's appeal. Not too overstated here, but nothing I've ever seen matches the exhilaration the races of Redline elicit. The sheer sense of speed and force conveyed by these vehicles as they surge through Redline's dystopian future is simply unlike anything else. The animators are constantly pushing the visuals as far as they'll go, exaggerating and distorting the depth of field to really capture that intense sense of speed, and it really conveys the sheer physical velocity that these vehicles and their drivers are under, helped in no small part by some phenomenal FX animation. Smoke billows, engines explode, and buildings are torn apart from the sheer kinetic force that surrounds these vehicles, and it's all held together by some exceptional editing and storyboarding. The film makes fantastic use of cutaways, constantly jumping to shots of the driver's hands and feet as they hammer buttons, flick switches, slam on the brakes, and wrestle the steering wheel, before cutting back to the race itself to show us the result of the driver's skilled high-speed maneuvering. Such a constant use of cutaways could easily feel jarring and staggered, but the incredibly smooth editing job means not a single ounce of momentum is ever lost, and this is helped in no small part by the incredible soundtrack. The music is a joyous mix of lively electro-rock crossed with upbeat disco that surges and pounds with an energy that not only perfectly matches the chaos of the on-screen visuals, but that meshes beautifully with the roar of engines and the screech of tires, that creates a savage, raw soundscape that really ramps up the intensity of the movie but perhaps just as importantly, knows precisely when to cut back and let us sit in silence for a moment before exploding back into the action in a way that gets me on the edge of my seat every single time. While the film does an incredible job in creating exhilaration through a sense of speed, where this feeling actually starts to carry real narrative weight is that this is the same sense of excitement felt by our protagonist, Sweet JP. Throughout the movie, you get a real sense of what racing means to JP personally, and a lot of it's shown in very subtle ways through small details, like how laid-back JP is outside of races, but how alive he becomes once he's behind the wheel of his Trans Am, or his refusal to use weapons during the red line, because to him, racing is just racing, pure and simple. And it's not overly elaborative characterization, but it does do a great job of defining who JP is and what's important to him, and gives weight to both his romantic relationship with Sonishi and his complicated friendship with his mob-indebted friend, Frisbee. And this goes for the majority of the cast of Red Line. We don't spend a great deal of time with any particular one, but what little we do get always feels significant. Like Machine Head, the lumbering mechanical monstrosity who's been victorious at the last 20 Red Lines, but who also is the proud owner of this little Lhasa Abso, who he carries with him in all his interviews. Likewise, police officer Gory is a brutal and violent defender of the law, but in an interview, he's asked to comment on the affair that may be taking place between him and another officer, which he aggressively denies, but then later on in the movie, we see him gently kiss a photo of her before a race. And what these little touches do is add an element of humanity to the otherwise bombastically insane cast. It creates the feeling that the race of Red Line is something personal and significant to each one of its participants. And all these little character moments are framed inside a larger galactic opera. This iteration of the Red Line race is taking place on Roboworld, a militant planet run by an authoritarian dictator completely opposed to the race ever happening, for fear that coverage of it will expose the genetic superweapons he's been stockpiling, and so destroy the galactic diplomacy that exists between Roboworld and the rest of the galaxy. What I love about this setup is that essentially, you can break Red Line down into three layers. The very personal story that takes place between JP, Sonishi, and Frisbee, which is just one of the stories framed within the actual Red Line race itself, all encased with the giant sci-fi opera of Roboworld and the impending threat of galactic war. And so what this means is Red Line succeeds in creating stakes that feel both very personal as well as galactically significant, meaning when the time finally comes for the titular race to happen, it really feels like there is a massive amount at stake, both on a micro level for each individual character, but also on the macro for the universe at large. One thing that's probably becoming pretty obvious at this point in the video is that Red Line is a goddamn gorgeous movie. Drawing equal inspiration from American comic book artists like Frank Miller and classic mecha animators like Yoshinoro Kanata, tremendous amount of care has been put into bringing these characters and their vehicles to life, from the solidly constructed facial animations right down to the detail of each individual character's footwear. And what's incredible is that the