Appleseed

Just finished watching the new restoration of Appleseed, which is sourced from the original camera negative for the first time ever -all previous versions were sourced from inferior video tape elements- and I have to say I'm impressed.

The backgrounds are true pieces of anime art, and they pop like never before. The quirky character designs, the robots, and especially all the vehicles look gorgeous!

Aside from the anticlimactic ending, my second viewing experience, especially with the comparatively low key original Japanese dub, has elevated the original Appleseed for me as one of the best OVA to come out of 1980s Japan.

Being an avid reader of manga and very interested in the fascinating genre that is animé, I have always enjoyed the work of the masterful Shirow Masamune. The original manga behind this movie is far more complex and a lot of the suspense has been left out during its transition to animation, but a lot of the character interaction and stylish action remains.

Very accessible for all viewers with really great backgrounds and scenery throughout the movie, not as spectacular as e.g. 'Ghost in the Shell', but definately pleasing to the eye.

The animation quality here is decidedly below par IMO, regardless of the age of the OAV. The plot itself makes sense, but the characters don't.

This might sound picky, but considering that the city of Olympus is almost exclusively populated by living machines, would YOU feel comfortable there as a human? Would any machine ever emulate human arrogance, short-sightedness and greed quite so effectively? I doubt it. There are some pointers towards this in the movie, but only when the team can be bothered to put them in, by and large the 'bioroids' (or whatever they are) are interchangeable with human characters. Seems sloppy to me.

The main characters seem to have some kind of emotional entanglement, though no light is shed on this. Little light is shed on the backstory at all, a great pity. The short length of the film coupled with the focus on mecha and the crime means that we don't see any character depth. The groundwork's all down, yet we're left with no finished product. A cropped version of this OAV would have made a great TV episode, once some character sub-plots had been established.

The highlights of this short film are the mecha designs and the action/espionage.

The flaws really start to show through once you've had a chance to digest all the goings-on, so I couldn't recommend this for owning, but it's certainly worth a watch or two! Whilst this review is mostly negative, I really do think it's worth your time to watch this, but it's not something to rush out and buy.

In a nutshell: A watchable wasted opportunity.

Appleseed is an anime based on Masamune Shirows manga of the same name before he became famous with Ghost in the Shell in the mid nineties. Being released just before Akira it got unfavorably compared with the latter and could never hope to reach the bar that was set so high by Katsuhiro Otomo's creation.

This is in fact the first installment of the Appleseed franchise although there is a gap of 16 years between this OVA and the 2004 movie.

Although this 1 hour OVA never covers the entire manga, in terms of plot and story it still does a good job albeit the story being kept rather simple. Nevertheless the philosophical and political tropes of Shirow are well dealt with albeit not so deep as in Ghost in the Shell or in the two later Appleseed-installments.

Animation-wise it is clearly a product of an era before Akira gave anime that huge boost.

If you like cyberpunk anime from the 1980s and early nineties and if you enjoyed Shirows earlier work from the same era, like Black Magic M-66 (1987) or Dominion Tank Police (1988), then you will surely like Appleseed the OVA.

This anime is unique on the grounds that it explores more 'science-fact' rather than 'science fiction,' and makes the viewer believe much of what is being viewed is a factual prediction of the future earth.

Appleseed, which is based on the 1985 manga of the same name, is set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of WWIII. A new breed of governemnet and scraped what remains of the world's government to put together an experimental utopia, 'Olypus' suposidly free of the past-world's troubles and strives. Deunan Natt, and Buliareous Heckatonickles are two of the best in the Police Force, and just when they thought they couldn't get more bullets coming their way, they're asigned to takeout a camatose terroist, AJ Sebastian, who's goal it is to destory Olympus. on the gorunds of it 'enslaving' human destiny.

Firstly, anyone who watches this can see how cheesy it is, but despite this, theres is alot more to consider about it than meets the eye. For stance, your confussed into believing who is the real bad guy-- the terrorist's moral values outway those of the Police & Government, yet what they're doing is rightly good also.

The animation goes from strength to strength, and isn't anything like AKIRA, but it's moderate for 80's B movie OVAs. The mecha design is seemingly bizzare, but factual and controversial. There are also references to make us aware of the physics side of the technolodgy used. One thing which puzzled me about this anime were that there were contious references towards greek mytholodgy, especiallin the characters names.

The analogue quality of the film though, doggs the whole thing from start to finish, with poor lighting, and fuzzy AV-recording.

All around, it's a highly enjoyable watch, with some laughable scnes in place, if your into anime of cause. ***8/10***