Anime Review: REDLINE

Written by Katsuhito Ishii (whose "Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl" I remembered well, I still have the VCD haha) and directed by Takeshi Koike (for which if you have seen "World Record" in the animated 'The Animatrix' anthology, you'd recognize this style immediately). The Redline anime is superbly produced by Madhouse, and I can imagine no other folks doing this, IMHO.

I have watched REDLINE today, and I have seen my genre-desires made anime. Having been released in late 2010, I reckon I missed out on this as it was around the time of my Stroke, but nevertheless I survived the ordeal, and was clued in most recently from gift of a movie poster from Richard Mijares! Imagine that…

Vibing the eclecticness of Wacky Races (which I love) and the hyper-technologies of a misbegotten far-flung-future at the smoking-hot barrel-end of "Speed Racer" (which I really love, the smoking-gun not "Speed Racer", thank you) speeding thru missile explosions and landmass-destruction, the film itself was an extreme swell-scifi-ride indeed, and is one of the best depictions of the anime genre I've seen for years.

According to multiple sources, the production of this film took seven years to make, and I find no fault in hand-drawn anime, with this not slowing down for any one else on the sidelines. It is indeed an impressive piece of celluloid-anime, and I can only imagine the visuals that WOWs the viewers on the silver screen. I would hardly dare imagine this in 3D, for I think it might well melt anyone's eyes, IMHO.

I watched this on a 15" laptop screen, so perhaps I am spared the agony of visual-awesomeness? Now the trick is to track down the DVD, and even the soundtrack, which was a heady mixture of retrograde-grooviness thru the blender of beatboxjazz, topped with explosive techno, and as equally eclectic as the different racing vehicles.