User reviews

First of all, this piece is brilliantly animated. Combining the visual effects with the sound effects this way makes me think of The Matrix, with fast cuts, some slow-motion sessions and of course a lot of doppler effects. I thought the plot was quite OK, not too original but not too hasty either. It has a good development I thought, and I have to admit that I were a bit worried for a while if it'd be able to sum things up in a good way, which I think it did quite well. Here's a bit of everything, violence and fighting scenes, hi-tech armory, some love and some conspiracy as well. I'll give this a 7/10. I can't say how much in fact the plot has earned these points, but if you like visual effects and fast-paced fighting scenes you're probably going to like this.

Appleseed simultaneously suffers from the worst Anime has to offer and benefits from the best animation and production a modern production can have. If you are a hardcore Manga fan (or just occasionally fond of it like me) you'll be aware of the most typical clichés, most of which make up the bulk of the Appleseed story.

So...we have a world set after WWIII, in which a Utopian Society has finally found peace. But there are still some people who cannot help but let their anger and bigotry take hold. Android/Clones with suppressed emotions help balance out Utopia and some even want to be fully-fledged humans. There are humans who hate these Androids and wish them to all die out. And there are some Android who hate humans and wish them to all die out. And finally, there is a big computer who runs everything.

Nothing there you haven't seen before huh? It also takes a while to build up momentum. Though when it does, the plot twists and turns and action scenes are truly exhilarating. The animation quality is breath-taking with seamless blending of hand-drawn, motion capture, CGI and 3D images. Style and plot-wise it is very, very similar to Sky Blue/Wonderful Days. But since they were in production at the same time one cannot accuse the other of plagiarism.

The sheer amount of technology and hardware in the movie will make you drool. There are loads of cool devices, futuristic inventions and awesome weaponry. There is also loads of atmosphere with gorgeous, gorgeous sunsets, storm-lashed oil rigs and wonderfully blue-sky-ed cityscapes with an environmentally friendly amount of trees everywhere.

The Matrix 'inspired' action can be a bit annoying sometimes. We've seen people diving through the air in slow motion will taking out supposedly highly-trained soldiers? And the music is kinda uninspiring. With contributions from Basement Jaxx and Paul Oakenfold one expected it to be a lot better.

When you take the good with the bad, Appleseed still comes out as worthwhile and enjoyable. If your new to Anime then you can forgive the clichés, if your a big fan then you'll be awe-struck by the impressive production values.

With nice cel-shaded graphics and fantastic CGI in a nice blend, Appleseed will not disappoint the eye. There is enormous attention to detail, reflections, shading and other small things. Many of the scenes, especially involving the giant city complex, could have worked as art if you froze the frame.

The story is pretty unoriginal though, which is a shame. I won't tell you anything, but it's likely you'll see references from a wild collection of sources. Characters have varying depth, and some felt like they needed a bit of fleshing out. Lip-sync was so-so and the same goes for most of the voices(in Japanese).

Music is cool and futuristic, with a few surprises thrown in(Basement Jaxx? What the?) and fits the scenes nicely. Sound follows the same pedantic attention-to-detail pattern as the animations. The action is very, very cool, even though it's not a pure action fest.

While the storyline doesn't feel too much like Manga, the animation really is. Manga eyes can be bugging, but it was OK. The transformer-esquire mechs where really cool even though they were very similar(then again, I've never watched Transformers).

So, in closing, is this worthwhile? Sure. It's storyline is not so complex you need to scratch your head, like other anime(Akira or Final Fantasy), and the animation is a feast to the eyes. Give it a try.

rating - 10/10 (saw it subbed). I would give it an 11 if I could. After reading a 5.6/10 and watching, the movie far exceeded any expectation I had, that I could have dreamed of. Having read all of the manga and data books, this movie not only captures but adds to them. The 3D style looks better in motion than in screen shots, validating its place in Anime's future (for characters, Ghost in the Shell already displayed the awesome extent to which environments can benefit). The mechanical engineering (just wait until you see the cannons) of EVERYTHING is superlative. The complexity and detail of the city is awe inspiring. Every scene has this attention to detail. And the action? Just watch the beginning of the movie to understand how cool the ride is going to be, because I assure you, it does not let up. Well worth any price of admission.

