Vexille: 2077 Nihon Sakoku

Set in the year 2077, this cyberpunk thriller starts off with a bang and unfortunately goes out with a wimper.


The story evolves around roughneck yet beautiful girl named Vexille who works for an elite military force codenamed: S.W.O.R.D. In a nutshell, Japan has elected to become an isolated country and decides not to play ball with the rest of the world. A semi interesting story ensues...

Fortunately, as soon as the movie starts you are well treated for some nice visual eye candy. As you would expect from a CGI heavy movie, everything is rendered with utmost detail. But almost immediately you will notice that ... the characters are altered slightly than what you would normally expect. They appear to be more styled in a cel-shaded way. A little minor gripe with cel-shading is that sometimes theres a little TOO much 'shading' on the characters. The style may look a little weird (semi-simplified characters over an extremely detailed background) but you will most likely grow used to it after a few minutes. There are a few flaws in the animation but thats proof of how beautiful this movie is. You'll be actively searching for things in the artwork to nit pick.

A great thing about a cyberpunk universe is understanding the universe itself. The back story and technology throughout the movie will most definitely do its job in to pulling you into the Vexille universe as all the technology is pretty believable (for the most part) and cool to look at. Unfortunately what pulls the story down a few points is that the actual plot is very unspectacular. When the viewer discovers the plot, seasoned anime viewers will notice how cliche' the whole move is from the climax to the ending. Which disappointed me so much since they could have easily gone a unique route but decided to take the safe (and unimpressive) route.

With a weakening plot, unfortunately the characters have to suffer as well. As they are near replicas of other cyberpunk characters. It also means that the characters faces don't show emotions very well for some reason (i.e. happy, sad, etc). To add more salt to the wound, the characters don't speak as much which is good and bad. Good as in usually when they're not talking some kick ass action sequence is going on, and bad as in the character chemistry is virtually nonexistent. If you have been following any of my reviews, chemistry is what makes a good anime great.

Don't get me wrong, this movie was for the most part, pretty good and I am most likely going to buy the dvd when it comes out, but the storyline and characters started to wane (or letup) further into the movie. If they only kept its intensity and uniqueness all the way to the end, this would definitely be a 9, but this movie deserves no more than a 6.

For the record, I didn't start off hating this movie. I'd actually been searching for it for a good year before they released it in June (July? Something with a J). I looked at it lovingly the whole way home once I'd bought it, and when I watched it for the first time, I felt...happy.

That was about for the first 15 minutes.

I've watched it 3 times since I bought it, and it never gets better. I don't know whether or not I'm biased towards Shirow or whether I just expect better from the producers, but something about this movie was a little off.

First, let ... me just say that the graphics are awesome. The opening scenes with the snow floating in the wind--excellent. Graphics were not the problem I had with this movie. One of the main problems I had was the mech designs. I mean, you want them to seem as though they could work in real life, and these just didn't seem like they could. Maybe it's a small gripe, but when machines are the majority of your story, you should pay them a little more attention.

The main character, Vexille (I honestly, seriously, hate this name. Who the hell names a girl Vexille?! Whatever....) seems like a copy of Duenan without the spunk and vitality. I believe that they just took the template for Appleseed and slapped some weird black/grey/blond hair on it (I swear to god her hair changes colors). She doesn't really have a back story, there's no sense that she even really loved her partner Zack (or that he loved her back), and by the end of the movie, I just felt indifferent towards her. This wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have to spend almost the entire running time for this movie with her, but you do, so it is.

The story has a good twist about half way in, but it doesn't make up for the rest of the boring, drawn out, ultimately lame plot. It had a great concept, but a few things (Jags) just killed it for me.

Given the fact that Appleseed: Ex Machina was released before this, I really don't see why you'd really need to watch this. I mean, if its your first time, go for it, because at least the visuals can get you through this mediocre piece.

If you enjoyed the visuals and sound design of Appleseed and Appleseed Saga Ex Machina, then you will enjoy Vexille. Indeed TBS has stolen alot from the Sega produced Shirow classic.

