Redline

Look, time is dilating around him, you know it's extreme.

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Tagline! Today I thought I'd do something a little bit different, and talk about an animated film I watched over the weekend. I don't normally talk about Anime on this blog, but I figured it was a movie, and I do talk about American animated films, so why not right? Redline is a movie that's relatively unremarkable in plot, but remarkable in execution. The movie is a science fictiony futuristic racer movie (basically like if they made an M-rated movie about the F-Zero games) where a racer with an enormous and ridiculous pompadour named JP makes the cut for the Redline Race, the most dangerous and prestigious race in the galaxy. The race is supposed to take place on the militant cyborg planet known as Roboworld, despite the violent (literally) opposition of the Roboworld government. This is all the better to spice up the race, as it just wouldn't be as interesting if certain death weren't on offer for a single mistake. Along with JP, a varied selection of weirdos is also competing in the race, including a giant robot Frankenstein man, magical sex-princess idol twins, a crime fighting bounty hunter duo (with their own theme song) and some other freaky aliens. Also JP's love interest, who is the only other not weird looking human in the movie pretty much (because having two tone pink/green hair or a massive blimp-sized pompadour is relatively normal). The racers gear up, prep their vehicles (mostly they are hover cars full of dirty tricks) and set out for what will surely be the most intense race ever.

Look at that glorious, glorious hair.

This film is, in terms of plot, characters and setting, thoroughly unremarkable. It is a by the books movie about racing, being over-the-top and assaulting your eyes with an explosion of crazy animation an general ridiculousness. If you like that sort of thing (and god knows I certainly do) you won't be disappointed here. This movie isn't about to let pesky things like explanation or plot get in the way of a dude in a space trans-am going several times the speed of sound and then exploding across the finish line in the rapidly disintegrating remains of their car. As much as I enjoy the minimal plot, because I love me a good race, the real draw here is the animation.

You see her boobs. Just sayin'.

In an age where virtually everything (and certainly most every Anime) is digitally drawn and animated, Redline was hand-drawn. That's right, this film was developed over the course of seven years, and it is made up of over 100,000 hand drawings. That is... something else if you ask me. It looks incredible after years of nothing but digital, homogenized looking art, and you can tell that their hearts were really in it. It sounds incredibly lame to say, but there is something just warmer about the hand-drawn animation of this movie, something that makes me very nostalgic for the movies and anime I watched when I was younger (I started out watching whatever they had on cartoon network, so I was watching Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Star after school). This movie is all hand drawn characters and super cool style over the more streamlined art and style of the mass-produced anime of the present, and you really just don't fully understand the difference in quality between hand-drawn and digital art until you experience something like this.

Nothing like chilling out with a lizard man gremlin in space.

If you are into anime at all, or just generally like animation, or if you enjoy over the top racing and action, then you can find something to like about this movie, and it is only a little over an hour and a half long, so it won't take much time either. Definitely give it a chance!

That's all for today, I'll see you on Thursday, with another very retro movie I'm thinking... but maybe not in a good way this time.