Redline.

If you’ve been follow Twitter for the past week or so, you might have noticed that a film called Redline has been getting quite a bit of buzz. 7 years in production, its director Takeshi Koike working day and night for years drawing frame after frame—if you’ve heard about the movie, then you’ve heard about its production history. It got released over in Japan and it sold just a little over 4000 copies across its various DVD and Blu-ray releases. Disappointing stat to see from a movie that had so much heart and soul poured into it, but it’s not unexpected given the tastes of otaku over in Japan. Then again, this movie was clearly aimed at Western audiences to begin with, so hopefully it will gain a cult following over here.

That said, I couldn’t wait for the US release and I decided to buy Japanese collector’s edition Blu-ray (with subs on the movie and the extras) and I don’t regret it at all. In fact, I’m still trying to recover from the thrilling experience. The movie is the most intensive visual experience I’ve had since Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game. But while its amazing visuals have touted left and right, the humor and personality that help carry the film is pretty underrated. Yoshiki Sakurai and Yoji Enokido were brought on to tighten Katsuhito Ishii’s script so as make the story flow and for it not to be bogged down in too many explicit details story wise. The visuals and body language of the characters make up for the final, more streamlined version and they create an interesting world with lots of depth. The design work in the sets, the machines, the characters themselves, and the music are overflowing with tons of personality, It makes the movie not drag its feet when it’s not going all out on the race track and make the entire movie a joy to watch. Ishii was the one who wanted an overload of information on screen and Koike was the man for the job. Honestly, the movie is nothing short of stunning.

There were 100,000 drawings made for this film and there were a core of 15 animators working on it, with other key animators being brought in to fill in holes here and there. Shinya Ohira is one of the latter animators whose work stood out the most. This was the first work we’ve seen from Ohira since his work on Genius Party and it’s breathtaking. *SPOILERS**SPOILERS* Katsuya Yamada corrected one cut, cleaned up another, and Hokuto Sakiyama probably cleaned up the rest of Ohira's work since all his work was 1st Key Animation (in other words, rough key animation). His scene starts the climax of the film (the awakening of the bioweapon). It’s great to finally see Ohira at work again, but I wonder when we might see him next, if ever. Sushio animated Machine Head and the Super Boins' introduction, Hiroyuki Imaishi did Johhny Boy and Lynchman’s intro, and Yoshiaki Kawajiri did about 20 to 30 cuts of Colonel Bolton in the third act of the movie. Kanako Maru did the intro of the MCs of the Redline race and Takeshi Koike handles the end of the climax film with JP heading towards the finish line and the very last scene. Sushio, Maru, and Koike did other stuff, but I’ve yet to decipher all the info on the Sakuga@Wiki entry (taken from the key animation book).

All in all, and I don’t say this often, you owe it to yourself to at least experience this movie once.

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EDIT 2: Sushio also did Machine Head's intro. Yutaka Minowa did the cuts where Bosbos is putting on her earrings and the racers getting into their rides before the Redline race starts.