After Party 7, Takeshi Koike would work on another project this time being a bigger undertaking than Party; Trava, Fist Planet. Trava would end up becoming a four part OVA released by Grasshopa! from 2001 to 2002. Koike would be working again with Ishii, and together would take the Peter Chungian aesthetics of 7 and go full alien this time literally! Trava would follow two alien characters Trava and Shinkai as they travel surveying an unknown planet. Through their journey they get into some wacky situations involving killer insect robots and all sorts of bizarre shenanigans.

Koike and Ishii’s production really shine here with a lot of the mechanical designs being a main highlight for me.

Following Trava, Takeshi Koike would move on to work on his next most busiest year: 2003. In 2003 Koike would show off more standout expos of his animation talent. At the very start of the year on January 1st, Koike would release the Afro Samurai pilot. While the actual anime in the future wouldn’t feature his style, a lot of stylistic influence would be carried over.

In spring 03, Koike would do some brief key animation on Texhnolyze, a dystopian sci fi series. June would follow and become Koike’s most significant work to date “World Record” on the Matrix anthology film The Animatrix, an animation lead production featuring nine short films. World Record showed just about the limit of how far Koike could push his style.

After being set to direct two sequences for the Animatrix, Yoshiaki Kawajiri was convinced Koike could direct World Record after seeing his designs. Kawajiri would handle the story, and Koike while directing would also handle a majority of the key animation even showing an impressive running sequence where he studied slow motion footage of professional track runners to get a good idea of the movement down and how he could exaggerate it. In Koike’s words

“I found that the hands -rather than the legs - swing up with a very strong impact, makes the animated motion quite realistic”

This special feature very well incapsulates the process of making World Record

The same year in fall, Takeshi Koike would provide key animation to Kill Bill. The animation of Kill Bill was handled by Production IG with character designs and direction by **Katsuhito Ishi*i. Ishii’s designs would have a sketchy old school aesthetic to them, giving it an all around different feel from a traditional anime at the time.

The next year in 2004, Takeshi Koike would work on Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Dead Leaves, a weird 52 minute OVA that gets as Kanada-esque as possible. Imaishi will come up later. Around the same time, Koike would add key animation to the opening of Shinichiro Watanabe’s Samurai Champloo. While the opening would not display Koike’s signature character designs he would make use of his pure black silhouettes, and drastic perspective shifts and posing. Also fantastic character acting

Five years later, Koike would finally release his masterpiece known as Redline in 2009, a racing film.

It is important to know the context for Redline, and how it exactly came about. The idea for Redline was originally drafted by Katsuhito Ishii with the push coming from producer Daisuke Kimura saying “hey let’s try something new”. Koike was working on Afro Samurai at the time, and being inspired by Trava Ishii wanted something set in the same universe. During the making of Kill Bill, Kimura would suggest Koike to direct the story for the movie

“…if we want to make something cool like Kill Bill, maybe Koike’s the one to do it?”

Ishii and Koike had a very solid work relationship during this process bouncing off ideas for each other, and being interested in the idiosyncrasies that could make Redline work. With racing being a major part, Ishii was inspired by Flanagan’s Run which drove the narrative for the movie. Flanagan’s Run contains runners from several countries have a foot race across America, but instead of that Redline would have cars with aliens racing from all planets across the galaxy.

One of the main reason Koike works so well for Redline is sleek and sexy comic book like designs. Ishii stated “I wanted to raise anime to a level that no one - not Takashi Murakami, nobody - could beat. That no one would even try to beat.” Ishii and Koike would exactly prove that by having the movie be one of the most lavishly animated pictures Madhouse would produce. A practice five minute pilot would be released the year before to merely prep for the insane experience Redline would be.

Many animators would be brought on to the film. Hiroyuki Imaishi who met Koike on Trava would work with him doing key animation on a commercial for Lynchman and Johnny Boya, two comic book like characters in the film.

Imaishi would show off his trademark Kanada-school animation style, even having a brief scene with a villain who has a drill that calls back to Imaishi’s recently worked on Gainax production Gurrenn Lagann.

Another Gainax connection would be Ishizaki Toshio better known as Sushio. He would handle insane explosion effects as a result from Funky Boy, a bio weapon that would be released by accident.

Shinya Ohira would work on the film, having connections back with Koike on Kill Bill. Ohira’s very unique animation style would return, seemingly having no timing corrections from Koike revealing all of the weird expressionistic movements of his style. Ohira would handle the sequences with Funky Boy fighting Colonel Volton merged with another bio weapon.

Another standout animator would be Takafumi Hori, an animator who helped Koike on the Afro Samurai Pilot who would later go on to work with studio Trigger on Kill La Kill.

One of the most essential parts of an animated car film is the cars themselves. Koike and Ishii did not want to use cgi, but since cars are very difficult to animate only being handled by the top draftsmen in the anime industry they came up with a clever solution of building small model race cars that the animators could reference for the film.

Redline is a visual feast, and while it was a labor of love being seven years of work it was not a big hit. Yes, the insane 100,000 frames of animation racing film did not live up to the success it wanted to, and unfortunately being such a big undertaking of Madhouse’s resources Takeshi Koike would be fired from the studio around 2010.

Takeshi Koike before being fired would go onto market and do designs + animation for an Iron Man anime pilot. Yet again like the Afro Samurai pilot, Koike’s art style would not show up in the finished product. All of this preview would be animated by Koike himself

Following Iron Man, Koike would work on a string of Lupin The Third films brought on by Sayo Yamamoto. Koike provided character designs for a Woman Named Fujiko Mine episodes, though he would hold back his art style drastically lacking the graphic novel look of his past productions, but still would have the lanky proportions typical of him.

Koike would direct the Lupin films Jigen’s Gravestone in 2014, and Goemon’s Bloodspray in 2017. Both films had a serious sense of coolness to them brought on by Koike’s storyboards and amazing key animation by the likes of Koike himself and legendary Lupin animator Kazuhide Tomonaga. Koike would also provide character designs for the Sayo Yamamoto directed Lupin The Third: Fujiko's Lie in 2019

Takeshi Koike is a god. Though he was a very late directorial bloomer in the already very talented Madhouse at the time, he rose to the challenge becoming one of the most distinguished directors of the studio and beyond. He has one of the most noticeable and distinctive styles within the anime industry. Even to this day Koike’s camera perspective shifts and works are copied by other animators. He is an innovator, artist, and never fails to put so much cool into an animation.

You can most recently see Koike’s character designs on Mappa’s Yasuke released in 2021.

Any Classroom of the Elite fans itt?

Starting Summertime Rendering in Winter

Movie was such a big flop. Did they not do any advertising?

No clue, but it didn’t seem like it

It’s also guessed it may have not had as big as a budget that people usually assume

Should I watch this?

In retrospect I ship him and the tsundere

Catching up to MHA season

Shigaraki is like the most boring villain

Dabi really picked it up for me, good stuff

yeah this s*** is dope