StoryIt's time for another go at animating the cult manga "Appleseed" (by Masamune Shirow) spanning over four volumes and a databook. This manga is actually "ongoing". Even if it was some 14 years ago since Shirow wrote about things to come in Volume 5 in the databook, the project isn't dead. But when this fifth volume will reach the shelves...well..let's not speculate about that.
First we had the Appleseed OAV: a one episode story from the end of the 80's. It took parts out of manga volume 1 and 2 and compressed it all down to an hour or less. This caused a confusion amongst the viewers to say the least as nothing was explained, because there were simply no time.
So, the movie creator took another approach. 'Let's not try to animate the manga'. They understood how complex Appleseed is, and to try to animate this manga is foolish unless you are looking at a full 26 episode show, which they weren't. So, what we have here is an animated political thriller sci-fi action movie thingie which has borrowed elements from Appleseed. No one is able to write as complex and true to life political thrillers as Shirow when all comes around, although the complexity in this movie is far away from the manga.
The timeline is set a bit into the 22nd century after the great war which turned the earth into wasteland. But amidst this land a city called Olympus was built as mans last hope. In this city, called "Utopia" by some, humans live without fear of war, violence or poverty. Life is good and stable thanks to bioroids which make up 50% of the population. Bioroids are enhanced humans/clones with, amongst some things, limited feelings and are meant to keep people from getting angry at each other. The problem here is that there are always a bunch of people who don't like these enhanced beings. They're afraid of them taking over the place, starting a war, making the humans disposable and so on. And this is where politics comes into play. Here we have a whole bunch of powers acting out. Without going into this to deeply: We have the legislative group, the Olympus Administration, and the Military. These are the basics and from there we have various branches.
Basically all names in this show are borrowed from Greek mythology and the characters/building stuctures are made to somewhat mirror these gods and goddesses. The show mainly centers about Deunan - a woman in her early twenties brought up with gunpowder under her nails. Then we have Briareos, her lover whom Deunan fought together with during the great war. Due to an accident within Olympus, Deunan and Briareos are sent onto a mission which not only concerns themselves, but also the future of the world.
The flow of the show is good with action scenes, calmer scenes, political discussions and various other stuff. The pacing is very good and pleasant, it never gets boring. The story flows well into the different scenes and stages. There are some things they could've done better. There is specifically one very emotional situation which rather than setting a ... very emotional mood almost makes a comical impression due to it being extremely cliché.
The ending is very well executed. Seeing as the manga story is left open, or rather that there is an ongoing arc (seeing as we have a fifth volume on the way), the script for the movie had to be quite different as to not leave plots hanging and such things. All in all, it's a good story which beats most modern Hollywood productions many many times around. The movie creator has done a good job in borrowing elements from the manga as well as creating new elements.
AnimationThis movie is very different from the manga and there isn't much which is true to it. Some characters aren't even in it, and they have also added a couple of characters. What is true however, would be the designs in this movie, except for the characters. Shirow himself apparantly re-drew the characters to make them more modern, sexy, appealing and fitting for the movie -- and they certainly are. The characters are beautifully made with a very modern design. As they're all 3D it's possible to squash in a lot more detail into the anatomy, clothing and similar things.
This movie is a big leap within the animation industry. This whole movie is completely 3D animated. Meaning that basically all movements in this show have been rendered via 'motion-capture' making them very natural and true-to-life. The result is an astounding, magnificient, beautiful, great, breathtaking, adorable, cool movie which gave me lots of goosebumps. There are to many impressions to be able to actually type them out here.
This show uses the whole color-palette and everything feels crisp and fresh. The animation is very fluent as they've used full 24 fps animation, contrary to standard anime which lands somewhere between 8 - 15 fps. Buildings, vehicles, characters, backgrounds, well basicaly everything is very detailed and the textures used are of a very high quality. There is only one scene in this movie which looks quite mediocre compared to the rest of the material. The lipsynch has been successfully animated and there is only one character where the lipsynch looks a bit to animated. In some cases they've used facial capture -- meaning that the facial animation of a character completely mirrors that of a real human.
