One could call it the most dangerous race in the galaxy. It's a race where anything goes. Unimaginably fast engines and nitro substances? No way you would be able to win without them. Weapons? Hell, most of your competition will be armed to the teeth with them. Explosives? It would be more illegal to race without them. The locals? Pissed off, armed to the teeth and have declared war on you and your fellow racers.
This is the ultimate race. It's the ultimate test of your racing skill in the entire universe. If you don't have the necessary resolve, balls, stupidity and hairdo, then there is no way in hell you'll be
able to even think about competing in...
Redline
Studio: Madhouse
Director: Takeshi Koike
Licensed by: Manga Entertainment
Length: 102 minutes
Genres: Racing, Sci-fi, Action
(For best experience, read this review while listening to this track)
Story:
The story to Redline is rather straight forward: People and aliens from all over the galaxy tune in and bet on races taking place across different worlds. Each race is given a color and acts as a qualifier to the most spectacular and dangerous of all the races: Redline.
Our story follows Sweet JP who has just lost at Yellow Line thanks to a horrible crash and has his hopes of competing in Redline all but crushed. Then two other racers drop out and thanks to a popularity vote, he and another racer are selected to compete in Redline.
Of course, then you have to consider the fact that said racers dropped out because Roboworld's government, the cyborg dominated world that Redline has been selected to take place on, has declared the race illegal and threatened to blow up any racer that participates in the race on their homeworld. To be fair, if you had all the military secrets and treaty breaking biological weapons strewn out across your front yard that they had, you probably wouldn't all all the pesky cameras that the race brings pointed towards your stash.
"And we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for you kids and your stupid TransAm!"
Well let's be honest here, you're probably not going to be watchingRedline for its plot. It's not really going out of its way to say anything overly interesting or be in any way thought provoking. And that is completely fine as really your just there to watch things go boom and cars go faster than they normally should. And it does those things really, really well.
Characters:
Much like the story itself, the characters aren't going to have you doing a lot of thinking. Characters primarily consist of the very pissed-off Roboworld government/military that go out of their way to annihilate the racers and the racers themselves.
The racer characters range from the main protagonist and love interest, a dirty cop, the cyborg guy who wins every Redline race, the Redline universe equivalent of Batman and Robin and of course: the fanservice
And their car is just a little bit unsettling...
While many of the side characters and their vehicles are rather varied in appearance and personality, they don't have much in way of actual characterization. This is understandable considering the length of the movie, but they lacked anything that would have actually made them memorable instead of being forgotten in place of the main cast.
Speaking of which, Sweet JP himself is your standard "need for speed" racing protagonist. His dreams and aspirations mainly center around racing itself. Personality-wise he's quite pleasant at other times (How he got the 'Sweet' in his nickname) though he can be pretty hardheaded at times. Appearnce-wise he more or less looks like your standard greaser... Except he has a ridiculously large do'...
It's like he's compensating for something...
Frisbee is JP's childhood friend and mechanic. However, it never seems as if he has JP's best interests at heart as he often rigs races and makes deals with the mafia.
Sonoshee McLaren aka "Cherry Boy Hunter" (A name she hates) more or less has the exact same motivation JP has and more or less acts as the movie's main love interest for JP.
Much like the story, you probably won't be watching Redline for its characters either. No what you'll be watching it for is...
Animation:
Studio Madhouse is well known for their pretty high quality animation and boy oh boy does it show in Redline. The film had about 7 years of development time with each frame of the film being hand-drawn and almost no short-cuts being used. The lighting and artwork for each scene is almost a visual masterpiece on its own.
The artwork has an insane amount of detail in every scene giving everything a lived in and reused feel to it. Visually the movie has much darker colors while still being vibrant. The closest thing I could compare it to are the scene cards from Gurren Lagann as the shading in the animation feels very reminiscent of them.
Character designs are pretty well done ranging from very sci-fi esque clothing to more modern-esque designs. The aliens themselves range quite a lot from more anthropomorphic to more traditional alien designs to more-human like ones (Albeit, mainly for fanservice reasons...)
One thing I really liked about the film is that much like Trigun: Badlands Rumble, Redline puts an extensive amount of detail in the background characters. Each one in a crowd feels unique and different from the next. None of them really feel like traditional cookie-cutter background characters.
It can go without question that the visuals during racing and action scenes are especially well done. Each one of these scenes delivers incredible amounts of intensity and badassery that are jawdroppingly amazing. In fact, I'm fairly certain my jaw dropped a good number of times over the course of the movie.
Sound:
If you've been listening to the track linked at the beginning of the review then imagine that track being played with the equally fantastic visuals. Congrats, you've experienced pure, jawdropping, blood vessel popping bliss.
I have that same expression when i'm on the toilet...
But in all seriousness, James Shimoji does an absolutely wonderful job with the soundtrack. The music in general does a nice job of accompanying the more intense racing scenes with equally intense beat-heavy tracks while also switching to more toned down tracks in calmer scenes.
The only thing I'd really say against the soundtrack is that, with a few exceptions, none of the other tracks really comes close to the same jaw dropping amazingness of the initial Yellowline track. That being said, I definitely found it enjoyable all around and especially liked that each racer more or less gets his/her own opening track.
Language-wise the dub is pretty well done with solid performances from Patrick Seitz (JP), Liam O'Brien (Frisbee) and Michelle Ruff (Sonoshee). Personally, I'd say go with the English dub over the Japanese one simply for the fact that you can focus more on the visuals rather than the subtitles.
Personal Enjoyment:
Redline is not a movie to make you think about stuff. It's a movie where you turn your brain off, so you can watch things go boom and cars go fast. I don't think it could be any more perfect in that aspect. Visually, it may as well be a masterpiece and judging by many of Madhouse's other works, it will undoubtedly still be visually impressive years and years from now.
Final Verdict:
After assigning scores to:
Story: 3.25
Characters: 3.00
Animation: 5.00
Sound: 4.50
And my own personal enjoyment: 5.00
I have given Redline an assigned score of:
4.15
Recommendation:
I give Redline a buy recommendation. While it's not rated, a lot of its content definitely treads R-rated territory, just as a heads up. As far as streaming goes, Manga Entertainment has an official (free I might add) video for it on Youtube (dubbed). Redline can be purchased off of Amazon, Rightstufor wherever you can purchase anime DVDs/Blu-rays.
Alternative anime (movies) to check out:
Trigun: Badlands Rumble
Much like Redline, Trigun: Badlands Rumble is not the most sophisticated in its plot but more than makes up for it in action and visuals. Additionally, it's standalone so you don't actually need to watch the series first to understand what's going on (Seeing as how I watched the movie first, I know from experience) though I would also recommend the series as well as both the series and movie are equally good. This is the movie that got me hooked on anime, and I've lost count the number of times I've re-watched it.
Paprika
Okay, maybe this movie will require a bit more brain power. If you watched Inception and said to yourself "I sure would like another movie like that", then you're in luck as Paprika was the main inspiration for Inception. In fact, Paprika is more or less Inception if Inception was high as all hell. Visually like Redline, Paprika has moments of absolute spectacle all while dealing with lots of interesting psychological issues and ideas. Also, the Parade track will be guaranteed to get stuck in your head for a long time.
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