Appleseed (2004)
Humanity’s Last Chance for Survival.
In the recent years I keep assigning some theme to the charity streams I do. This year, I decided to do mechs, because I love giant robots like everyone else does - but I ran into a bit of a problem with having already done most the movies that immediately come into mind. And thus, I delved back - way back, like DVD back and the early 2000s - to find something to watch from my collection. I came up with two choices, one more fantasy than the other, and then pitched them both to my watch-mates, who opted for the more 3D animated one. Learn to love your robot boyfriend, tonight we watch Appleseed.
A lady soldier fighting a war against robots get saved and caught by the mech-police in short order. She is then taken to a wonderful city, where humans and a new race of human-but-better folks known as bioroids co-exist. Well, they kind of co-exist, humans are kinda crap at not being racist it seems. Still, the place is set up and all about balance and being all peaceful, but the military folks aren’t particularly known to like the police side that’s largely bioroids, so there’s a friction under the blankets of this utopian city. Things start escalating after a terrorist attack on the bioroid factory, and now the city is met with a drastic decision if it wants to save it’s population of altered-humans from ceasing to be when their normal life expectancy check up and extension comes up. Good thing we have our soldier lady to fight the good fight and try to save everyone.
Characters exist, and I would say that more so than arcs they get more used towards specific thought lines. This isn’t to say that they aren’t necessarily interesting, and our main does get a bunch of backstory spilled out over the movie - and it turns out to be kind of important really - but her main progression points really come from being more hopeful and coming to terms with her now robotic boyfriend. Everyone else is rather straight forward unless they suddenly twist to villains - but with all the “humans are pretty dumb” commentary that floats around you mostly expect everything as far as characters becoming worse than you do someone becoming better in all honesty. Some of the chemistry between characters doesn’t play out the best - but I think it’s both intentional given how it changes over the course of the movie and also perhaps just a side effect of the voice/animation disconnect that can happen.
The voice actors do a good job though. Yes, I threw on the english dub because it’s the default on my DVD copy and I couldn’t be bothered to worry too much about it when I’m trying to watch a potato sized video on a modern 4k monitor - in all honesty, the projector does a way better job of stretching things out then my monitor does - so the most I really did was turn on subtitles. What’s there really isn’t bad though, even if you do get a little scene chewing deliveries from a few of the characters - especially one of the military guys. The deliveries are pretty good in most instances, like the exchange between Hitomi and our lead about love while hanging out in a bar. I wouldn’t call it anyone’s particular greatest performances, but it’s more than serviceable enough to not take you out of the movie. It won’t, however, save you from some potential exposition boredom at points.
The sound of the police
Exposition boredom isn’t an experience relegated to this movie alone, and admittedly I end up giving way more slack to it then I necessarily want to in most movies - because thing’s need to be explained, and there’s only so much you can do to make talking about politics or utopias exciting in all honesty. The movie has some neat action scenes - and it’s one of the earlier attempts at the 3D anime style that I can remember seeing - but there is a lot of exposition, flashbacks, transits, or otherwise talking and posturing that happens in the movie’s run time. The landmates get some use, and there’s some on foot action moments as well - but expectation wise it’d be more appropriate to go in with the thought of drama or adventure then pure action. Works for the thinking person - you’ll get all that wonderful topic extraction like racism, classism, greed, war, and those sorts of thought systems out of here and it doesn’t even really try to hide it.
Effects wise the entire movie is technically effects. I mean, it’s a 3D animated movie, with a bit of that cel-shaded experimentation for some extra zazz. The best description would be if a video game went anime with it’s models. Not a super modern one either - they aren’t horrible looking, but it does show its age in a few spots. Other times though, you’ll be surprised how nice the shot looks - even if it’s in a small window on a big monitor because you only have the DVD. Character designs are good and they don’t end up all blending together in looks, The entire thing is based on a rather well known name in the mech genre - heck, if your into some of the earlier days of anime released state-side, you’d probably recognize him more from Ghost in the Shell than things like the design of the landmate type mech and rather, uh, saucy drawings of ladies. For me, I didn’t start recognizing his name until the mechs, which lead to his name and art style getting recognized by me as i came across it more and more. Admittedly, the models used in this are a bit more tame as far as the saucy-ness but still hit the mark for the most part. It’s a bit different seeing it all computered up, but I feel like the general idea is still there enough to be recognized.
Admittedly, I never got as far as learning Japanese or finding some kind of dubs to experience any of the manga he did - so I can’t tell you if the movie is a good adaptation. I know the characters are generally right looking - with the exception of perhaps our main’s hair style, which I’ve seen a few different styles of in the art anyways. Story wise and character wise though? I’m clueless. There was some motion acting going on in this movie as well - but again, it was early 2000s. The movements can at times look a little wooden, although during action scenes it’s usually fun enough that it doesn’t call your attention to it while doing all sorts of flip-jumps over attacks and spin kicks to faces. Probably the most offensive (for lack of a better word) part of it all would be the models mouth movements - and some of that could just be the different between something meant to look like it’s speaking Japanese being dubbed over by English, but I’m sure on the other hand some of it just it’s age showing. Speaking of, the subtitles are pretty different than the english voice lines as well - they aren’t all horribly off in intent, but I’m assuming at least some of that was changing things around to at least try and make things line up with the mouth movements.
Alt title: How I learned to love my robot boyfriend
The movie is a part of it’s time period for sure. This extends in multiple directions - for most, that early 2000’s music, especially the heavier stuff, is golden. On the other hand, you also get the occasional stiffer animation like some of the mouth movements. Overall pacing might feel a bit slow for some people’s attention spans as they set up a good deal of stuff about the world, but I don’t find it that bad personally - just have to do my due diligence in pointing it out is all. The mechs are cool, our robot friend is baller when he gets going, and our lead get’s the whole movie to work towards kicking more butt than everyone else. There’s some thinking stuff for those types, but I don’t think hard character enthusiasts will be too enthralled by the pretty straight forward bulk of characters. It held up surprisingly well all considering - although perhaps I should look into seeing if there’s a higher quality than DVD the next time I go to watch it.