Appleseed (1988)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I can't really badmouth the film, since it is made in 1988, I mean, My Neighbor Totoro and Dragon Ball Z come to mind from that time. But the animation is in the old school Japanese drawing style that looked so much like bad Disney, the sci-fi concepts are outdated and the story itself is nothing more than a cop story set in the future. It is not easy to find anything good that stands out, even if in itself is not a bad movie. It is just so boringly average that it becomes instantly forgettable.It does explore some aspects of humanity, as the story revolves around a fictional future city in which people are happy, but without choice. However it is difficult to buy into the story when terrorists and average people have guns and often turn to a life of crime. I mean, you have no choice, but you can buy a military robot suit and start killing people with high powered guns?The more recent reinventions of Appleseed are more watchable than this, I have to say. Perhaps there is a reason why the 1988 version is so difficult to find.

Appleseed is an anime based on Masamune Shirows manga of the same name before he became famous with Ghost in the Shell in the mid nineties. Being released just before Akira it got unfavorably compared with the latter and could never hope to reach the bar that was set so high by Katsuhiro Otomo's creation.This is in fact the first installment of the Appleseed franchise although there is a gap of 16 years between this OVA and the 2004 movie.Although this 1 hour OVA never covers the entire manga, in terms of plot and story it still does a good job albeit the story being kept rather simple. Nevertheless the philosophical and political tropes of Shirow are well dealt with albeit not so deep as in Ghost in the Shell or in the two later Appleseed-installments.Animation-wise it is clearly a product of an era before Akira gave anime that huge boost.If you like cyberpunk anime from the 1980s and early nineties and if you enjoyed Shirows earlier work from the same era, like Black Magic M-66 (1987) or Dominion Tank Police (1988), then you will surely like Appleseed the OVA.

A good anime and faithful (loyal, adequate) to the manga.This animate movie, from the manga of Masamume Shirow "Appleseed", remains faithful. It includes the design, the characters and theirs characters, the tone and his comic, and one of the major story lines of the world of "Appleseed" are developed . Namely, through the city Olympus, the new world created for humans after the major global conflicts and their management by broods race created to manage and keep safe the humans. This "golden cage", as it's call in the animate movie, poses ethical problems through governance for the human world by non-human entities.We can be a little unfortunate (disappointed) that the introduction out of the Olympus from the manga, is deliberately set aside to penetrate directly into the film's plot and probably to be consistent with the desired duration. But this shelving (lack) is recovered by a sequence in the film where the role (part) of Hitomi is explained about it.The action, intrigue and pace (rhythm) of the film is very consistent. It's a very satisfactory achievement for this time and probably his budget.The soundtrack is unobtrusive (discrete) but perfectly accompanies the action. A good and faithful manga.The film is short (a little bit more than 1H) with a very good "rythm".

This anime is unique on the grounds that it explores more 'science-fact' rather than 'science fiction,' and makes the viewer believe much of what is being viewed is a factual prediction of the future earth.Appleseed, which is based on the 1985 manga of the same name, is set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of WWIII. A new breed of governemnet and scraped what remains of the world's government to put together an experimental utopia, 'Olypus' suposidly free of the past-world's troubles and strives. Deunan Natt, and Buliareous Heckatonickles are two of the best in the Police Force, and just when they thought they couldn't get more bullets coming their way, they're asigned to takeout a camatose terroist, AJ Sebastian, who's goal it is to destory Olympus. on the gorunds of it 'enslaving' human destiny.Firstly, anyone who watches this can see how cheesy it is, but despite this, theres is alot more to consider about it than meets the eye. For stance, your confussed into believing who is the real bad guy-- the terrorist's moral values outway those of the Police & Government, yet what they're doing is rightly good also.The animation goes from strength to strength, and isn't anything like AKIRA, but it's moderate for 80's B movie OVAs. The mecha design is seemingly bizzare, but factual and controversial. There are also references to make us aware of the physics side of the technolodgy used. One thing which puzzled me about this anime were that there were contious references towards greek mytholodgy, especiallin the characters names.The analogue quality of the film though, doggs the whole thing from start to finish, with poor lighting, and fuzzy AV-recording.All around, it's a highly enjoyable watch, with some laughable scnes in place, if your into anime of cause. ***8/10***