Appleseed (anime)

[Ruccus]

Yesterday I bought the 2004 version of the anime Appleseed and I must say that visually, this is one of the most impressive animes I've watched.

Firstly, the Limited Collector's Edition is well worth the cost ($7.50 extra at Amazon.com) considering the case alone; it's a clear plastic case with a beautifully done thin metal exterior on which is some quality artwork. In my mind it one-ups the presentation of the Lord of the Rings extended version DVDs. There's also a third version which is the collector's edition plus an action figure (Briareos, the male lead who's a cyborg and before he became a cyborg was a former love interest of Deunan, the main character).

The movie is presented in both English and Japanese Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound as well as Japanese DTS 5.1. The movie looks and sounds great, and the battles make liberal use of slow motion and blur effects (as well as the standard plethora of big explosions). Plotwise it's your standard anime, with robots, cyborgs, chicks, and clones (and big explosions, of course). The plot did get in the way of my enjoyment a bit, as some emotions and plot twists seem too convenient, and the final task Deunan needed to do to save the day seemed overly simplistic. It's a two and a half hour plot packed into a 100 minute movie and it kind of shows.

But the revolutionary nature of this movie isn't the plot, it's in the way it was created. Appleseed uses full motion capture and is made entirely in 3D, then cell shading effects are used on computer generated characters and objects to make them more 'anime-like'. This is also why I recommend the Limited Collectors Edition as the second disk (not included in the base version) includes "Birth of 3D Live Anime" a 35 minute Japanese language, English subtitled featurette showing the technology used to create Appleseed. There's also a music video (Boom Boom Satelites' "Dive For You"), design archives (showing sketches, CG rough cuts, and final product), as well as an image gallery.

If you're a collector of anime this one's a no-brainer, and if you like big explosions and quality fight scenes, as well as cutting edge technology, then it's also for you.

[Stalk]

Honestly, I did not like the movie. On a technical aspect, it might be impressive, but it was overall not well-executed. The plot was jumbled and unclear, the characters were ugly because of the 3d. So in my book, it was a big "loss" in the two major aspects of a show.

Had the visuals been more well done, I probably would have enjoyed it much more. While I don't expect most anime to look great visually (I used to watch anime on VHS, some LD, and .rm files. Now that was bad.) as long as they have a strong story, this one has neither.

The style works well for the mecha aspect of the show, but I have a hard time enjoying the 3D style anime. Perhaps if the technology gets improved much more, I will enjoy it.

There is a Manga out if you are interested, anyway.

[Ruccus]

I didn't mention Masamune's Appleseed manga because it didn't appear that he worked on the movie; there are two writers credited with the script (Shirow Masamune is credited with the 'original story').

The feel I got with the movie was that of an action movie with lots of 'live action' style camera movement, and even during the talking scenes the characters aren't stiff as a board like in most animes, they're swaying and moving slightly. That really added to the experience in my opinion. As an artistic style I liked the cell shading done on the characters, and I think that because they went with full motion capture even with the detailed environments they had to stick with cell shading the characters to avoid having the faults being compared against humans. I'm sure they could have gone with something closer to 'Final Fantasy' style characters, but chose the cell shading route. I chalk it up to an artistic choice, and I liked the overall look of the characters.

The only character criticism I can think of is that I don't think Briareos was mo-capped properly; Briareos sways and moves like a human even though he's a cyborg. The actor motion capturing him should have worn weights or something with bulk so as to have a more cumbersome, machine-like movement.

I'm guessing by 'visuals' you just mean the character style, as I was blown away by the environment. The abandoned research platform in particular was extremely well done, and the lighting in that part of the movie (dark and rainy night, with the soldiers using flashlights) was excellent.

I guess we agree on the weak plot and writing, but disagree on the visuals.

[Stalk]

Yeah, I meant the character visuals. I can definitely agree with you on the environment, however. My problem with the character visuals is that I constantly had the feeling that they were "outside" the enviroment, instead of "part" of it.

Sort of like making a picture of Yosemite, and cropping out a person in a picture taken in the city, and plastering it on the Yosemite picture to give the effect that the personis there.

I guess that the character visuals stick out even more so to me, because it is my habit by nature to be very focused on the facial/physical expressions of people, as I rely on it a lot in my communication with others.

But, this is an issue that likely will be solved as the technology gets developed more.