This is a work of love, a commitment to total quality. I see the score increasing rapidly in the near future.

Thank you Shinji Aramaki, Masamune Shirow (comic)

Haruka Handa (screenplay) & Tsutomu Kamishiro (screenplay)

I should note first that I'm not the biggest anime fan. I've seen a number of anime films and serials, but the genre has never quite clicked with me. If you're a huge anime fan, you might like Appleseed far more than I did.

Not that I hated it. It has some elements that were very successful. The animation is very impressive. One of my past complaints with anime has been that the artistry often looks like cut-rate Saturday morning cartoon fare. None of those low-budget shortcuts are visible here, even if another bothersome, bizarre staple of anime is present--namely that most of the characters look like Caucasians who just stepped out of a Walter Keane painting.

But the animation is all technically sophisticated, highly stylized 3D modeling. It's a bit like a complex video game world, except that the artistry is cranked up to 11. If you're at all a fan of that look, or you like immersing yourself in filmic fantasy worlds, Appleseed is worth a view for the visuals alone. There are all kinds of hip "camera movements". There is a fascinating, regular incorporation of photographic textures and photographic phenomena like explosions, smoke and water. At times, Appleseed looks as much like a computerized version of claymation as it looks like standard animation--the objects and the "people" in the film have that much weight, texture and depth.

But then there's the story. I don't usually believe that derivativeness is a flaw, but here, derivativeness is about all we're given. In terms of tone, and even a lot of very literal references, you'd achieve something like this if you put, say, Blade Runner (1982), Aliens (1986), Terminator I (1984) and II (1991), Star Wars Episodes I (1999) and II (2002), I Robot (2004), and the three Matrix films (1999 and 2003) into a blender and hit "Chop". And the references to other films do not end there. Appleseed director Shinji Aramaki even gives us one character, Briareos (voiced by James Lyon in the English language version), who inexplicably looks like Frank the bunny from Donnie Darko (2001). Of course, as in just about any anime film, there is the constant "Transformers" (1984) aesthetic--that's part of what amounts to a technological fetishism--and there have to be some nods to kaiju (Japanese monster) films.

The actual plot, which was based on manga (Japanese comic books) by Shirow Masamune, concerns a post-apocalyptic society (of course) that has attempted to create a utopia, Olympus (there are a lot of very shallow Greek mythology references). At the beginning, we see Deunan Knute (voiced by Amanada Winn Lee, or "Jennifer Proud", in the English language version) fighting off a bunch of Terminator/Transformer-like robots, Matrix-style. She's captured by a militaristic organization known as "E-SWAT", who take her to Olympus, which she didn't know existed. She learns at Olympus that there is another race of humans, "bioroids", who are genetically engineered clones, designed to "keep the peace". The bioroids cannot reproduce on their own--that was a "safety" feature built into them by humans worried that they'd otherwise take over. There is a Star Wars-styled council of elders (and occasionally congressional meetings right out of Episode II). And of course, there is a rebel faction of humans who are determined to wipe out the bioroids. Deunan ends up in the middle of all of this, partially because she is related to persons who were important in the history of Olympus, but more importantly, because she's an unstoppable, butt-kicking soldier, ala Ripley in Aliens, but given Neo-like powers, after he's had all of the kung-fu and weapons programs downloaded. The plot turns out to be something like a war between the rebel faction and the official government, in a race against time to see who'll survive and how.

As you might expect given a plot like that, Appleseed is a bit heavy on exposition--screenwriters Haruka Handa and Tsutomu Kamishiro have to explain a whole other world, including the intricacies of its politics, social problems, and a lot of technological gobbledy-gook. But you might not expect the exposition to be as heavy as it is. Voice actors frequently have to rattle off very long stretches of explanatory dialogue--this continues throughout the length of the film. They often sound like they're reading, and not much of an effort was made to make the exposition flow naturally in the story. Probably because there's absolutely no way to make such heavy handed stuff flow and not seem like a chore to listen to instead.

