From Barefoot Gen and Ninja Scroll to Paprika and Summer Wars, the blitheness studio Madhouse has been responsible for tons of classic anime films. Picking out the best film in Madhouse'due south library is a hopeless task. Picking out the all-time-blithe Madhouse film, however, is surprisingly easy -- and it happens to be a film virtually no one actually saw. The anime movie in question is Redline, directed by Takeshi Koike.

Redline is almost a futuristic car race in space. The protagonist, Sweet JP, has been competing in rigged races in the Yellowline contest, needing to come in second to get bond money from the mafia. All the same, when ii racers driblet out of this year's Redline, which is taking place illegally on the fascist planet Roboworld, JP suddenly finds himself qualified for the large league. At present he's not simply competing against the milky way'south best racers (including Yellowline victor and possible love involvement Sonoshee MacLaren), but trying to survive the hostile environment of Roboworld itself.

Redline featured

Madhouse spent 7 years animative Redline using over 100,000 drawings, and the resulting flick is a celebration of simply how cool information technology is such a project could even be. It's easy to draw parallels between Sweet JP pushing his old-schoolhouse TransAm to the absolute limit against cyborgs and hovercars and the Madhouse animators themselves making the absolute most of hand-fatigued craft in an increasingly digital industry.

second animation isn't anywhere every bit close to extinct in Japanese theaters every bit it is in American theaters, merely even mostly hand-drawn anime will yet rely on CGI for vehicles and other furnishings. Redline's production didn't entirely forgo computers (as with almost every anime fabricated afterward 2000 or so, the coloring was done digitally), but all of the motorcar races are animated past hand, with a thrilling sense of exaggeration that non even the best CGI could pull off effectively.

Unfortunately,Redline was not a commercial striking in either Japan or the Us. Despite its popularity at international film festivals in 2009, the pic barely made a dent in the Japanese box office in 2010 -- no hard stats are available, but Matt Schley of The Japan Times notes anecdotally, "I saw it opening weekend at a cinema outside Nagoya with most five other people in the theater." The American theatrical release was nigh non-existent and Redline became the last new anime sold on DVD past Manga Entertainment.

Movies Speed Racer Live-Action Fireworks

In many means, Redline is comparable to another sci-fi car racing motion picture made around the same time: the Wachowski sisters' 2008 live-activeness adaptation of Speed Racer. Both movies expand the simplest of plots into the well-nigh lavish eye candy to the point of overstimulation. Both movies received some downright vicious reviews upon initial release from critics who dismissed them as way over substance, just in both cases, the mode is the substance, with racing serving as a heartfelt metaphor for the art and struggles of filmmaking.

Just every bit Speed Racer's reputation amongst American cinephiles has risen considerably over the past decade, Redline's risen to cult classic status in Nippon, receiving a 10th-anniversary theatrical rerelease final year. The seventh episode of Space Keen, another hyper-imaginative cult anime with a pompadoured protagonist, is a direct homage to Redline. Takeshi Koike has continued to find practiced work in the anime industry, directing a trilogy of darker-and-edgier Lupin III films and doing the character designs for Yasuke (premiering on Netflix April 29). Madhouse, all the same, has not fabricated a motion-picture show anywhere about equally ambitious since.

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