Ranked #3555

Appleseed

Given that the newer versions of Appleseed have become popular, I figured that I might as well write a review for the lesser known film. It was created in '88 by the man who I believe created Big O. For some strange reason, it took damn near a decade to bring it from Japan to the US.

The story is similar to many other Olympus outings: terrorists trying to bring down the Utopian society so that humanity doesn't become like a caged animal. Generally, this means destroying Gaia, which is the main goal of our two terrorists. The story's decent, and it picks and chooses parts from the 1st and 2nd volumes of the Appleseed series to have in the film. Ultimately, the story satisfied me, so I have no complaints about that.

My main complaint is with whoever they got to do the voice over work. My god, the V/Os for the English dub are awful. Seriously, everyone sounds like a stereotypical New Yorker, and if it's not that then its the fact that it all sounds like it was recorded in a tin can--echoey (is echoey a word?). A curse word is added to every sentence like a period, and this is also only in the English dub. I watched the movie once in both Japanese and English, and while both adaptations are fair, the original language is the one to watch (some things get cut from the American version, for whatever reason).

The characters are roughly the same in the manga. The one I enjoy the most has to be Hitomi, who wasn't done any justice in the recent 04 movie. I don't know what it is, but all the bioroids act like humans instead of clones in both this and in the manga, a thing that the recent films just hasn't really touched on, at least not yet.

All and all, I enjoyed this, but not as much as I expected. It's good to see where Appleseed originates, but don't dive into it with high hopes. If you can stand the ancient graphics and potentially deadly V/Os, then this could be a decent movie for you. read more

This anime lacks a certain... something... Nothing seems to be horribly wrong, but at the end of the day, it's no more than mediocre. The best word to describe this anime is "bland". It's like drinking water - I don't hate it, but it just doesn't really leave much taste behind. I had a really hard job trying to get excited when watching it because, frankly, there's nothing about it that's very interesting.

Going through everything categorically: the animation... not bad, but not amazing. Music... so bland I can't even remember much about it (though I guess that must mean it can't have been bad at least). The story didn't really inspire. They failed miserably to engage my emotions with their boring dilemmas because they couldn't put together a convincing case about why I should give a toss about it. In addition, parts of the storyline seem a bit muddled up, though that's possibly because my attention was wandering at that point. The characters annoyed me a bit. The police in the anime are a joke. They seem to have no sense of responsibility, and are able to just do things like transfer to a different division without any restraint, as though they are free to do whatever they want. Do they have no superior officers to report to?!

This anime isn't horrendous in any particular category... but it's not really outstanding in any category either, so it's hard to recommend this anime based on any area. And besides, there's a movie out now that's apparently a re-make based on the same source material as this. Though I've not seen it, at least it looks visually stunning, which is more than what I can say for this... read more