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Appleseed (Widescreen) (2004) Actors: Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi, Yuki Matsuoka Director: Shinji Aramaki Number of Items: 1 Format: Animated, Color, Widescreen, Dolby Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Running Time: 105 minutes Studio: Geneon Entertainment Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2005-05-10 Buy from Amazon |
 "Bang for your Buck!"Everyone who sees this will ultimately compare "Appleseed" to PIXAR 3-D animated films. I must say this is a truly unfair comparison for many reasons. For one, if you're going to compare PIXAR films with this rare gem, you better take into consideration the budget restraints and limitations "Appleseed" had. Made on a trifle $10 million, "Appleseed" blows the audience away with its beautiful detail and amazing animation. Sure, it's not on par with the $150 million dollar films PIXAR pumps out, but to compare the two would be like comparing a small independent garage film to a mega dollar studio backed Hollywood blockbuster. They're both movies, perhaps even similar genres, but they can't be compared solely for the purpose of showing contrast. What you get in Appleseed is the best 3-D animation I've seen. I for one preferred its realism and rich tones over the soft cloth texture pastels of many PIXAR films. I would bet that if it had the budget of a PIXAR film it would have looked 100 times better than all of PIXAR's films combined. If you need proof, just look at how close the Japanese came this time around. Other people claim that the cell shading makes it look hokey. I actually thing this style suits the film. The backgrounds are realistic, and "Appleseed" has a style and flair that reeks of too cool. Considering that they cell shaded a 3-D film to look more like traditional 2-D animation almost sounds like an oxymoron, but it gives a flavor entirely unique to this movie, giving it a much needed aesthetic originality from other films within the same genre of 3-D animation. For once we can enjoy an adult story with real emotions and characters and not have to fall to the kiddy gimmicks of a film like "The Incredibles." Although "The Incredibles" raised the bar for action in a children's film, it is a far cry from anything resembling adult storytelling and entertainment. Appleseed satisfies the older generation of animation lovers and lets us delight on the rarity of this high caliber story telling aimed for well rounded and mature audiences. "Appleseed" is definitely worth adding to your personal DVD collection. "not as cool as trailer/but definately add to your collection"i first saw the trailer for this movie on my samurai champloo dvd, i was blown away, it looked like the coolest anime ever made, its not, but its good. the visuals are pretty sweet, as a whole though, it almost feels too much like a capcom game or something, i think everybody would probly agree with that. but i feel its an important anime, i enjoyed it inspite of all my criticism, i just had high hopes thats all, anyway, buy it. "Decent plot but killer presentation"Although this movie has a decent plot, where it rules is the jaw dropping presentation in 3DCG and DD/DTS 5.1. It literally rocks after seconds into the movie. The 3DCG uses motion capture for fluid-like animation. It resembles traditon cell animation to a certain degree, and is very well done. An anime fan or not, you would enjoy this DVD.  "Anime fans'll love it - Everyone else'll think it's okay"If you're the average sci fi anime fan, you'll readily eat this up and want seconds. The action sequences are awesome and the film is visually stunning. However, if you're a more discerning animation fan, you'll appreciate the visual style of this film, but you'll also notice the shallowness of the story as well as the relatively weak execution of the actual "animation" involved. People who aren't fans of sci-fi animation probably won't even be looking at this film in the first place. Visually, this film has a lot of eye-candy. The hyper real textures used in the mechanical objects and in much of the backgrounds are stunning and the cell-shaded characters are appealing. However, some people may find the fact that they try to integrate both into this film at the same time a little distracting (most people will probably just take it in stride). The story is nothing to rave about. It's nothing more than your typical government/rebel faction conflict with one man/woman holding the key to ending it all premise- not exactly the meaning of life type fare. Good for an afternoon of mindless entertainment, but not much worth coming back for. Character development is rather thin (the characters seem to be more like anime stereotypes instead of individuals in their own right) so you don't find yourself really empathizing with any of the characters. However, seeing as how this is a more action oriented film, that can be easily overlooked. It's probably a good thing to remember that the manga (japanese comic) that this film is based off of was mainly targeted for teenage boys, so the story sensibility reflects that. As for the actual animation itself, it's rather, for lack of a better word, stiff. The characters move smoothly enough, but it appears as though the animators relied too much on their motion capture data to get these characters moving than actual animation. Pure motion capture movements being performed by computer generated characters come off as looking rather odd. We see motion that we associate with a real live human being being performed by what amounts to a cartoonists rendition of a human being. It just draws unneccessary attention to the fact that the character moving onscreen isn't "real" (most apparent in the hands and the eyes - characters move about like they have GI Joe action figure hands and the eyes never appear to focus on anything - probably since these can't be motion captured and the animators never bothered to fix these individually). This isn't apparent in the quicker action sequences where motion capture is actually a plus, but for the slower paced sequences, the characters look robotic or puppet-like. There's also an almost complete absence of emotional facial expression from most of the "cast" (once again, probably because you aren't able to capture this data with motion capture equipment - one of the many weaknesses of this technique). All we're given are a few smiles/frowns here and there and a few raised/lowered eyebrows. It's like the entire population graduated from the Steven Segal school of acting (more likely, the animators felt the polish of the look of the film overall was more important than the actual "acting"). It's this specific sense of movement that motion capture causes that gives this the feel, as another reviewer stated, of a Capcom video game (many games rely exclusively on motion capture for their Full Motion Video sequences since it's faster and cheaper than actually animating them). This may not be too much of a concern for most viewers and your average anime fan won't really care (it has flashy visuals and the action's great) but discerning fans of animation will undoubtably see past these superficial elements and notice that something is definitely off with how these characters move. Another reviewer claimed that this film put Pixar's work to shame, but it's quite obvious it was the anime fan in him talking. While this film is visually very pretty (and flashy to boot), Pixar's work has an overall quality that this film is still missing. The story isn't as well developed as Pixar's films are and the overall animation quality of Pixar's films are light years ahead of what this film has to offer. It's a step in the right direction for Japanese CG films, but it's not quite there yet. All in all, it's a pretty, flashy, animated action film with lots of explosions and mayhem to draw your attention. For the pure purpose of mindless entertainment, it gets the job done. Just don't go into it expecting the next great film of the century because you'll be sorely disappointed. Needless to say, hardcore anime fans will think this is the greatest thing EVER since this has what, sadly, most anime fans think makes great movies (characters with angst, flashy visuals, lots of action, and a psuedo-psychological explaination of what makes people human). More discerning animation fans (or film fans in general) will see this as a pretty and flashy film but, all in all, rather shallow underneath (rudimentary "animation", minimal story/character development). This film has a ton of eye-candy, but movies can only go so far on eye-candy alone. It, unfortunately, is another case of style over substance. EDIT: Added more to my review after viewing this movie again. "Beautiful, well done"After seeing the original movie released by Manga a while back, this is a major jump of greatness. At first, it takes a while to get used to the animation, it's as if watching a video game at some moments, while at times it becomes like a painting. This is worth it, especially if you were disappointed with Final Fantasy's action. The plot is predictable, with a few twists in the way. But as with most Masamune Shirow modern reworks, the designs are obviously revamped to more realism, the big eyes are still there. The weapons are something to look at, as always in anime, research has always been done to blend a balanced present and futuristic/fantasy weapon. ESWAT Landmates being dropped by VTOL vehicles that resemble Osprey's, the Olympus regular Army using rifles that resemble M-4's, but are actually Bull-pups. All-in-all a great movie for your surround sound system. |
