Review of Redline

(Warning: review contains a spoiler for the movie, you've been warned) To be fairly blunt with anyone who reads my sorry ass review, the only racing anime I've known is initial d and although I have yet to catch the show I also have yet to see another racing anime that catches not only my eye and my attention, but also makes me want a series more than ever long after it's release (In terms of racing anime) Enter stageleft: Redline This is one of those one in a blue moon movies that's a work of art and holds a good sense of a world that just askingto be explored, sadly it's a one-shot wonder coming from madhouse since it's a 0.0025% that they'll be willing to revive the film that nearly sunk them.
Not gonna dive on that old scar anymore so looking past that here's some of my thoughts on the film.

-Story
The story for redline is fine, bare bones but fine. It's not something that's revolutionary but nothing that's so bad it's insulting to the series.
My main issue is a lack of the character's backstory but more on that later.
Again fine but bare bones and I wish they could have given some depth to some of the characters (like JP, Frisbee, and Sonoshee a little bit).
The World of redline however is self-explanatory, some bold and in our face and some subtle enough to go unnoticed.

-Art/Animation
Do I even need to say anything about the art or animation?, it's amazing and it feels like it's coming straight from a comic book.
I have very little to nothing to say about it except for it's just...amazing and that they went fully hand-drawn with the movie is just flat out beautiful.

-Sound
Similar to art I really don't have much to say for sound except that it's great, not that every single track stands out outside of the races but it's good nonetheless. A small thing that I really appreciate about it is that whoever is in first they track changes, like when JP is in the lead the guitars kick in, or when sonoshee is in first it shifts with backup singers coming in.
It definitely comes off as the soundtrack was planned to be adaptive.

-Character
The characters are solid enough to not feel one noted as far as I've seen.
and to recall back on the story section for some character's backstories, mainly JP, frisbee, and sonoshee.
It's a bit tough to describe my issue with it but I guess it's the lack of explanation on how they met (excluding JP and sonoshee), now granted JP (and spoiler incoming) is doing these races to bail frisbee outta debt with the mafia for frisbee pulling a loan out to have JP race again (If I recall correctly, and if I am wrong please forgive me). But it was missing....something to me I dunno.

-Enjoyment
Obviously, by the score, I very much enjoyed the movie and it really shot up as one of my favorite anime movies in a long line of anime movies I've seen thus far, and what's very mind-blowing to me is that it's not only just 6-7 years of hand-drawn animation with painstaking detail on pretty much every frame-by-frame animation, but also that this film released in 2009 and it still looks like a brand new movie that just came out recently (but that is debatable).

-Overall
This is for sure a must watch movie in my opinion, it is a shame that Takeshi Koike was let go from madhouse since he was a very underground animator and when he's finally given his shot he then just disappeared and back into the abyss, but for the level of effort and passion poured into this movie I cannot recommend redline more than enough.
I really liked it for its art and soundtrack and the characters not being one-dimensional, but its story could have been somewhat polished more in terms of letting us see more of the characters and why there like this.
And it's ending (which I won't spoil here) but it was truly, in my opinion, the best way to end the movie, and I'm not sure if it's me but it felt much more than what it appears to be and has the brimming potential to be a lasting series if studios just give Mr.Koike another chance at the series and make it something special.

And overall to best explain the film, it was the straw that was worth the camel's back and you'll most definitely not regret watching every second of it.