vast, vast majority of the animations, outside some simple particle effects, are hand-drawn. And Koike said the reason for this is he wanted absolute control over the kind of marks he was making. He wanted to be able to manipulate lines in a very precise way in order to really put across the speed and emotion of each particular shot. And I don't think this is more apparent anywhere in the movie than the stunning key drawings of Red Line's animations, where you can really feel the artistic intent behind each and every line. But yet, as detailed as the characters in Red Line are, the animation itself never suffers. The movements of the characters consistently stay fluid and expressive, which of course makes the action scenes more exciting, but it also helps maintain that element of chaotic fun during the film's more mellow second act. In an interview with Ishii Katsuhito, the film's character designer, he stated that the visual theme of Red Line was for information overload. He wanted the movie to be an overwhelming visual assault, and in that regard, it absolutely succeeds. There's a vibrancy to how each scene is brought to life, and the galactic setting means that the designs of Red Line don't have to conform to any kind of human anatomy, and its character designers show distinct glee in taking advantage of this. Every environment of Red Line is swarming with all manner of uniquely designed creatures. No character ever feels like a placeholder, and there's never a design that feels half-assed or throwaway. I in particular love the designs of these little chicken scalpers. They're only on screen for about 40 seconds, but just look at how goddamn cool they look, and how each one has these little visual distinctions that help them stand out from the rest. And these are just one of the many strikingly original designs of the movie, to the point that it could nearly look a little too chaotic if it wasn't so beautifully tied together by an extremely strong art style, combining deeply saturated contrasting colours with pools of heavy black shadow. So, no question, Red Line is a goddamn gorgeous movie from any angle. But what I think's really interesting about the production of Red Line is that the film has a prequel OVA released in 2003 called Trava and the Fist Planet. Created by the same, albeit smaller, far less experienced staff, Trava and the Fist Planet is a fun, goofy, stylish way to kill 40 minutes, but the reason I bring it up is that you can see the various weaknesses in the team's production at this point. A lot of the shots feel very flat, and the animation is quite limited. The vision and style is most definitely there, but it's the technique that was lacking. And it's this lack of technique that Koike and his team at Madhouse would spend the next seven years working up and improving upon. And that's exactly what Red Line feels like. Seven years of intense work by an extremely skilled team who really believed and loved the project they were working on. And in a way, I can't help but feel there's something a little tragic about that. You see, as much merit as Red Line has artistically, the film wasn't especially well-received in Japan. It didn't even make the top 50 domestic box office list in 2009, the year of its release, losing out to titles such as the Japanese release of Jim Carrey's motion-captured A Christmas Carol. And this is really crushingly unfortunate, because Red Line is also one of the last times a big Japanese studio was willing to take a chance on an original animated movie. Something not based off an already successful series, or marketed and aimed at the broadest possible audience. And while there has been some fantastic animated films from Japan in the last year, with titles like Your Name and A Silent Voice, it's hard not to acknowledge how similar these titles are in aesthetic, structure and narrative, at least compared to something as different as Red Line. Which is why I wanted to make this video. I think it's important to recognise when a group of passionate and talented people create something special, which is exactly what happened with Red Line. I'm not in the business of telling people how to watch their media, but if you can, track down a Blu-ray copy of the movie. Not only so you can view it at the glorious 1080p quality it so badly deserves, but to show your support for a movie that, both in its production and its story, is about shattering every possible limitation. This, friends, is why Red Line is an amazing movie. This is why it matters today. Friends, that's going to do it. I really hope you enjoyed this video, and if you did and would like to help me create more like it, you can do so over at patreon.com slash supereyepatchwolf, where you can see your name listed with my beautiful and fantastic supporters right here. This week in particular, I'd like to thank Also, my buddy Clemps recently started a podcast over on his YouTube channel and was kind enough to have me as his first guest, so I'd highly recommend going and checking out the Coffee with Clemps podcast. As ever, you can find me over on the Let's Fight a Boss video game podcast or on Twitter at eyepatchwolf. Friends, take care of yourselves, and I'll see you next time.