But even that wouldn't have to be so bad. I was reluctantly becoming acclimated to convoluted explanations, even if they remained a bit clichéd and hokey. What killed it for me, however, is that the further you go into the film, the more melodramatic it becomes. By the end, every bit of dialogue is delivered as if the fate of the world is resting on characters' feigned, overly serious concern, and annoyingly, they keep saying each other's names at least once every other sentence. I don't think a single one of these characters ever met a sense of humor. That disposition is a hard sell, and it needs far more artistry than a mishmash of genre film conventions in a predictable post-apocalyptic scenario.

Still, even though the story was growing more problematic by the minute, I found myself being slightly wrapped up in the climax. Aramaki is able to build suspense and put viewers on the edge of their seats even if they're annoyed. Imagine what he could do with a good script! I should also briefly comment on the music. Even though the score also tends to be a bit melodramatic and manipulative at times, there are a lot of good songs in the film ranging over various techno/electronica styles. If you're at all into that stuff, don't miss the soundtrack.

First things first; if you're looking for a literary masterpiece or an anime masterful like the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii, then Appleseed is not for you. It's plot is cliché with the overused science fiction premise of struggle between two coexisting races and the flaws and sins of humans, and the general execution of the plot is also in no way an outstanding one of the genre.

What Appleseed truly is, is a technological achievement in 3D animation for Japanese anime. It's animation style is far from Hollywood animation features like Finding Nemo and Shrek, instead it uses cel-shading technology which we've already seen in video games, and takes it up to a very high and polished level. The result is a beautiful movie with jaw-dropping animation, such that one cannot doubt that this style will pave the way for the future of anime movies. The range of emotions expressed through the CG is impressive; and motion capture has worked beautifully into the film, making it a seamless viewing experience. As a whole product, it's graphical presentation rivals that of great 2D animation features.

Other aspects are fairly well done; the music is done fairly well, with the opening song giving it a distinct flavour but later that fades away to the average run-of-the-mill songs that aren't particularly effective in rousing the emotions and senses. The artistic direction is great, with wonderful colors and tones chosen to accentuate the mood from the bleak dark ruins to the pastel colors of the Utopia. Scene execution is also stellar, and the structural development of the movie is natural although inter character relationships are somewhat lacking in development.

As a whole, it's an extremely graphically polished product based on an overused premise.

This movie astonished me in two ways. First the visuals and sounds are more than breathtaking, but on the other hand I wondered how they can tell the story in such a confusing way. Maybe it was the subtitles, but it just didn't feel right. The storytelling never minded to explain the background a bit more.

The movie reminded me of the Korean anime "Wonderful Days", which also had great visuals but the story just didn't fit seamless.

That said, if you like last generation visual animation, good sound and a lot of action this is *the* movie for you. And the story is not bad, but missing pieces.

Animation: 10/10 Story: 6/10

I went to this movie with very high expectations, and after about 30 mins I knew this movie had already delivered.

I won't talk about the story (do a search on google if you want it spoiled) but I can say that the plot is interesting enough to keep the viewers attention. The pace of the movie feels very right, action scenes and slower character building scenes are vow en into each other without any of them feeling forced. Although the movie is not without cliché's, especially in some sentimental parts, they do not ruin the overall experience. I have not read the manga so I cannot comment on if it stays true to the source material.

Technically it's in a league of it's own. The 3d visuals were amazing, even on the low quality cinema I watched it in. The camera swoops in and out of the action and you end up just staring in awe at the screen. Designs and the attention to detail is incredible. What takes getting used to is the cell shading of the characters. Done to mimic 2d animation, the characters are not able to deliver the same amount of personality and emotions as the handrawn ones are. I wonder if it would look better with pure 3d characters ala Squares Advent Children. Sound effects were also excellent, and I thought the industrial techno soundtrack was very fitting.

All in all the most impressive anime movie I have seen so far, that is if it could be seen as an anime? The director was actually present at the screening I attended and he raised this question as well. Seeing as Appleseed was not made and does not look like any traditional anime at all why should it be considered as one? Maybe we are looking at a new genre in animated movies. If so the Appleseed has certainly set the new standards as to how it should be done.

Anime' has come a long way from the days of gratuitous bloodshed and borderline pornography that marked its early notoriety here in the United States.

