Redline

  Here's the plot for Redline: Sweet JP (Takuya Kimura) really wants to win the Redline, an interstellar racing championship, all the while nursing a crush for rival racer Sonoshee (Yū Aoi). He blows his chance to qualify, but gets lucky when two other racers pull out for the championship and he gets voted into the final lineup.

 Unfortunately, the reason people are pulling out is because the race is going to take place on Roboworld - the home planet of race of fun-hating fascist cyborgs (is there any other kind?), a whole race of Galactus wannabes that would like nothing more than to crush anyone who lays rubber on their homeland.

 And... that's pretty much it. There's a corrupt agent and an interlude in a demilitarized nearby moon where the racers mingle and prepare their rides ahead of the race, but the plot on this movie is minimal. The focus is fully on the insane detail spilling from every frame. Not just on the action, which is frequent and beautifully animated, but even minor scenes such as the one where JP tries to buy cigarettes is a visual treat where we get to see the weird nervature on alien currency, a weird, funky rabid merchant, and some gorgeous Mignola-esque corridors in the background.

 The art style on this thing is gorgeous - both scratchy and detailed - and the visual imagination is staggering. The story barely hangs together, but that doesn't matter because this movie is first and foremost about looking cool, and that's something that Redline does exceptionally well.

 Everything gets thrown in the blender. You've got a rockabilly protagonist and his zeppelin-breasted object of desire (who is shown topless while she complains about the angles the news choose to show her from...). There's a magic-using race of hot space elves whose racing candidates also function as a J-pop group. Two intergalactic bounty hunter's visual inspiration clicked for me halfway through the movie, making me laugh very loudly. The last third of the movie is a protracted battle scene that includes the expected racing shenanigans, but also mechs, Robotech-style flying battles, and a giant baby-shaped energy monster. It's a pummeling mix of annoying techno, eye-watering visuals and a serviceable (but surprisingly sweet) storyline. Exhausting, but glorious.

 This is the closest I've seen any studio come to the lush animation of Ghibli and classic Disney, and it's all in service of bringing comics - many different styles of comics - to life in a form that I'd vaguely describe as the love child of Speed Racer and Wacky Races. I don't really read a lot of comics or manga, so I could only identify a few the many, many references here (Kirby fort the Roboworld crowd, some Tesuka and a huge spider-limbed nod to master Miyazaki) - I expect proper comic and anime fans will have a field day with this.
 But even without that dimension, it just looks gorgeous, and the designs are phenomenal and often hilarious. I mean, look at this guy:

  Redline is pure joy, from start to finish. A lush love letter to everything its creators (director Takeshi Koike, with some heavy input from producer Katsuhito Ishii and others from Studio Madhouse) hold dear. It reportedly took them seven years to bring it to fruition, so the least you can do is spend a hundred minutes taking it in. Trust me, it's worth it.