Back in 2009 when Redline was released it got a lot of praise and attention for its fantastic animation and artstyle as well as its great fast paced action and colorful characters. But there was another similar highly stylized and fast paced racing anime that was released around the same time. That went relatively unnoticed due to the attention that Redline was getting. That anime was Tailenders released only two months after Redline. The plot takes place on planet Terulus long after terraformers were used to try and repair the environment only for them to go haywire and ravage the surface of the planet for centuries creating mutations to the wildlife and devastating earthquakes. Because of this giant cities that could drive around the planets surface were created to house what was left of the population. One of the biggest past times is a racing competition. The dream of every racer to beat the track records held by Loser King who disappeared a century ago. Shiro one of the top racers is horribly injured by a stampede. A mysterious woman walks in and offers him the chance to race again by replacing his heart with the engine from his own car. Soon Shiro finds himself trying to win the Planet Redevelopment Race and try to beat the Loser Kings record times. Even though its not much longer than the average episode of a TV series Tailenders tells a satisfying enough story in its run time that i didnt really mind its length. Sure its not going to have a lot of character or story depth but Tailenders wasnt trying to have that. The characters are well defined enough within the constraints of the short that all of them are enjoyable despite their simplicity. The shorts world definitely feels like a world despite simply being a setup for its plot. Tailenders wants to tell a simple fun story and it does it pretty well. I wish it was slightly longer so its pacing could be a bit better but its a minor issue. I cant really talk about the plot beyond the initial premise since its less than 30 minutes but it was satisfying for what it is. The art and animation is top notch. The artstyle is a little more over the top than Redlines which helps differentiate it enough from Redline that you wont mistake them from each other. I could see how it could grate on someone more than Redlines artstyle as it seems less refined. But it comes down to personal preference and i had no problem with it. Tailenders didnt have the budget or development time that Redline did and it doesnt quite reach the peaks that Redline did but it does fit a lot into its scant 27 minutes long running time. It also didnt recieve quite the same attention either which is a shame because Tailenders is definitely worth a watch as its can be just as fun as Redline.
78 /100
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