Appleseed
Tuesday, July 5
Over the weekend I watched a movie a friend wanted me to see. It was an anime film called "Appleseed". I haven't really watched too many anime films. I can appreciate the artwork and more adult themes, but for the most part they seem to repeat themselves in just a few categories such as "ninja film", "fantasy film", and "screwed up future film". This one falls into the "screwed up future film", where at the beginning it had a "Matrix" meets "Terminator" feel.
I don't always give anime films their due credit, mostly I just avoid them. I give credit to the more famous anime's that have become cult classics such as Ninja Scoll, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira. The thing I can appreciate most is the artwork. I've seen some animated movies take their hand at CGI into their films and it just never looks right. Everything CGI looks out of place with the rest of the animation. "Appleseed" is almost the reverse of that. Most of the movie is CGI and even the characters appear cell-shaded. It was like watching a new kind of animated film, something I'd never seen before. So visually it had me hooked for a while. Eventually the story caught up with me though. It wasn't a terrible film... it just wasn't my thing. I'd seen this movie before, the last time I watched a "screwed up future" anime.
"Appleseed" tells the tale of Utopia, a world in which 50% of the population is made up from Bioriods (man made humans). These Bioriods are restrained on emotions and are seen as the ideal solution to balance the human thirst for war and thus maintain the peace. Enter, human Deunan Knute, a SWAT trained, lean, mean, killing machine who has been plucked from the war zone - in which she was still unwittingly fighting. Her quest is to find the Appleseed, the final code, which will allow the Bioroids to reproduce and maintain the same lifecycle as humans, and deliver it to the legitimate owner.
Although visually appealing the plot is somewhat complicated, it seems to unfurl, as they do in many of these films, in a scene of dialogue between two of the main characters. I'd advise a crash course in speed-reading for those watching the subtitled version. Miss this and you can pretty much give up hope of understanding what is going on. Not that you'll be bored as there is plenty to see. Overall this wasn't a bad way to kill an hour and a half.