Alot of the mechanical design and environment design is clearly a Shirow knock-off, but it is executed fairly well. I did appreciate the thought put into the explanation behind alot of the technology represented in the movie, since technology is rather central to the plot.

But the plot was exactly the problem in this movie. Specifically around character development and motive. While the outside story resembles a crossbred of Appleseed and I-Robot and does ... a fairly good job of suspending disbelief, until time constraints forces open various cliches plot-holes; the inside story is what literally tanks the movie. Perhaps if the writer made Vexille and Leon's relationship more as a mystery, or one that was more ambiguous...

Oh well...the soundtrack by Paul Oakenfold, with a brief bump by M.I.A. saves the movie from time to time, along with the standard post-Matrix cinematography. Worth watching if you're starving for some cyber-punk dystopia.

Watching Vexille is like watching the most beautiful yet uncomlete painting. The art is fantastic, and the elements within the story contain everything a good story needs. All the elements to make this the most innovative anime are there.

Art is perfect, like watching appleseed again.

Story is rushed, though full of many great elements it falls short and feels incomplete.

Characters are decent and would have been great had they truly been expanded upon. The hero alone never feels much like are hero or even important.

Sound was very good with some very good musical picks and pretty good voice acting.

It just ... feels like they are not put together. Most of the fun in this show comes from things not meant to be funny, yet end up being hilarious. At best I would call Vexille a rental.

Sooo....a first not-so stellar review. Though I liked Appleseed Ex Machina I went into this movie expecting something along those lines. I did get what I was expecting but..uhmm less of it. Vexille wasn't interesting and despite the action and the glittery explosions (and I do like explosions), as well as the cyber-punk dystopian themes, it was dull..dull like's story, characters, music, and etc.

Story: The story itself is good. The idea of Japan isolating itself once again and the disastrous results that came from such isolation was something that got me into seeing the film. The theme of technology ... erasing humanity as a consequence of our dependence on it is one I have seen before (many..many times), but I never get tired of it. And I did feel the paranoia of the government wash over me as a reminder of why we should ALWAYS question the government and those who make decisions without the people's knowledge thus consent.
So the story itself got a lot going for it. It was just executed in a manner I didn't enjoy...and that mostly came from the characters...the unconvincing romance...the thrown in action sequences...and so on so forth. I liked the themes it presented.

Characters: I disliked Vexille. Normally I love strong female characters. I envy and connect with them. But Vexille was just so...boring. For an brash American, she was downplayed and ignored even though she was the most seen character on screen (and the TITLE character mind you). There was little life to her, and when she showed signs of life, it was forced. Sometimes...she felt as mechanical as the androids she is so wary of. Leon was also near lifeless...and well...showed very little life..at all. Sure both these lvoers can polite and fight well...but once again so can those androids. And the romance? The chemistry? Nothing. I got nothing.
Everyone else is as dull as predictable. Main villain being a evil genius hell bent on being God? Seen it, easily dealt with and pathetic...as well as boring. Silent stoic henchmen? Check.
And those rebels....I...didn't care about them at all...except for Maria. In fact she was the only character I connected with...which sucks, cause she was woodened and morose.
None of them were fun, none of them were good. I kinda wanted all of them to die in some semi-heroic fashion, but I never got what I wanted from this film.

Art: The art went back to that annoying cell-shading I did not care for in Appleseed, but the animation was nice. The architecture was very well done, though unlike Ex Machina, I wasn't wowed. The weaponry, suits, and machines were pretty cool.
The characters however...I saw little emotion, little reaction to even the most tragic of times. Everyone is so...damn...stoic. well more like emotionless and robotic. Especially the main characters, which stinks cause i have to watch them show the SLIGHTEST hint of love and sadness in the only the convenient of times. The animation was nice but again the character designs and the lack of conveyable emotion hurt this score.

Sound: Voices were all right...but meh, no real emotion, not really impressed. Music was standard cyber fare.

Overall: This could've been better..I wanted it to be better...but I was not engaged.