Redline

All I told sashagee before we went is that it's about racing.

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Redline IS about racing--the entire movie is about a once-every-five-years race called Redline where, in the space future of flying cars, they requires four wheels and powerful engines. The protagonist is named JP ("James Punkhead"), has a foot-long pompadour, and drives a car called "Trans Am" that looks like a sci fi Pontiac Firebird. Some of the other racers include a cyborg named "Machine Head" who has his own themesong where the chorus goes "Machine Heeeeeeeeaaad!🎵🎶", a pair of intergalactic bounty hunters, two Japanese dudes from Earth (animeified versions of the stars of Mole Brothers), or a pair of magical girls in stripperific costumes called "Team Boin" (Team Bouncy). There are planet names like Dorothy and Sweetgrass (a planet of magical girls--though they don't use their magic during the Redline) and Roboworld. Roboworld is the planet that the Redline takes place on, much to Roboworld's annoyance--it's some kind of military dictatorship, with a blasted rocky hellscape surface, and the racers race through a minefield (they're so fast the mines don't blow up until they're out of danger), through a secret testing area where illegal bioweapons are being developed, and all the way to the main Roboworld governmental building. There's a mafia sideplot, there's a love story, at one point there's a kaijū fight in the background, each of the secondary characters has their own short arc and just enough personality to be compelling but not enough to take over the narrative--for Machine Head, he first appears looming over another racer and says “Move.” The other racer says “I’m not moving!” and there’s a moment of tension before Machine Head says, “Fine. I’ll go around you then.”

It's great. sashagee loved it even though before we went she was incredibly confused why I would invite her to a movie about racing.

Also I did not realize that the voice actor for JP was Asano Tadanobu, who recently won an Emmy for his work on Shōgun! We were talking with neilworms afterwards and he mentioned that, as well as some of the other cameos that people who had seen other Koike Takeshi works.

The venue really made a difference, I feel like. The last time I watched Redline for ping816's anime discussion group, I of course watched it on a 1080p computer screen by myself, and I liked it, but it was nothing like watching it in a movie theatre with a full crowd that all laughed when any of the many comedy bits of the movie happened. I did not realize that Facets was such a title in the independent/foreign cinema space. They have a lot of other screenings--they're showing Tampopo this month--and I should really get on a mailing list so I know what's going on.

Unfortunately, I don't have nearly as much praise for the dinner we went to beforehand. We joined some other people from Anime Chicago at Mi Nueva Tierra nearby, which has 4.5 stars on Google but based on our experience there I have no idea why. We got burrito bowls--sashagee had steak, I had roasted cauliflower--and they were fine but nothing special. She got horchata, I got a blueberry Old Fashioned--again, fine--and the bill came out to $60 for the two of us for a meal we came away from thinking "Eh, I guess." I wish we had all gone with spacedragon's initial suggestion of going to the nearby Strings ramen, or that we had gone with jeremy.podczerwinski and erendira.morales to the vegan Thai place they went to. Well, for next time we'll have to remember that.