When making recommendations, I typically try to ensure something is “cyberpunk” rather than ensuring it’s “good”. After all, this community is for “cyberpunk” content, not “my random list of recommendations”.
But I’m not going to try with this one. It isn’t cyberpunk. I’ll call it cyberpunk-adjacent though simply because of the mood of this movie. Plus, it’s a really good movie. And the animation is incredible. You could call it style over substance, but there’s a lot of style in this movie.
Redline is about an illegal car race which draws in racers from all over the galaxy. This year, the race has been chosen to run on a planet called Roboworld, who definitely do not want the race to happen on their planet. So it’s sci-fi, it’s weird, and it’s a gorgeous film made by Madhouse.
Here’s a trailer. I don’t think it’s streaming anywhere right now but if you ever get a chance, definitely watch it.
It’s one of my favorite movies. The car designs are great, the plot is great, animation is fantastic. Do yourself a favour and give it a watch, it’s a hell of a ride.
Redline is a fantastic movie, one of my favorites. It used to be on YouTube for free (uploaded from the studio’s official channel, so it was a legit release), but it looks like they may have pulled it some time ago.
If you were ever a fan of the F-ZERO games or enjoyed the vibe of Initial D, you need to watch this movie.
It might not be a dark Gibsonian ballad, but it plays a lot of the same power chords as cyberpunk. High tech fascism, grandiose cyborgs, organized crime, the indomitable human spirit, and dirty deeds (done dirt cheap). It just so happens that when you play all those same notes like Takeshi Koike, you get Redline. I wanted to think of the best genre for this metaphor, but every comparison that came to mind fell short. You just have to see it.
Thanks for the recommendation! The anime world is so vast it can be a big effort to find stuff like this.
I just watched this on a whim recently. I think it was streaming on prime, but I can’t be sure.
Great movie. I love anything where the solution is something like “We’re losing the race, what do we do?” “Well what if we pushed the pedal down…harder”
I’ve been curious to watch this one since I saw an AMV a few years ago that someone made out of clips from it – but I never managed to track down a copy.
My son and I have watched this movie too many times to count. Since it’s high tech, low life… Dystopian, and style over substance, I would call it cyberpunk personally.