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WHY'D I WATCH IT?
n/a
WHAT'D I THINK?
I'm going to try and keep this short since I have a tendency to go way overlong on details: Appleseed pleasantly surprised me.
In more than one way in fact.
On the surface it sold me on it's animation style alone which is fully computer animated, but cel-shaded to mimic traditional anime stylings.
Right off the bat, it looks very good. Coming out the same year as Shrek 2 and The Incredibles, it's initially nothing to sneeze at, but unlike those movies and their respective studios who have a history of perfecting detail animation, Appleseed was the first production by it's studio and demonstrates a clear preference towards grand design than fine details.
What this translates to is that the character models look very simplistic compared to their much more heavily textured environment which looks slightly off but carries the benefit of aging significantly better during close-ups than later much more popular photo-realistic CG movies like Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
The tradeoff isn't just for that timeless quality though, it's clear a MASSIVE amount of effort went into designing the environments and very carefully animating complex machinery which is always a pleasure to watch.
There are some design choices and color picks I kinda scoff at and at rare times the lighting puts the hardlit cel-shading into unflattering shots a la Wind Waker HD... but for the most part, it looks really good for an early faux-anime look.
Let's move on to the plot and characters.
The premise here is that Sami from Advance Wars and Vasquez from Aliens turned out to be lesbians, magically lebsianized a baby into existence and that baby turned out to be TOTALLY STRAIGHT BADASS ACTION GIRL #1: Deunan.
Wait- is it straight if you're sexually attracted to a robot? Whatever.
The robot in question goes by the ever perplexing name, Briareos. Did I get that right? Briareos? I'm gonna assume I said that right.
I try to remember it like "briar" and "eros" except the drop the last R. Cause briar eros basically translates to rough sexy time and you're bound to have rough sex if you've got it in for a robot AM I RIGHT?
Appleseed
Action Sci-Fi Drama / 2004
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
n/a
WHAT'D I THINK?
I'm going to try and keep this short since I have a tendency to go way overlong on details: Appleseed pleasantly surprised me.
In more than one way in fact.
On the surface it sold me on it's animation style alone which is fully computer animated, but cel-shaded to mimic traditional anime stylings.
Right off the bat, it looks very good. Coming out the same year as Shrek 2 and The Incredibles, it's initially nothing to sneeze at, but unlike those movies and their respective studios who have a history of perfecting detail animation, Appleseed was the first production by it's studio and demonstrates a clear preference towards grand design than fine details.
What this translates to is that the character models look very simplistic compared to their much more heavily textured environment which looks slightly off but carries the benefit of aging significantly better during close-ups than later much more popular photo-realistic CG movies like Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.
The tradeoff isn't just for that timeless quality though, it's clear a MASSIVE amount of effort went into designing the environments and very carefully animating complex machinery which is always a pleasure to watch.
There are some design choices and color picks I kinda scoff at and at rare times the lighting puts the hardlit cel-shading into unflattering shots a la Wind Waker HD... but for the most part, it looks really good for an early faux-anime look.
Let's move on to the plot and characters.
The premise here is that Sami from Advance Wars and Vasquez from Aliens turned out to be lesbians, magically lebsianized a baby into existence and that baby turned out to be TOTALLY STRAIGHT BADASS ACTION GIRL #1: Deunan.
Wait- is it straight if you're sexually attracted to a robot? Whatever.
The robot in question goes by the ever perplexing name, Briareos. Did I get that right? Briareos? I'm gonna assume I said that right.
I try to remember it like "briar" and "eros" except the drop the last R. Cause briar eros basically translates to rough sexy time and you're bound to have rough sex if you've got it in for a robot AM I RIGHT?
Okay, uhhh... I really like these two main leads. Deunan is a tough no-nonsense girl and FOR ONCE IN FRIGGEN' AGES we don't have a female lead being roundly sexualized or underplayed just because she's a girl. She's like Ellen Ripley. She's here to kick ass and break gender stereotypes and she's all out of ass...
Right, so the deal is she used to know this guy back in the war which apparently ran itself dead sometime ago, but the news never reached her. She's finally extracted from the warzone and she learns that while she was off shooting people, humanity has established a true UTOPIA.
...
Is there a single person out there who will be surprised if I tell them that IT DOESN'T LAST???
When she returns she meets Briareos who used to be flesh-and-blood human like her, but in some sort of accident was forced to be reintegrated into a new cybernetic body. You could say "he's more machine now than man", but that serves an interesting purpose.
One one hand it presents to us the disturbed and estranged relationship between two former partners who are now different from each other in the most extreme of ways. Just as this new utopia is populated by human-like robots who've had their human impulses heavily dulled in the name of vulcanizing everyone,
Right, so the deal is she used to know this guy back in the war which apparently ran itself dead sometime ago, but the news never reached her. She's finally extracted from the warzone and she learns that while she was off shooting people, humanity has established a true UTOPIA.
