Appleseed (Widescreen) (2004)
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Movie Reviews of Appleseed (Widescreen) (2004)
Movie Review: Fascinating, Complex...but rough around the edges.
Summary: 4 Stars
Appleseed / B0007OY31G
*Spoilers*
I would really like to give Appleseed a five star review, I really would. The animation is superb, the story is intriguing, and the voice work is flawless. Unfortunately, the movie needs just that little bit of polish on the edges to be truly perfect, or at least truly perfect for beginners who come to this story brand-new, as I did.
I'm unsure how much of the story in this movie will be familiar to existing fans of this anime franchise. The story revolves around a new utopia in the midst of a ruined world, populated in part by genetically modified humans who are incapable of strong human emotion, most notably the hatred, prejudice, and anger that led humanity to destroy the world in the first place. Set in the midst of this is the apparently missing-in-action-for-some-time famed female warrior Deunan Knute.
Deunan Knute is many things. She's one of the best warriors on earth, descended from an equally brilliant warrior and (it will be revealed) a rather important scientist. She's the love interest for the now-mechanized Briarius who was presumed dead and is now more machine than human, and a protector of the new utopia. She is a fantastic protagonist, and a wonderfully strong and sensitive woman, managing to eschew the stereotypes that abound in some other types of anime.
This is where we run into our rough edges that mar the movie. To wit, Deunan is never really allowed to reach her potential. A humorous scene where her "training" ends in the complete and surprising defeat of her numerous laser-tag opponents and a cute quip from her in the end is marred by Briarius' scolding that she shouldn't tease men who may save her life someday. This could work if the scene was meant to show that Briarius is conflicted about Deunan's arrival into his untroubled utopia, but the scene is played straight and Deunan silently vows to be more serious, to my own disappointment. Another drawback here is that the filmmakers do not seem to trust their underlying premise that Deunan is capable and tough - Briarius repeatedly saves her life throughout the film, often over her ridiculously protesting objections, and I cannot think of a single instance where she handles actual trouble without the protection of her imposing metal lover. This is a disappointment, for a character that is supposed to be strong, self-reliant, practical, and battle-hardened.
The film also suffers from exposition issues. There are long stretches of exposition that, should have been arranged differently in order to allow the user to process the convoluted storyline. Exposition is hampered by skipping major plot points and returning to them in retrospect later, if at all - the wire fighting warriors that slice Hitomi's car in half are never explained with regards to who sent them. There are also simply too many coincidences and "gee, that's convenient" plot points, for instance when the multiple automated fighters are converging on the dome and we find that (a) they don't need to stop ALL the fighters, because there's a shut-down port on ONE of them that will shut them all down (convenient!) and (b) they are given the shut-down passcode by a previously comatose Hitomi who announces that her name is the passcode the elders chose to use. It's not really understand WHY she would know this - I can buy that the elders might use her name as the super-secret passcode because they are fond of her, but then they also TELL her the super-secret passcode? Very odd, and again a little too convenient.
Having given all this criticism, I still highly recommend Appleseed as a solid four star movie. The story may be unpolished, but it is still far superior to most movies, anime or live-action alike. The character development and relationship exploration between Deunan and Briarius could have used a great deal of work, but I recognize that this went into the sequel and was handled very well, all things considered. And the movie also contains the most touching "I remember now!" amnesia scene that I have ever witnessed, with a climax that brought tears to my eyes.
One more major gripe: This movie provides closed caption for the hearing impaired. But, and this is a big but, the captions *never* match the actual words being said by the voice actors. Literally, it was not at all uncommon for a caption and the voice text to share only the words "a", "an", and "the". I have to assume that the caption writers and the voice actors were working with different translations which yielded the same intent, but with vastly different words. If you are hard of hearing and you use the captions to follow along and pick up the words that you missed, the discontinuity between what you HEAR and what you SEE is incredibly jarring and annoying. If you are completely deaf, well, you won't be watching the same movie as your companions. There is really no excuse for such shoddy work, but I did not include this in my star rating as it will not apply to all viewers.
~ Ana Mardoll
Movie Review: Decent Story. Excellent -- but not perfect -- CG
Summary: 4 Stars
The story in this is not the best, but it is better than most of the trash the Hollywood puts out now-a-days. There were parts that I felt a little bit lost (and that is pretty rare) but everything cleared up by the end. There really is nothing ground breaking in either the story telling or science fiction technology. However, in the end, I did find this quite entertaining and action-packed.
However, what blew my mind away was the computer graphics!! There were three things that really did fantastically well... pretty much ground-breaking. Though none of them were perfect, they are some of the best I've seen in animation.
1) The buildings and the cities. They looked really, really close to being real. They weren't perfect as I was still easily reminded that I was watching a cartoon, but I haven't seen anything this close before. The randomness of what was happening on the streets (a good variety of cars fills the streets) and the shapes of the buildings is what you would expect to find if you were looking at any large city from above. It was really done well.
2) The people, especially their movement. The biggest problem I had with them was their heads. Their eyes are too big and colorful. They are either too blue, too green, or even too ??red??. And the hair was very clumpy as if everybody on earth only had about fifty strands of really, really thick hair. It was too easy to remember that this was an animation I was watching whenever humanoids were on the screen.