Part of this massive and successful transition into mainstream American cinema has been due to technological breakthroughs in animation, computer digitization, and detailing. Immediately, you think of the films of Hayao Miyazaki, "Ghost in the Shell" (1995), and Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" (1988).

"Appleseed," the latest addition to the list of groundbreaking Anime' films in the last 10 years, is yet another skillful advance in the world of Japanese animation.

This film has a plot that's not greatly different from past adventures: a rebel female soldier, Deunan Knute, is captured at the beginning of the movie after a fierce battle in the ruins of a large city. She's flown back to the city of Olympus, a vast metropolis that looks a lot like "Blade Runner" on a better day.

Human beings (grudgingly) coexist with the Bioroids, human androids, who are slowly becoming the majority, already with one serving as the city's prime minister. Bioroids have a limited emotional range (sound familiar?) and cannot reproduce, nor can they experience feelings such as love or anger.

When the Bioroid generation center is attacked, Deunan, a kind and curious Bioroid named Hitomi, and Deunan's cyborg lover Briareos link the attack to a deadly conspiracy involving the (still human) military and the mysterious 7 Elders, who control Olympus' main control center.

If you don't buy the story, then at least "Appleseed" will draw you in by using its lush, beautiful animation and graphics, which are surely the next stage in the evolution of Anime'. The plot is convincing, if not wholly original, and fans of Philip K. Dick may spot some of the scattered references to "Blade Runner."

Certainly a testament to Anime' and animation in general, "Appleseed" should definitely not be missed.

7/10

I fought so hard to get tickets to see the World Sneak Preview to Appleseed in London on 4th March 2004 - and the effort paid off. I won a pair in a website competition 2.5 hours before the start of the movie. The event was a media soirée with plenty of media hacks and a few minor celebs swanning around as they dished out free beer and sushi.

Having not seen the original Appleseed I had no concept of the plot or the scenario at all, so i was grateful when the producer gave us an overview lecture (with a flip chart and everything) as it is a little complex.

The second the film started i knew we were witnessing something special. The animation is outstanding. This film has the production values and attention to detail present in films like The Matrix. My jaw hit the floor just as hard with Appleseed as it did with Trinity's opening fight scene in the first Matrix.

The soundtrack is exceptionally well put together with contributions from Basement Jaxx, Paul Okenfold and the awesome Boom Boom Satellites who also performed a live set after the preview.

Often, when you build yourself up too much to see a movie, the reality can do nothing but disappoint. The opposite was true with Appleseed. I went in expecting 10/10... I got 11.

This movie has boldly raised the bar for animation and set a bold new standard by which i believe other animations will be judged in the future. Truly a masterpiece, the highest complements are deserved by everyone involved in this production. Roll on next year's Academy awards!!!

I have two major problems with the new anime remake of APPLESEED:

1) The characters' faces all look like porcelain masks or mannequin faces. There's very little movement or detail in them. No facial lines, no bags under the eyes, no cheekbones, no variation in the color on the faces. No movement of the eyes. I've seen much more expressive emotion on the characters' faces in "Pokémon." Sure, some of the characters are supposed to be "bioroids," some kind of human/machine hybrid, but I don't think the original manga artist, Masamune Shirow, meant for them to be completely devoid of expression. And besides, this is true of the human characters in the film as well. Either way, it's kind of hard to get engrossed in characters whose faces are completely blank.

2) The backgrounds and other aspects of the design are way too detailed. You can see distinct textures on every surface. You can see every detail on the power suits and the mecha and the costumes. And on the buildings, highways, streets and cityscapes. The human eye doesn't need all that detail. It's not how we see things. We isolate details when we look out at landscapes. Some things are blurred or shaded or unseen or out of focus. Not here. Every detail is in sharp focus. Piling on so much detail is incredibly distracting. And annoying. It's not beautiful, it's cluttered.

