I saw this movie on Blu-ray, and it was fantastic!
On the surface, the Appleseed Ex Machina may appear to be a glitzy, shoot'em-up anime mecha action show. And on that, it is fabulously rendered. But there is more, much more in the offerings for those who are willing to appreciate them. For those with open mind and are willing to peer into the multi-thread story lines, they are in for visual delights that are woven with thought-provoking ideas about: the pursuit of utopia leading to dystopia, introspection and what makes us human and authentic, coping with the past and really facing yourself to find a path forward, the self-actuation process of a clone, and (corny as it may sound) unwavering love that transcends the human-machine line.
Call me trite simple but I LOVE it!
Those who are highly critical of this 3D anime movie might have missed great offerings from a fairly new medium. There is no need for such innate fears of CGI it will never replace human actors (those that tried, for instance, the Final Fantasy: A Spirit Within, flopped utterly in such attempts), but it will expand the anime genre and broaden it with fantastic visual appeal.
Regarding the Blu-ray video quality, some "Blu-ray experts" did not think it was crisp enough for Blu-ray. Well, my take on it is that the softness is deliberate, in part to help focus the viewer's eyes on the important parts of a scene, and in part to heighten the human aspects of the story. It says this movie is not all about the CGI glitz but that it has gone beyond that so the viewer can enjoy the highly stylized actions and romantic moments.
The video bit rate is fairly good, generally range from high teens to around high 20s Mbps. It's not the best encoding, however, because you can see some color banding (when the color gradient is supposed to be smooth) and, occasionally, jagged line definitions. There are only a few compression artifacts that I could see. By the way, I thought the CGI rendering STYLE, was excellent it sort of infuses the feel of cell animation into the smoothness of 3D CGI animation.
Regarding the audio quality, it is excellent in both spatial/channel separation and clarity. The dialogues are fairly easy to pick up. One nick-pick of mine is that I would have liked to hear the techno music pumped up higher during some of the kick-ass action scenes you know, to let our neighbors know how much we are enjoying watching an incredibly tight futuristic-action flick. The English dubbing was quite good (good enough that it didn't detract from the feel of the movie).
The ending seems a bit hurried, and is far fetched (like so many anime movies). I would love it see the last parts filled-in and polished a bit more so that it's more poignant and warm at the same time.
It is a great 9-star to me. It's worth seeing just for the CGI effect. If you do see it, hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
