Recently, I watched two highly recommended anime movies; Redline and Sword of the Stranger. I talked about sword of the stranger in a few of my earlier posts but it was only a few weeks ago that I was able to actually sit down and watch it. I’ll try to review these two movies without including any spoilers.
Redline
This movie I had heard about earlier but it was only until one of my friends propose we watch it on movie night. Redline is the story of a intergalactic race-car driver named JP. He wants to participate in the galaxy’s most prestigious race: the Redline. JP fails to qualify in the opening race of the yellowline, but due to other racers dropping out, he is offered a seat in Redline. During the race he meets a female racer, Sonoshee, who becomes his love interest later in the film The rest of the time in the movie was spent detailing the difficulties of JP and his friends in building a car able to race in the Redline while dealing with other racers, a hostile army who wants to stop the race from happening, and their own personal struggles with racing.
I went into this movie not expecting much in the field of plot. From what I heard from those who had watched the movie, Redline was a good film to watch for its art and good animation, not for its compelling story. Indeed, Redline took seven years to produce, taking a staggering 100,000 still frames to complete. For comparison, the average anime film took about 14,000 to 20,000 frames to finish. After watching it, my expectations were met exactly. The plot was pretty dumb, but still rather enjoyable, while its animation was absolutely mind-blowing. It’s also pretty funny at some point. However, the beautiful action sequences are the main reason for watching this movie for.
Case in point
Sword of the Stranger
I watched this movie the day after watching Redline and I have to say I was actually pretty disappointed. Sword of the stranger tells the tale of a wandering swordsman who is hired to protect a small boy being chased by an elite group of foreign commandos. Sounds pretty badass, right? Well its not that great in reality. The film starts out with a lot of action, swords swinging wildly, arrows, limbs and heads flying everywhere, blood splattering on people and the ground. It then goes into a lull, trying to establish some emotional scenes between the young boy, Kotaro, and his wandering bodyguard, Nanashi.
From the trailer and clips I watched on youtube, I thought the entire film would be action packed fight scenes and beautiful animation. I was wrong. Only the beginning and the end featured battles, the middle featured half-hearted characterization and bad dialogue. The final fight pretty much makes up for it though, with beautiful action sequences. Overall, I would still recommend this film , but be prepared to be excited, then bored, then excited again.
It had a pretty bitchin’ fight song though.
Molly Basilio says
Sweet review, I’m definitely going to check these out over spring break when I’m laying in bed after getting my wisdom teeth out. Good call by not revealing any spoilers, it really set a tone of mystery for the entire piece and made me want to know the material behind what you were talking about. Keep up the stellar blogging!