Unfortunately, it turned out to be a burning-car-battery of a mess.
While the world is interesting and the central conflict engaging, with the enjoyable staples of 80's cyberpunk and Shirow's insistance on shopping-cart-wheeled-mechs, the worldbuilding itself is a disaster. So many concepts are introduced through extremely clumsy, peacemeal exposition by nameless or very minor characters, often portraying situations and characters in certain situations or factions with the reader having to assume "oh, I guess they're doing this now".
Character motivations and backstories are similarly obfuscated, making essential character traits - like Deunan's age and role during World War III - really hard to determine. It's hard to root for anyone if they're all vague archetypes who's backstory *might* be elaborated on in the future.
By the time I got to the "Appleseed" chapter - you know, the one that presumably would explain the concepts behind the manga's name and themes - it was so obfuscated by technobabble and hard-to-decipher character motivation that I didn't have the energy to go on.
Although Shirow's involvement in Stand Alone Complex was probably minimal, I definitely get those vibes when it comes to Appleseed's exposition dumps that clumsily explain the entirety of what's going on and if you don't understand you're just a big dummy. SAC had the excuse of interjecting philosophy for all of those people who insisted anime wasn't art until it had random quotations of Catcher in The Rye as antagonist mottos and near-pornographic interjections of random philosophy from hardened police officers. What's Appleseed's excuse?
It's a shame the designs for the cyborgs, mechs, and other technological miscellany look so cool, because the art itself is a mess and woefully inconsistent, especially during action scenes. I wasn't aware overshading was a thing, but Shirow's "attention to detail" can get you lost in the details and make it hard to make out the entire panel at points. This is especially a problem with action scenes are an absolute chore to read (not surprisingly, they're the longest chapters!). No matter how cool everything looks, the aformentioned shading problem + inconsistent action between panels makes reading action scenes feel like reading some ancient, obscure verse of English - the shapes generally make sense, but trying to figure out how they go together takes quite a bit of interpretation.
Character designs often get lost in the action, with minor features such as antenna or eye count adding to the muddled mess that is the action scenes. I was even mistaking key characters for others at some points!
If the very original Appleseed is like this, it's no wonder was sidelined in favor of Ghost in the Shell for media dominance. I wish the world Appleseed created got a better manga to go with it.