They decided to go for "toon/cell" shading when making this movie. Toon/Cell shading is what we have in regular anime. For example, that the shadows are fields where they've used a darker color-tone of the original. The shadows can look a bit square and usually don't have a gradient at all. This might look weird at first as you expect more true-to-life shading due to everything else looking very close to realistic. According to an interview, the creators decided not to go with that kind of shading as they wanted to keep the anime feel of the show, nor were the characters designed to look true-to-life. I think they made the right choice in going with toon shading, as it looked great on the characters and flowed well with everything else.
SoundJust like with the animation, the movie really shines in this department as well.
The music itself is varied with everything from progressive techno trash music to classical compositions. Overall the background music is used perfectly in this movie. The classical pieces come in when needed -- mostly during emotional or deeper events -- whereas they throw in the modern stuff when the action comes on. My only gripe with the music would be some of these modern tunes. Sure, they all make a good impression in sounding very futuristic and post-apocalyptic, but some of the tunes, while they hold good quality sound and mixing wise, are not what I'd consider to be quality music. There's even one "tune" which could compete with SLK's Slogun... and I believe even I could produce something better. While it certainly adds to the mood, it's not something I like listening to on my 5.1 system all cranked up.
A big plus goes out to the theme song which is actually written by "Basement Jaxx" (featuring Lisa Kekaula). It's very catchy with a more modern poppish RnB influenced sound and the text is fitting for the movie. This is probably the only BJ tune I've ever liked, seeing as I generally dislike modern RnB. Another English artist involved is Paul Oakenfold. Most of the modern tunes were, however, recorded by the Japanese band "Boom Boom Satellites".
CharactersWe have a mix of characters in the show. Unfortunately, due to the timeframe of a movie, some characters are left somewhat undeveloped. Nike who is a minister of internal affairs, as well as chief of staff in the manga, is reduced to something which looks like a mere secretary for Athena in the movie. But once again, one will have to be a realist -- and in this story Nike's role isn't all that important; they didn't exploit her character.
The characters in this show were very believable and true-to-life in their actions, save for that cliché scene I wrote about earlier. There isn't much development in this show. Basically we get to know the characters more, but considering the timeframe there isn't really much time for any personality changes at all. The roles were played out well and the main characters were given a solid base and good depth, with useful flashbacks. I felt relatively empathetic towards the characters considering their roles and situations in this movie.
Appleseed is full of interactions, as it's centered around having the different factions try to work (or rather, not work) things out with each other. All in all, it's once again very believable and true-to-life.
OverallThis is an excellent movie from all aspects, in my opinion. While I know many people who have read the manga disagree with me regarding the story, I think it's important to be realistic. This is not an animated version of Appleseed, but rather, a movie which is built up by borrowing elements from the manga, as well as introducing new ones. The political depth and complexity has been toned down a lot as well as some characters, and that was the right thing to do as the timeframe didn't allow for more depth than was already given. New characters were introduced in order to help support this version of the story, and others weren't included at all as they weren't neccessary.
Overall I love everything about this movie, and it's at the top segment of my favorite movie list. It's got a good story with some depth and interesting concepts. It's beautifully made and is definitely a success within the 3D area. The sound is great, with a good opening theme song. The characters behave believably and the interactions are good. It's worth mentioning that I'm not a movie fanatic though, so my movie arsenal isn't all that big compared to some people.
This, ladies and gentlemen, will be the highest ranked review i've written up to today's date.
If you like this movie and are interested in a lot more depth of this universe, then I suggest you get a hold of the four manga volumes as well as the databook (which you read after you've read the four volumes). This explains and shows the entire political apparatus in a more visual way. It also covers a brief rundown of the main characters involved in Appleseed, the landmates which are used, ideas and sketches, specs, and so on.
Screenshots
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