Three years ago a movie called Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within was released that nailed what I would consider perfection when it comes to facial looks and hair. Especially the hair.
So what did I like? The motion of their bodies! They were very, very fluid and looked very life-like. They ran like humans, they walked like humans... they all looked very, very lifelike. Except their heads, of course. There is even a scene were Duenan (the story's protagonist) is hanging from something and swings her body up to get on top. Very, very lifelike. The motion of the bodies is fantastic and I've never seen it done this well before.
Now if they would only work with the producers of Final Fantasy to perfect the heads. Okay, enough on that.
3) The water. Water was done well once again. There was one time, when looking at a stormy sea of water, where I had to rewind it. It didn't look like an animation; it looked like it was actually filmed. I had to look very close to catch the small little imperfection and lack of randomness in order to convince myself that it wasn't filmed. The only time water was off was when they came from the eyes of somebody crying (mostly Duenan) or tearing up. That didn't come across convincingly whether it was swelling up in her eyes, dripping down her face, or splashing on the floor. I haven't seen so many tears since Alice in Wonderland.
If you like action, even if you don't like cartoons, pick this up. It has plenty of it. If you like Sci-fi then I can't think of any reason to skip this movie. If you like Anime then this is one I doubt you'll want to miss.
If you don't fit in any categories then forget it, I can't think of anybody else who would want to see it. I must say, this isn't for the weak of heart (i.e. small children), there really is a lot of action and violence.
Movie Review: LOVING THE MACHINE
Summary: 4 Stars
On a future Earth devastated by world wars, there is one shining city that moves all human events, unknown to most. Its name is Utopia, a city guarded by gigantic moving gun fortresses that allow none in except a chosen elite. Its population is made up not only of humans but also genetically engineered clones known as "Bioroids", which with the help of a super-computer, control Utopia. Helping to keep the order and fight against enemies from the wastelands are cyborg soldiers called ES.W.A.T. But its enemies are not just outside. Some humans in the city are starting to chaff under what they see as Bioroid dominance. So a silent military revolution has begun, which threatens not only the city, but all humankind. Deunan Knute, an outsider, is rescued from certain death by robotic assassins and brought to Utopia for unknown reasons. Some believe that she has the power to save Utopia. Others think she is better off dead. And things are more complicated. She finds out that her missing ex-lover Briareos, lost his body long ago in battle and is now a cyborg in the employ of ESWAT.
The plot of Appleseed is pretty much stuff you've already seen if you're a fan of anime. A devastated apocalyptic Earth, a computer controlled city revolting against its non-human rulers, even if it might lead to their annihilation, and cyborgs are a standard feature. Appleseed is CG animated and at times the creators try a little too hard to make the animation seem "realistic". It seems like they spent years making the character's hair move back and forth when they turn their heads. The problem is that this attention to realism actually makes the movement look "fake". The same with the blinking of the eyes. If a great white shark could blink, that is an action I would compare it to. The problem with CG has ALWAYS been faces and the cel-shading of Appleseed, while distracting from this weakness, does not solve it. Besides these complaints, I found this movie very entertaining once you got used to the animation style. Some scenes are pretty emotional and work very well. The action especially has a kinetic energy missing from some films, even if some of the slow-mo shots are homages to The Matrix. The artwork is beautiful but digital animation still has miles to go.
Movie Review: Very detailed animation
Summary: 4 Stars
This review is coming from someone who has not read the books or seen the previous movie. This being said, I have to say I really enjoyed this movie a lot. I thought the animation was amazing. It was done in CGI, laid over with regular animation for the characters. The amount of detail in the animation is just astounding. One particular scene comes to mind when Deunan and Briareos are talking in a locker room; you can actually see dust floating in the sunbeam coming through the window. One thing that got on my nerves, however, was the way the characters hair was drawn. It was very clumpy and didn't move at all.
The story was very entertaining as well. Basically the last city, Olympus, is half populated by humans and half populated by Bioroids (artificial clones). There are extremist human groups who want to get rid of the Bioroids completely, thusly returning full control and power to the humans. The fait of both the Bioroids and humans ends up resting on the shoulders of Deunan and her retrieving the Appleseed technology that her mother helped produce.
My only complaints are that there was a tremendous amount of dialog and explaining. Also, the English dubbing was poor. There was little emotion in the voices of the voice actors. Aside from that, I thought it was a great movie.
Movie Review: Distopia
Summary: 4 Stars
This animation is based on a comic by Masamune Shirow, a master of depicting distopian futures in which humanity must struggle with technology for its survival. In this case, much of the world has been destroyed by war, but one oasis of humanity exists, Olympus. Thanks to its balance of human and android inhabitants, it has been able to maintain a peaceful existance. However, there are those with prejudices who want to disrupt this balance. Can Olympus surivive?
An attempt was made to maka a fully 3D animated feature like Pixar. However, there was a conscious effort to stick closely to the style common in anime. It's interesting to see the 2D world of anime come to life in full 3D. However, it was not an entirely successful transition. The characters are oddly weightless, so at times, it looks like dolls moving around on screen rather than flesh and blood (or steel!) characters on screen. In fact, this looks mostly like the intro to a game stretched out over 2 hours. For this, a take away one star, but it's still worth checking out. A good effort was made, and I hope we get more along this line, with better animation of course.