That was absolutely bonkers and it was great.

JP’s dream of winning the famous Redline high speed race is dwindling fast. Not only did he crash his racer, but the Redline race is set to compete on a planet ruled by a tyrannical dictator.

Redline is a 2009 Japanese animated movie directed by Takeshi Koike, whose distinctive style was felt in The Animatrix in 2003. The Matrix spin-off anthology series included a short called World Record, which included some alarmingly disproportional animation of the human body. Redline is equally extreme in its animation. But that is the reason to love it.

While released in 2009, Redline was in production for seven years and (according to IMDB) took over 100,000 unique drawings to complete. Which in today’s modern cinema market, with everything being CGI or computer animated, is a colossal undertaking and achievement. There isn’t a single frame of computer generated imagery here. Redline feels straight out of the 80s or 90s. Even then, anime in the 90s used CGI regularly, especially for machinery. But more than the technical achievement, it is the stylistic achievement. Takeshi Koike and their team of animators really really push the boundaries of what animation can do here. This is something not seen with 3D animation.

Set far into the future, Redline sees humanity living alongside alien races across different worlds. Fiercely competitive races take place across these worlds, using extremely fast vehicles. The Redline race is the pinnacle of this competition, and we follow JP and Sonochee McLaren (I see what they did there) as they take part. But an initial race sees JP crash out… or rather, be sabotaged by his engineer and best friend. Can JP get a new car and win the big race now? Can he withstand attacks on the track and from within his own circle?

The film is appealing to a very niche audience, but I am part of that niche audience. So take a grain of salt for everything said in this review. Futuristic science fiction race cars are a weirdly fascinating concept. Redline is absolutely packed with weird and ridiculous characters. Each one of them receiving an over the top introduction. Robots, biomechanical people, aliens, and of course beautiful women. The entire smorgasbord of anime visual language is present in this one film.

It is all wrapped in an insane sci-fi bubble gum pop grease monkey Death Race 2000 mixture. With racers going so fast (I believe a car was quoted to have 35,000 horse power) that their skin is pulled back and they can barely hold on to the wheel. The animation “camera” becoming extremely foreshortened as everything stretches like a rubber band.

The tone of the movie is ridiculous, as you can imagine, and none of it is played straight. The vehicles jolt and bounce around haphazardly; recoil, traction, and inertia don’t quite rip vehicles apart but instead make them comically distort. Our racers are bizarre, violent, charismatic, or all of these. But they are all very distinct, which is vital during so much chaos and rapid storytelling. Our villain, a bizarre cybernetic overlord of Roboworld, denies Redline take place on his planet. But the Redline organizers do it anyway. Despite, or perhaps because of, the military backlash that results in the competing racers having to evade total destruction.

It is as hairbrained and bizarre as it sounds. It has several moments where you have to readjust your expectations as the film shifts gears too quickly to count. Certainly it is “style above substance,” and it certainly isn’t for everyone. I couldn’t get a Japanese audio version either, which was disappointing. But the dub was acceptably silly. There were also one too many plot additions for me to fully get on board with it, but gosh that animation is incredible. Just look at the poster if nothing else, it does a good job as an example.

It is hard to express how insane and impressive the animation here is. Redline should probably live on as an example of modern hand-drawn animation possibilities.

Whenever hand-drawn animation returns to our screens, it will not be too soon. Movies like Redline might put off a lot of people simply by their content, but the actual implementation of this animation is jaw-slackening. The plot feels at the mercy of animators who simply “want to” make a giant energy kaiju that screams mountains apart.

What?

If you like the sound of all of this, do watch it. You will know very quickly whether it is for you or not. If you aren’t immediately tapping your foot to the music and embracing the first race, you’ll know.