Expressway Coming Apart

Late-eighties Japanese animation cel look with hand-inked highlights and heavy film grain, a girl in a red racing jacket flat out on a low sportbike along an elevated expressway at night while the roadway behind her collapses section by section into the city below. Neon towers on both sides, wet asphalt throwing their reflections up under the wheels, red warning lights strobing along the guardrail. She never looks back. The camera runs alongside her at hub height for the first half, then falls behind and rises as one span drops away a bike length behind her rear wheel, and the last thing in frame is her taillight going into a tunnel mouth while the section she just crossed goes down. Rear tire visibly loaded in the corners, the bike squatting under power, her jacket flogging against the airstream. Anamorphic composition, blown neon highlights, deep black in the shadows, no digital gloss. Two-stroke engine screaming through the gears, concrete tearing, rebar snapping one strand at a time, an alarm somewhere below, and one synth line that arrives on the first collapse and cuts out dead when she enters the tunnel.