YoshiKyon

6/10

Anilist: [link]

Felt like something short this morning & that made it the perfect opportunity to finally get to this. This was recommended to me by kryal, someone I tend to either completely agree with or disagree with in terms of taste, as part of my 12 Anime in 12 Months:

12 Anime in 12 Months:

These are listed in the order I thought I would enjoy them, from most likely to enjoy to least.

• Shinsekai yori
• Plastic Memories
• Vivy: Fluorite Eyes Song
• Kaiba
• Bloom Into You
• Princess Tutu
• Redline
• Monster
• Saint Onii-san
• Haikyu!!
• So I'm a Spider, So What
• In Another World With My Smartphone

Mild spoilers below the cut.

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I didn't know much about Redline going in, but had been told that it was basically "Wacky Races in space" and, honestly, that is both incredibly accurate and also tells me nothing about how much I'll enjoy it. The way it ended up going, that was honestly the best part of the film - the race itself is absolutely ridiculous, never taken seriously, and the cast are both ridiculous and easy to get behind. Some of the character designs are fantastic, and it helps give a clear idea of who's who with minimal time spent delving into backstories and personalities.

Unfortunately, that's also the biggest weakness of Redline. The cast feel too reliant on clichés to carry them through the lack of detail or development, and some never overcome that. There are so many moving parts - the story with the military deserters or Sonoshee's backstory, as examples - that just never come to fruition because there isn't enough time for everything the film sets up. Whenever that's a criticism, my first thought is to see where things could be cut, and Redline definitely has its fair share in the pre-race setup that feels like it drags on too long, but it's mostly just having more characters than a film of this length & scale can handle and trying to include something on each of them.

I can definitely see why this is popular, though; it just does a lot of things that I personally find jarring. Having entire plot points that make little-to-no sense and are just there for the spectacle (the Roboworld attacks during the race are the clearest example of this) did nothing but hurt immersion for me, and the art style is one of those where it's clearly good, but it's so detailed in places where I don't want detail that it ends up being horrible for me to look at. (JoJo is the clearest example of this kind of style that I can think of, and honestly the similarities between that and Redline are pretty apparent.)

Redline seems fine to me as a "switch your brain off, watch some mindless fun" kind of thing. I just don't tend to like those much, and beyond that, it tries to do too much in too short a time to the point where it's hard to switch off. It feels like an odd way to put it, but Redline is so chaotic that it forces you to pay attention, and then feels like it punishes you for trying to.