So I actually made a short comment about this the first time I saw it.
"This movie is such a pet project. These dudes gave no fucks if the movie was salable. They made what they wanted to. I just wish I had more levels in animation geek, there is so much going on in this movie and I would love to be able to analyze more of what's going on with it.
No mistake though, this is a thoroughly entertaining movie on its own merits. Just, everything under the hood has me intrigued but I just don't have the background to dig in."
And the core observation there remains true: Madhouse let a first-time director make his dream project, and everyone on board was so in love with it all they just did not give a fuck if they actually made money doing it.
So has the other thing changed? Well... not exactly. The direct animation influences on this movie clearly EXIST, but I'm not familiar enough with the ones they're calling to to actually spot it all. However, we are a little bit better at this now.
Okay, so one of the things this movie is famous for is being fully hand animated. Let's pause a minute on that. The movie is 102 minutes, about 5-10 minutes longer than your feature length animated feature (ie Disney). Okay so.
NOBODY DOES THAT.
Most people don't hand-animate 10 minute shorts, never mind feature length films. Not in 2011 when this came out, not in 2005 when they started principle animation, not in the fucking Disney Renaissance. The Little Mermaid did not hand animate every single frame. You have to go back to like Sleeping Beauty, which not coincidentally also took forever to make (something like 8 years) and lost money, and that despite actually being a rousing success in the theaters (#2 for domestic gross in 1959). But these loons did it.
And it's not just that they hand animated this shit, this movie is ALIVE. Most shots of the film are crammed full of non-background elements that are moving, vivid actors on the stage. Like we need pictures here.
This is Princess and the Frog, full budget Disney Film from 2009.
And you'll note that the character and the items IN the barrel are distinctly more colorful than the rest of the shot. Those elements are in motion on the foreground, while the rest is background elements.
Redline usually looks like this:
That's insane. Nobody does that. These dudes said nope, the whole movie has to look like a cohesive artistic vision, DRAW THE LITTLE GLOWY LIGHT BOXES BY FUCKING HAND.
Unsurprisingly the rest of the movie is given a healthy coat of insanity over everything. The basic plot seems to actually be "barely-legal street racing with a World Cup-level following in the far future is utilized by the Planet of Royal Magical Girls to expose the secrets and decimate the military might of oppressive cyborg planet." Each racer besides the hero and the love interest are on screen about 5 minutes combined at best but are provided full bios during the movie because goddammit we wrote those bios and WE WANT THEM TO BE KNOWN. It does have the cool effect of making the whole thing seem more like real life sports coverage, the media spinning stories for each competitor to drive up viewers and gather followings for each.
I'm a little torn though.
Rating: 7/10. Like, this feels SO LOW for a movie with such overwhelming artistic quality, but I rate by general emotional response and well this is very definitely a fun as hell movie but doesn't have any deeper impact for me y'know? I may have shamed myself here.
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