Film

Redline

Name: Redline
Genre: Animation, Action, Science Fiction
Released: 2009
Cast: Takuya Kimura, Yu Aoi, Tadanobu Asano, Takeshi Aono, Tatsuya Gashuin

Car-chase action
Relentless

Seven years of hand-drawn animation went into this, and it shows in every impossible frame. It's a racing film where the race is barely the point — it's an excuse for the maddest, densest, most gorgeously overdesigned action animation ever made. Loud, funny, gleefully vulgar, and built entirely around the pleasure of watching things move very fast and explode beautifully.

TMDb rating

3.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love animation that treats every frame as a rush, with hand-drawn kinetic chaos, lurid neon design and races so loud and inventive they feel like a fever dream you want to ride again.

Skip it if you want a story that stops to breathe, since the film barrels through its hundred-odd minutes at full throttle and its tangled plot can feel more like an excuse for the next spectacle.

What it asks of you: It asks you to keep up with a relentless visual pace and to accept a loose, cartoonish storyline, with little room for quiet moments between the next explosion of speed.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Mad Max: Fury Road2015

Practical vehicles, maximal design, and a chase that never really stops — the closest live-action has come to Redline's sustained sensory overload. Pure kinetic cinema.

But It's relentless in a different way — grimmer, more muscular, less interested in being funny.

Speed Racer2008

The Wachowskis built a candy-colored, physics-defying racing world that's as gleefully excessive as Redline's, with the same love of speed as pure spectacle.

But Its earnest, family-friendly tone is a big swing away from Redline's sweaty, grimy underworld.

Akira1988

The other essential hand-drawn anime landmark — the density of animation, the roar of engines, the sense that every frame cost someone their sanity.

But Darker and more political, with body horror where Redline has comic-book bravado.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Redline

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

C'était un rendez-vous1976

Redline is a cartoon built entirely around the sensation this film captures for real — velocity itself as the only subject, decades before anime had the technology to draw it.

A nine-minute silent short: one real, illegal, terrifyingly fast drive through empty pre-dawn Paris, filmed from the bumper of the car itself.

But No plot, no characters, no animation — just an engine and a camera. It's an experience, not a story.

Cowboy Bebop1998

Same cool, jazzy, outlaw-underworld energy, with a cast of misfits who feel like they wandered in from Redline's paddock.

But Slower and more melancholic episode to episode — it earns its cool rather than blasting you with it.

Fist of the North Star1986

Director Takeshi Koike cut his teeth on this franchise's ultraviolent, muscle-bound aesthetic — you can see Redline's DNA forming here.

But Cruder animation, grimmer post-apocalyptic setting, and violence played completely straight.

Tekkonkinkreet2006

Koike was animation director on this Madhouse film too — same rubbery, hyperkinetic character movement, aimed at something quieter and sadder.

But It's a street kid drama at heart, tender and melancholy where Redline is all swagger.

Death Race2008

Trashy, brutal, unapologetically dumb vehicular carnage — the live-action B-movie cousin to Redline's over-the-top spirit.

But Nowhere near the visual imagination; it's fun, but it's junk food next to Redline's feast.

Senna2010

Same obsession — drivers who need to race even when it might kill them — but with actual stakes and an actual death, which recasts everything Redline treats as spectacle.

A documentary about Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, told almost entirely through archive footage — cockpit-view speed with none of it faked, and a genuinely moving story underneath.

But It's a true story that ends in real grief, not a cartoon explosion. Tonally, it's the opposite of a good time.

The Triplets of Belleville2003

Another race-obsessed, wildly overdesigned animated world built by hand, but tuned to whimsy and heartbreak instead of testosterone and explosions.

A near-silent, hand-drawn French film about a kidnapped cyclist and a grotesque, jazzy underworld chasing him across a race that spirals into the surreal.

But Slower, stranger, and sadder — its humour is dry and melancholic where Redline's is loud and horny.