What better way to close out the year than with a review of a title that is technically out next year, but might well have been among the very best releases of this year? (It's technically out in January, but review copies found their way out before then.)
I speak of REDLINE, Takeshi Koike and Katsuhito Ishii's landmark anime feature film, hitting theaters and BD/DVD this coming January in many U.S. cities. It's already played film festivals around the world to great acclaim, and most everyone who has seen it has one thing to say: the animation is astounding.
Given that REDLINE was seven years in the making, I'm not surprised its animation has become one of its key selling points. The meticulously hand-drawn animation was produced by MADHOUSE, the animation company famous for plenty of other previous efforts (Black Lagoon, Claymore, Chaos;HEAd, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Rideback, Summer Wars, Trigun, and many more). MADHOUSE were also responsible for bringing to life the late anime director Satoshi Kon's groundbreaking productions: Paprika, Millennium Actress, Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, and Tokyo Godfathers.
REDLINE's worthy of attention for a whole bevy of reasons, but one of the biggest for me (apart from the spectacular animation) is the fact that it's an entirely original project. It's not based on an existing franchise -- a previously-released manga, anime, or what have you -- which means that much more creativity, but unfortunately also makes it that much more difficult a project to sell to existing anime fans, inside or outside of Japan. I've grappled with this issue before and concluded that while original doesn't automatically equal better, it's almost always refreshing to have that many more original projects in the mix to keep things interesting.
Read our full-blown review of REDLINE, and speak up below if you've been lucky enough to see this extraordinary production yet.
Image: REDLINE. Image courtesy Pricegrabber.
Comments