More than just praise, it also earned him some director credits simply because his style is so defining for a project that the director cannot take all the credit for himself. While it still exists within the realm of Japanese animation, it's hard to compare it to other Japanese artists out there. ![]() Koike's visual style has earned him much praise before. The good thing is that it never feels as if Redline shamelessly borrows these elements, it just pays quick respect and goes on to bury them in it own creativity. And that's not even counting the zillion other small references that seem to be taken from various parts of the wide manga/anime universe. The race element bears resemblance to Speed Racer (the live action film) and Running Man (a short from the Neo-Tokyo anthology), the Redline universe itself seems like an extension of the Trava world (hence the Trava cameo). The result is something that shares many influences and connections to other films, but tops that with bucket loads of its own creativity. There they were allowed the budget and time to expand the initial concept into a true feature-length film. The duo had more luck this time around (Trava got cancelled before it could turn into a real series) and found in Madhouse the perfect home for Redline. Koike was teaming up with Katsuhito Ishii once again, following the same road they travelled with Trava Fist Planet. Redline first appeared some 5 or 6 ago in the form of a short teaser. Enter Koike's Redline, the first film to actively challenge the title of most crazy animation film ever. ![]() Dead Leaves raised the bar for its small niche, sadly it raised it a little too high for the competition and for 6 or 7 years nobody even came close to the madness of Imaishi's first film. Not that Imaishi invented a whole new niche by and for himself, people like Koike had been doing similar things before (the opening sequence of Party 7, the Animatrix World Record short and last but not least, Trava Fist Planet), just never with such intensity, conviction and power. Never before had there been such a raw, crude and rude film, executed with so much passion, attention to detail and technical brilliance. When Dead Leaves was released, it took the alternative anime world by storm and smashed it with a force that nobody could have predicted. But Production I.G and director Imaishi had another surprise lined up. In 2004 Japan was experiencing one of its top animation production years, with films like Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence, Howl's Moving Castle, Mind Game and Steamboy all being released that year. The result is a staggering demonstration of the power of animation, wrapped in colorful pop art and injected with a mean streak of creative madness. Takeshi Koike's long awaited project took almost seven years to complete, but he made sure every second of that long wait counted. Stop the presses! After an excruciatingly long period of waiting, Redline finally found its way onto the TV sets of those who can read English subtitles.
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