Redline

I've been a fan of anime since I saw my first fan dub of "The Bubble Gum Crisis" at Norwescon. It's a beautiful medium with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, it generally wastes it. It's easy to get annoyed at anime with the same five plots and the same three characters. Then, just when you are ready to chuck it all you see something like "Redline," and if it doesn't restore your faith in humanity it at least makes for a funky time.

Now "Redline" isn't really original, but what it lacks for in originality it more than makes up for in energy and bugaboo whooting chaos nutso crazy. I've never seen anything like it, oh wait I have. The last time I saw animation this crazy it was attached to a film called Party 7.



Redline comes off like someone gave Ralph Bakshi in his prime a bunch of LSD and cocaine and then sent him off to Japan to make an anime version of the "Wacky Races." So the plot such as it is has our hero with hair so big it counts as an extra limb trying to qualify for the redline the biggest race in the galaxy. He loses because his no account friend and mechanic is working for the mob. He wins a place in the race anyway when it's announced it's going to be in a war zone which causes a lot of folks to drop out. The rest of the movie has our hero meet the other racers including the very cute Cherry Boy Hunter. Then of course there is the race, followed by the cyborg troops sent out after to kill them, magical princesses, and huge akira style monsters. It's an amazing movie where literally anything can happen and probably shouldn't. Cars probably shouldn't morph into beautiful girl robot with tires on her hips and her drivers enclosed in the silicon(?) ta tas, and it shouldn't be doing a funky dance that takes out cyborg assassins.

Clearly, this is a film that doesn't give a hoot about traditional notions of story telling, logic, or normalacy. Luckily, the music helps bind the craziness together. A song like "Yellowline" is less music and more a drug that synchs your heart into this ten thousand miles per hour movie.