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Recently I have seen this review of the animated movie Redline, and compared with my review, oh boy, rarely I have read a review so much off the mark. My own review mentioned that it’s both jevenile but a great piece of art, yet Monji focused entirely on the juvenile aspect, using its lack of official awards (of an incredibly biased and unoriginal industry) to brush off any consideration about its visual qualities.

Reading the review again, it’s as if so many moviegoers come to see not a movie but rather a screen adaptation of a book, with a very strong script, or an adaptation of a play, with very strong lead actors and drama or comedy. But what about going to see a movie to be fascinated by something you’ve never seen or experienced before, as an art piece, like Méliès would do?

As an example, contrast my review of Redline with Rango. Rango is a stunningly beautiful movie that can barely blossom under the crushing weight of a strong script. In effect, no matter how amazing the story was, the incredibly poetic, emotional moments of animation were few and far between seas of plot lines. On the other end, Redline is more an immersive experience of an incredibly stylized juvenile world of Japanese racing serials, akin to Speed Racer and F-Zero.

I suspect that people complain and moan that the plot is thin in those artistic animated movies are the kind of people that cannot immerse themselves in an artistic experience. This annoys me to no end because I cannot simply assume that this is something that some people can’t do, and that I’m still hopeful that without those mental barriers anybody can be touched by arts. Including silly animated movies.