Redline

##*The Opinion no one F~ing asked for but I delivered cause I had nothing better to do on a Saturday morning other than j**k it*from Takeshi .K Plus Madhouse 5 Anime Comic

Digidy dang doo Redline is mothaf~ing cool
The biggest and bestest waste of money that there ever was

blah blah blah recently rewatched Redline (for the 3rd time) and while i can securely say It's probably one of the most explosively kinetic action animated flicks I'll ever see it's also just an overall intimidating and batshit ambitious project that Takeshi Koike the Resident batshit animator with a kink for movement really gunned for

if you've never heard of Koike just think about any animated scene with over the top unnecessarily, superfluous, and eccentric over-the-top movement with cool shadows and unconventional angles that you rarely see in animation

Koike is like a Mad Scientist of animation I don't know a better way to put it he just IS

the first half of Redline has a more laid-back methodical setup with the various racers and background elements sort of seasoning the centerpiece race that the whole movie is based around but once that actually gets going it's as if the story multiplies itself into insanity~fest with how many random element setups coalesce with the main attraction being redline and how they're used to spice up the main event and the abruptness and jarring writing is something that really contrasts the earlier half with it's slower pace at introducing the various racers and character motives and fleshing out the main premise of the film

there are so many times things just happen in the second half during a frenzy of kinetic fascinating absurdity that it feels like the writers themselves started speeding up parallel to the film and starting doing coke
it's amazing but it's just incredible how much I forgot about the insane second half seeing it again
to put it in a way that's more easily understood it would be like if I rewatched Good Will Hunting and there was a scene of Robin Williams going on a murder spree and started mowing down people with a sub-machine gun it's just that jarring of a rewatch

though in Redline's case I have to say the film's aesthetic style and bombastic presence at the start created a foundation for it's later insanity as a sort of breeding ground such that it doesn't disrupt any logical coherence of this universe which often people tend to forget about writing personally that realism within a narrative's universe and realism by trying to compare a narrative universe and our own is two different things where with the former is about maintaining a set-up of logic of what to expect and the latter is trying to compare two things that already have ample dissonance between them based on one existing in reality and the other NOT

Basically realism in a fictional universe is different than our own universe unless the world of said universe is meant to be a reflection of our own either to a T or with some variations ranging from a world where some humans gain immortality and are experimented on by the government or an alternate history where the allies lose WW2

Redline is a master of meshing its bizarre and eccentric reality of greased up violence and rubber road mayhem with a simple yet moldable frame of a story that allows its animators to go buck wild

Madhouse and as far as I’ve heard the movie in terms of box office sales grossed less than half of what made up the budget though box office sales being successful is tied together to the manufacturing cost and when it comes to anime it’s difficult in itself to find a reliable and accurate source for a budget measuring or any facts about it

Hell the Box Office numbers come from an unreliable Medium article with no references or citations to back up his claims

The animated film Redline can be widely considered a failure. It was a flop and didn’t make back most of the it’s budget. It grossed $8.2 Million with a budget of $30 Million.

But if were going off the idea the Studio went bankrupt from Redline it introduces an interesting conversation dictating art

Cause, in order to make art of such scale, requires quite a bit of people all organized and doing various specified tasks ranging from Directing, Mechanical Design, Sound Directing, Script Writing, Storyboard artists, Key Animators, and Planners organizing everything in synergy all in the service to complete a product because at the end of the day studios need to make a net gain in order to sustain the studio the company needs to make money in order to put into other projects as well as pay its employees for their work

In this perspective, I don’t really begrudge studio's that’ll target a specific audience niche of waifu character designs so that those viewers will buy the DVD's and other merchandise like boob mouse pads or body pillows or even the scents of the main characters

tying it back to Redline because the mods maybe think that I'm going off on an unrelated tangent

Redline goes all in with its animation and while I love the movie for it especially in all the ways they use it to add character to each part of the world from the Cyborg Fascists to midget Adidas tracksuit-wearing alien bookmakers

but due to this long endeavor of work that costs the studio time and resources working on and mind you the movie took 7 years to make with a compared to another MADHOUSE project Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust the production of which started around 1997 and was finished 3 years later in 2000 with the American screening being in 2001

the screening and box office dividends from Redline didn't add up to the production costs of the film and left the studio in financial troubles which in a simplified explanation led to them being bought out especially after various talents started leaving the studio like Yuuasa or Hosada

I don't think Redline killed the studio but it definitely crippled it quite a bit.

theres a saying that art with constraints can lead to innovation learning to work around obstacles instead of bashing through them and also minimizing the amount of time you focus on trying to get things exactly as you see them and finding ingenuity that saves time while also being a good practical solution and concession on the side of the artist

part of me wonders what would have been if the leading personnel decided to pull back or tweek some strenuously labored on scenes then maybe the studio would still be around

then again there's something poignant in how Redline breaks from the mold even though it became a double-edged sword giving us a spectacle unlike any other that stands monolithically for years able to be enjoyed due to the sacrifices came with it

rather than just going with the cycle Redline threw its bet all in for better and for worth and I can't help but respect Koike and everyone at Madhouse involved in its production for it

some say it was worth it but I think its a more complex question given what was sacrificed