Review of Redline

Redline feels a lot like a rollercoaster ride – you wait around, bored out of your mind, for an hour to get a few minutes of exhilaration, and when it comes, it’s a bit disorienting and a lot worse than you were expecting, and then it’s over. Basically, Redline’s got a lot of waiting for not much payoff, and I personally prefer my motion pictures to be good in their entirety, rather than have a single good scene. One thing that immediately comes to mind as soon as you begin viewing is the unusual visual style, with its very sharp colours, which is a love itor hate it ordeal, and I happen to hate it, and this art style is accentuated by the fact that just about every conceivable object in this universe seems like it was intentionally designed to look as bizzare as they could make it, rather than construct a fictional universe in which things seem to function normally, and as a byproduct, some will look different to the way they do in this universe. Take, as the most prominent example, the various species of alien present within, a hundred different species that all look like the genetic product of crustaceans and Decepticons, but, they don’t really matter a whole lot, practically the only characters that matter happen to be human, which is a bit strange to me, if they’re going to go through all this effort designing these bizzare creatures, you’d think they’d give them some sort of screentime, but they’re extras, and nothing but. Call it Chekhov’s Laser Gun, if you will, if you’re going to make something look or work differently to how it does on this planet, then some sort of reasoning should be given, or else it’s not of much purpose at all. Usually, I’m of the belief that so long as it looks neato, then it’s not entirely necessary, but the problem is, it doesn’t, it is disorienting, more than anything else, at any given moment, there are at least ten different things that are completely unrecognisable to me, and I’m just kind of meant to accept that.

If you aren’t paying attention, you might not actually notice, but Redline has a story, that story being that people in cars, some of which look like actual old-timey racecars, others looking like morbidly obese metallic lobsters, have a race called the Redline every 5 years, and our protagonist, generic punk dude with a pompadour and leather jacket with spikes in it, is preparing himself for that race. And, generic really doesn’t quite cut it, he is as fucking hollow a character you can get, if 0 dimensional characters exist, he’s a prime example, he wants to win the race, and he likes some girl, that’s all I can say about him, the girl, well, she also wants to win the race, and she likes him. And, the others might have actual character, barely, 1 dimensional isn’t much better than 0 in the grand scheme of things, they are most certainly not interesting at all, and the problem with this racing anime is that their focus is not on the racing, you get that only at the very beginning and the very end, but rather, this story that nobody gives a shit about, I do not believe it is possible to, the entire thing is malignantly useless. Also something about some space empire trying to colonise one particular planet who didn’t want them to, but I wasn’t very enthralled by that, and you won’t be either, and for the record, they throw in a huge number of characters and plot points, but basically the protagonist and his girlfriend are the only ones who get a conclusion of any sort, 90% of it is filler, holds no purpose, and goes nowhere.
The race itself isn’t awful, it’s a little disorienting because I’m more used to races being grounded, on the ground, being informed that cars are capable of flight, and then flotation about a minute apart isn’t how I’d go about things, but, it’s fine, I guess, same deal with the soundtrack, a few decent tracks in there, but a strong reliance on Engrish theme songs, or that type, which I’ve never been immensely impressed by, but the songs aren’t bad so it’s acceptable enough.

Really, the problem with Redline is it’s focusing on the wrong thing, it’s about a race, yet they hardly ever race, and instead have to go for some profoundly boring story for the overwhelming majority of its duration, they have absolutely nothing to interest the viewer. Redline, more like flatline.