Had "Redline" been released a decade earlier, anime fans would be talking about it relentlessly. Takeshi Koike's intergalactic racing adventure, which premiered at film festivals in 2009 before its commercial release in 2010, is the exact sort of ultra-stylized action-packed sci-fi spectacle that people who got into anime via "Akira" and "Ninja Scroll" would adore. Seven years of production, however, found the release of this visual masterpiece out of sync with popular tastes, so it went mostly ignored.
For those who have given it a chance, however, "Redline" has become something of a cult classic, and for good reason. The race sequences (animated entirely through traditional hand-drawn techniques) are thrilling, and Koike's design and world-building are so imaginative that the downtimes between races are just as fun to watch. Anime studio Madhouse has made plenty of great anime, but since the lackluster response to "Redline," it hasn't attempted anything as singularly ambitious, which is a shame.
