100 Meters

I found this one almost by accident. It was a Friday, I had decided to make it a cheat day, and I did something I almost never do, I brought internet home with me. The Formula One season had just started, so I subscribed to Netflix to binge Drive to Survive and warm up for it. The first episode was only okay. Then I saw the poster for this, red, a style I liked straight away, the kind of look the good ones usually have. I checked it expecting episodes and found it was a film, hesitated, and pressed play anyway. It turned out to be one of the best animes I have seen.

A short warning before I go on: I am going to walk through how it moves. If you have not seen it, go watch it first. It is better knowing nothing.

The art alone would have been enough. It is unique, refreshing, completely its own thing, and it did not surprise me to learn afterward that it is by the same people who made Orb, which is a masterpiece and one of the most underrated things I have ever watched.

What got me early is that you cannot tell who the main character is. I thought it was one boy, then the other, and only near the end did it settle. There are two of them. One figured his life out young and is so far ahead of everyone that winning has gone boring, he just outruns the whole field and feels nothing. The other is the shy one, quieter, a harder life behind him, the kind of kid who looks a little lost, except he has the one thing the fast boy is missing. He actually wants it. The fast one starts training him, they bond, and then they separate. Years pass. The fast one drifts, joins a club, eventually stops running and forgets how fast he ever was. The shy one goes somewhere else and trains relentlessly. The whole film is built so the two of them meet again as men.

Here is what I took from it, and I will be honest that I did not get it the night I watched it. It landed the next morning, after I had slept on it, and I might still be misreading parts because I never went back to check. The fast one lost his meaning because the thing he loved was racing that one person, it was only ever good with him. The shy one was running to break records, and records are a trap, because the moment you break one it is empty and you just need the next. The film ends without telling you who won. It shows you the start, everyone on the line, and then it simply does not say. Because it does not matter. What matters is the person you are racing and the act of racing itself, not the position, not the number.

That hit me because it named something I have been living. I started karting a few months ago and I love how competitive and tactical it is, it is talent and body both. But lately I enjoy the competition itself less, the being first or second part. First is a little lonely. I used to chase my own lap times, I started with exactly those goals and I liked them, and then somewhere I switched. Records make me sadder than the sport does, because some days it rains, or you are off, or someone beats you, and you go home down over a number. The act is always there. The best thing in karting is overtaking, will against will, fighting to get past someone. The happiest I have ever been on a track was a race where I fought one guy the whole way, defended like crazy, and finally got past him. Afterward he laughed and told me it had been a blue flag, that he was a full lap behind because he started late, so the pass did not count the way I thought. I told him I did not care, I had wanted to overtake him and I loved every second of it, and he had loved it too. I was maybe seventh that day, or twelfth, I genuinely cannot remember, and it did not matter at all. That is the whole film.

The second thing I took is almost the opposite warning. It is a bad bet to stake your whole life on one thing. The runner whose life is only running ends up insecure, and when an injury takes it from him he collapses, he says twenty five years went downhill. I do not fully buy that one injury ruined him, but he had nothing else to stand on. Most athletes are like that, all in on the single thing they do best, and I think it is a mistake. Be obsessed with something, keep the thing you love, but do not let it become your whole identity, so that you always have somewhere to land. By the end both of them are laughing, which to me is the sign they finally understood it.

I would give it an easy nine, and then I would tell you the score does not matter, which is the point of the whole movie. What matters is watching it. The good ones hand you back a piece of yourself, and the more meanings a thing gives you the better it is. This gave me a lot. Just go watch it.