...
Is there a single person out there who will be surprised if I tell them that IT DOESN'T LAST???
When she returns she meets Briareos who used to be flesh-and-blood human like her, but in some sort of accident was forced to be reintegrated into a new cybernetic body. You could say "he's more machine now than man", but that serves an interesting purpose.
One one hand it presents to us the disturbed and estranged relationship between two former partners who are now different from each other in the most extreme of ways. Just as this new utopia is populated by human-like robots who've had their human impulses heavily dulled in the name of vulcanizing everyone,
Briareos is also emotionally distant. We get a scene in which Briar (I'm just gonna call him Briar from now on) is just messing around with his equipment and returning static "I don't know" answers in response to Deunan's questions, but when she tells him "not to act like a robot" he seizes up and it's a great character moment between them which I wish we saw more of throughout the movie.
Not that we don't have plenty of Deunan/Briar screentime, but their relationship was honestly the most interesting part of the movie to me and I would have liked to have seen it explored even deeper.
Most of the movie is dedicated to addressing a terrorism in utopia (yeah, I'm getting dead drug dealers in Chumscrubberland flashbacks).
Apparently a whole half of the population is practically indistinguishable from human, but actually robots built to be near-human, composed of "superior materials". These are "Bioroids". Bioroids, as I've already stated have had their human impulses stunted, but in addition to this they have no independent reproductive systems and their lifespans are artificially limited.
The whole artificial lifespan thing is never really important, never really adequately explained, and never really existing for any reason other than to weakly ratchet up the tension.
The reproductive thing is the whole core of the movie, though. The name "Appleseed" is a reference to Adam & Eve.
One would think that Bioroids wouldn't be cool with having their rights limited like this, but they're apparently first and foremost "there to maintain peace among humans" a la vulcanizing.
This is eventually contrasted by the line "Bioroids don't kill Bioroids" which reeks heavily of what is now my third reference to Aliens, "You don't see them ****ing each other over for a ******* percentage."
It's all very cool and interesting and you can probably predict like two of the twists this movie's gonna throw at you already, but I have one simple question: If humans are still discriminatory ****s, then how did we not only get a population that is half robot, but a SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT IS ENTIRELY ROBOT?
You kinda just have to take that big plothole and run with it. Run with it directly into the BIG OL' SLICE A CHEESE in the middle of the movie where we have to stop and talk about whether or not robots have the capacity to love.
You WISH I was talking about Wall-E!
Not that we don't have plenty of Deunan/Briar screentime, but their relationship was honestly the most interesting part of the movie to me and I would have liked to have seen it explored even deeper.
Most of the movie is dedicated to addressing a terrorism in utopia (yeah, I'm getting dead drug dealers in Chumscrubberland flashbacks).
Apparently a whole half of the population is practically indistinguishable from human, but actually robots built to be near-human, composed of "superior materials". These are "Bioroids". Bioroids, as I've already stated have had their human impulses stunted, but in addition to this they have no independent reproductive systems and their lifespans are artificially limited.
The whole artificial lifespan thing is never really important, never really adequately explained, and never really existing for any reason other than to weakly ratchet up the tension.
The reproductive thing is the whole core of the movie, though. The name "Appleseed" is a reference to Adam & Eve.
One would think that Bioroids wouldn't be cool with having their rights limited like this, but they're apparently first and foremost "there to maintain peace among humans" a la vulcanizing.
This is eventually contrasted by the line "Bioroids don't kill Bioroids" which reeks heavily of what is now my third reference to Aliens, "You don't see them ****ing each other over for a ******* percentage."
It's all very cool and interesting and you can probably predict like two of the twists this movie's gonna throw at you already, but I have one simple question: If humans are still discriminatory ****s, then how did we not only get a population that is half robot, but a SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT THAT IS ENTIRELY ROBOT?
You kinda just have to take that big plothole and run with it. Run with it directly into the BIG OL' SLICE A CHEESE in the middle of the movie where we have to stop and talk about whether or not robots have the capacity to love.
You WISH I was talking about Wall-E!
No, but seriously, other than a few plot hiccups here and there and some action sequences which feel just shy of the kind of punch they were going for, I definitely recommend Appleseed, and having seen it, I'm encouraged to try out it's sequel movies and even the Appleseed video game.
I'd be very interested to see these character's origins better explored in a reboot of some sort, so now I'm off to go see if they exist.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]
I'd be very interested to see these character's origins better explored in a reboot of some sort, so now I'm off to go see if they exist.
Final Verdict: [Pretty Good]