Netflix's 100 Meters anime movie feels like Heated Rivalry without the romance

A dazzling meditation on radical intimacy between fierce competitors

HBO’s Heated Rivalry, about the relationship between two pro hockey players, earned a reputation as a must-watch sexy romantic drama, but it’s the furthest thing from mere horny smut. At its core, Heated Rivalry is a thoughtful meditation on loneliness and the innate desire for intimacy between two people so weighed down with other people’s expectations that they’re controlled by fear. Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) is an earnest, slightly awkward, but hyper-competent workhorse. Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) is a cocky, deliberately unbothered Russian bad boy. They start the series as bitter hockey rivals on different teams in the same division, and that tension culminates in an intense romantic relationship that evolves over many years.

Intense rivalries always feel inherently romantic, though not necessarily sexual. A certain kind of mutual obsession develops in all the best stories about competitors, which is why sports rivalries make for such rich storytelling. Anyone who loves that kind of drama in TV and film should check out Netflix’s new anime movie 100 Meters, about two rivals striving to become Japan’s fastest competitors at the 100-meter dash. Following a Japanese theatrical debut in September, 100 Meters landed on Netflix at the end of December and has remained in the top 10 non-English movies since. (Netflix does have an English dub option, if that’s a make-or-break for you.)

Protagonist Togashi is the fastest grade-schooler in Japan, and he believes running the 100-meter race faster than anyone can solve “most” problems. He mentors a troubled new student at school, Komiya, who disappears just as quickly as he arrived. In high school, Komiya emerges as Togashi’s biggest competition in the young pro runner scene, and the drama between them concludes when they’re in their 20s

The first act’s coming-of-age storyline establishes that these two couldn’t be more different: Togashi is an effortless talent who’s friendly and confident. Komiya is dark and brooding, with a kind of desperate sadness about him. Komiya runs to escape from a traumatic life we never learn much about, but he spends most of his steps flopping around breathlessly in raggedy old shoes. Togashi ditches his friends to teach Komiya proper running techniques, and the two quickly become close. Over the course of the roughly 15 years covered by the movie, Togashi experiences a great many ups and downs as he struggles to maintain his passion for the sport and deals with injuries.

Their rivalry, like Hollander and Rozanov’s, is defined by a kind of radical intimacy. Where Heated Rivalry uses desire, 100 Meters uses isolation. In a different kind of story, Togashi and Komiya would grow to resent each other, trading taunts and barbs before each competition. Instead, some of the best scenes in the movie happen when they bump into each other in stadium halls before a race, open up to express their doubts and fears, then reassure each other, as they both struggle to comprehend what really drives them.

Visually, 100 Meters juxtaposes quiet, pastoral scenes with lush scenery, and explosive race scenes full of rippling muscles and unhinged facial expressions. The music reflects each scene’s energy, drifting between quiet melodies for slide-of-life scenes and pulse-pounding beats for the sports action. 100 Meters also makes good use of rotoscoping to trace the animation over live-action footage, even when characters are simply walking around, so the whole thing feels more visually realistic than a typical anime feature.

Though the film focuses almost entirely on the 100-meter dash, there’s a quiet middle act where Togashi participates in a relay race, and the sequence crystallizes a key facet of the drama at the core of the sport. Running the 100-meter dash is brutal on the body, and most athletes who participate at this high a level wind up injured and forced into early retirement. At first, Togashi’s rise to glory as an athlete feels inevitable. But over time, the film explores how each rising star in the past has eventually gotten eclipsed by a new runner. Each new “generation” of runners is only a few years younger than the last.

The baton pass becomes a narrative throughline for the entire movie. As other runners age out of the sport or succumb to injury, will Togashi take the baton from them and break their old records, or will it be Komiya? When one pro retires, he describes how the 10 seconds it takes to run the 100-meter race condenses an entire lifetime of thoughts and emotions into a single moment, but he also says that becoming the “undisputed champion” ultimately made him feel empty. So he cautions Komiya to not obsess solely about winning and breaking records.

“The faster I go, the more everyone falls behind. When I look beside me, no one is there,” the old pro tells Komiya. “The view from that position is the same as from last place. And nothing is more boring than that. The thing that is a true triumph and what brings us pure joy is neither medals nor records. It’s the person you run against.”

As this pro passes the metaphorical baton to Togashi and Komiya, that’s the real legacy they face.

On social media, Netflix points out that that metaphor extends to the movie’s brassy main musical theme: It’s designed to be so breathless and hard-driving that individual musicians on wind instruments can’t play it alone. To keep the melody going, they have to pass that baton to another musician so they can breathe.

For an anime movie about running fast, 100 Meters winds up feeling deeply philosophical on so many levels. In the end, it’s not really about who wins any given race, it’s about what it feels like to be exceptional in a sport that doesn’t let anyone stay exceptional for long. The moment these young men peak is already the moment when someone else is closing in behind them. Just as in Heated Rivalry, that’s a situation maybe only your greatest rival could truly understand.

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100 Meters is streaming exclusively on Netflix.