"Redline", Dir: Takeshi Koike, 2009

I generally don't seek out a lot of Japanese animation, or "Anime", since a lot of it looks the same to me, with small variations within what is clearly a commercially successful medium spawned from "Manga", or Japanese comic publications. The style - characterised by economic, clean line work and well-defined characters- lends itself to drawn animation but also leads to a generic quality, though to be fair, often balanced with interesting storylines and more mature subjects. Criterion Channel is hosting several Anime films in its August line-up and, typically for me, I chose at random and settled on "Redline" without knowing too much about it and the brief accompanying outline reveals very little. From the get-go director Takeshi Koike's "Redline" looks very different from the usual anime in terms of graphic style, which owes more to certain graphic novel styles, and has a very "Heavy Metal"/"Metal Hurlant" feel combined with a tendency to use extreme and unusual camera angles and distorted physiognomy of the human and alien characters that populate the world of the story.

The plot could be described as "Wacky Races meets Mad Max-Fury Road meets Speedracer", the last being a classic and influential 1960's TV anime that revolved around the then popular passion for motorsports, in turn inspired by the live-action feature film "Grand Prix", which I've discussed elsewhere.

Koike ramps up the energy of what is in essence simply a race between various outlandish vehicles and their equally outlandish drivers through the deserted rocky wastelands of "RoboWorld", much to the annoyance of the ruler of the planet who tries to throw every kind of destructive obstacle in their way that include a giant mutant weapon of mass destruction that owes a great deal to the mutated "Tetsuo" from "Akira" and a monstrous and obligatory giant "Kaiju ("giant monster") Battle" to add to the general mayhem. But these are mere story plot points in what is, visually, a non-stop tour-de-force of hand-drawn animation and effects that somehow manages to maintain the story arc of "Sweet JP", the film's roguish hero with an exaggerated 1950's coiffure who is reminiscent of the titular character of "Space Dandy", which shares a similar manic energy. Much like "Grand Prix" before it, the format of a race between cars is more than simply a race but becomes a framing device as a metaphor for life - at the start the hero's journey is thwarted following a devastating accident where his car is totalled but he rises again in spite of seemingly overwhelming odds and gets the girl to boot -"Sonoshee", a rival racer - by the conclusion, and the journey is indeed a breathtaking one as obstacle upon obstacle are piled on to the hapless drivers in their souped-up super machines at a breakneck speed rarely witnessed in drawn animation. The style of hyper animated fight sequences in anime has become a much-repeated trope amongst followers of the genre and I am not particularly a fan since there comes a point where it is just an exercise in technical flash that doesn't particularly move a story forward, besides pushing animation into increasing meaningless visual abstraction. "Redline" manages to rein this style in enough to allow the viewer to follow the plot...just. This metaphorical aspect is what makes the subject of endless appeal to film makers beyond simply covering the subject in a straightforward documentary style. I've yet to see Tom Cruise in "F1" but my guess is that it ploughs a similar furrow.

The film was apparently a commercial flop on its release and never recovered its high budget but has since gained a following as an example of an anime that determinedly tries to avoid the cliches of the genre while still retaining some of its recognisable hallmarks.

"Redline" Dir: Takeshi Koike, 2009

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