One of the aspects of anime design that has made the work of Japanese animators so consistently interesting from an artistic standpoint is the use of suggestion of detail when budgets prevented them from the kind of fluid animation and detailed backgrounds we'd get in a Disney film, for instance. Some bold lines here, a block of black there, a wash of color here, all tastefully and delicately applied to suggest a more detailed setting. I've seen futuristic cityscapes in black-and-white episodes of the original "Astro Boy" that impress me far more than anything in APPLESEED. It's the quality of the detail, not the quantity. It's called artwork and you can see the human hand at work in every frame. When the Space Battleship Yamato sailed across the screen 30 years ago, you could see an artist's hand at work in every movement of the battleship. The crude character designs were more than acceptable given the way the animators could convey emotion through the eyes and the set of the jaw and the coloring of the cheeks. Simple but creative methods. Nothing like that can be found in the new APPLESEED. The hand of the artist is nowhere evident. The soul of anime is slowly slipping away.

The story comes through but I think the animation sucks compared to the original

Humans and a kind of genetic robot race live together in a perfect utopia, while a world war rages on the outside of their city. Of course, like all sci-fi, humans and robots don't get along. There are awkward issues about race, and the violence of man. It's all the same stuff that has been discussed before and in more subtle detail. Of course emotions are what makes humans both great AND evil. Blade Runner analyzed such themes with a lot more maturity. Here, the animation is nice and the action scenes are fairly awesome, even if some cheesy music invades the film at times. It could have served from dialogue being cut. Do we need lines such as "Move and I'll break your neck?" That's fairly obvious from the way you're holding her. I understand the need to explain such creative futuristic worlds, but writers need a better way to explain, instead of relying on dialogue.

This cg/cell style anime is the most incredible i've seen. Most of what I can say has already been mentioned by others that have commented. Suffice it to say, Appleseed is worth watching simply for it's eye goggling effects.

The story is decent but not spectacular and has changed just a bit more that i would've preferred from the original premise of the manga.

I rate this an 8/10 because i did enjoy it thoroughly. The -2 pts is for what someone else mentioned...the too typical clichés. Every dramatic moment is something you've seen pinched from some other overdramatized movie.

Ignorant moviegoers are still claiming that the slow-motion fighting choreography of Matrix (1999) is original. These sequences were coined as simply 'Matrix' effect. When such said effects appear in Appleseed, they will shout "See! Japanese anime copied the Matrix effect." Ghost in the Shell was produced in 1995. Go figure.

Modeling human-like characters is not an easy task. For example, animated films such as Shrek, A Bug's Life. The audience is unable to judge how accurate or true the characters were modeled because the characters are fictional. In addition, the two most expressive and difficult-to-animate human parts are face and fingers. Hence, the characters in Appleseed (and most animated films) are wearing gloves most of the time. Even if the hands are exposed, it will most likely be a non close-up camera shot.

Mao points: 7/10

After watching this when it was released in 2004 I enjoyed it but in retrospect it was good for its time but compared to the 1988 original movie this one just doesn't hold up all that well the characters feel more watered down with much less personality than they did in the 80s movie and the Manga the visuals are ok but this kind of CGI is dated and it's easy to see why it died out as it feels more like PS2 cutscene footage than it does the amazing CGI movie it claims to be.

The movie follows Deunan Knute after she is rescued from the collapsing ruins of a war torn world by an old friend and lover Briareos who after being saved years before Deunan is now a fully augmented human part machine part man after his body was destroyed in the war Deunan is brought to a utopian city built to save humanity from itself and runned by synthetic humans called Bioroids who are controlled and regulated by the city's advanced AI computer Gaia that controls everything in the city the Bioroids were made to preserve and safeguard humanity but even in a utopian society human kind fears what it cannot control and brings destruction with them Deunan and Briareos now fight there own kind to save both races but is it too late for mankind to be saved from itself?.

Worth a watch some cool Mech fights throughout but personally I would recommend watching the 1988 original movie Appleseed for the best version of this amazing anime series and Manga.

This movie is fine to watch if you can put up with Shirow's original work being raped to make a summer Hollywood effects blockbuster. Every intellectual aspect of the movies has been removed and replaced with hokey melodrama. The dense plotting that originally covered two books is twisted into a forced mess.

It is a very pretty movie to watch, and the soundtrack is great. While this adaptation is better than the last try, it's still incredibly bad. Here's hoping that in another 10-15 years it will get a decent treatment, or that the movie will inspire an excellent TV adaptation like Ghost in the Shell did.