May 26 2008
Appleseed Ex Machina Might Be Perfect Anime
I watched the 2004 CGI remake of “Appleseed” (1988) last year and found myself under-impressed. The animation was good, but the story was so long-winded that you wait for all the boring talking to end so that you could see the next fight scene. “Appleseed Ex Machina” (2007) stepped up both the animation and the action from its predecessor, but it did away with most of the explanatory dialog. So, no twenty minutes scenes of smurfs describing the intricate details of metropolitan clone replication management.
The thing that sets this one apart from any other anime was that John Woo was involved as the producer. John Woo is a legendary director of action movies, know for his use of slow-motion action sequences and lots of shell casings hitting the floor. The gunplay and action scenes were top-notch. Although his style is often immitated, you could really tell that Woo was directly involved. The artists mention in the DVD features how Woo’s ideas were integrated into the film. He would study the storyboards and point out where his style would benefit the story.
The animation in Ex Machina was ten times better than the 2004 version (which was still pretty good). All of the environments were photo realistic and special attention was paid to the details of every backdrop. The panorama shots were beautiful, such as the wide view of the city-nation, “Olympus”. The characters models were “toon-shaded”, so they were 3D but had the appearance of two dimensional drawings. Best of all, the animators finally nailed down the “angry face”, which has plagued computer animated characters in the past.
The real coup of this anime was the range of emotion. John Woo was again credited for adding emotional impact to the story. Deunan and Briareos, the leading pair of the Appleseed movies, have never been closer. The voice acting brings a lot of the emotion across, but again the facial animation has really improved as well. Examples of this would be a memorable funeral scene that was very sad and a gathering of friends at Briareos’ bedside after he is injured. So it’s not all bang-bang action, there’s some meat to this story.
Overall, I was very impressed with the improvement in quality in this series. It’s definitely on par with many of the summer blockbusters, many of which are mostly computer generated anyway. I actually waited a while before watching this sequel, thinking that it would be more the same, but I was pleasantly surprised. I would recommend this episode over the previous Appleseed movie, as it stands alone well, retelling a high-level version of the saga. Of special note: Only one follow the speeding bullet effect was used in this movie.
Meta-Tags:
3D, anime, Appleseed, Appleseed Ex Machina, John Woo
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I haven’t watched this with my full attention - I had it on my workstation at work as background noise. Every once in a while I would pay attention to what was going on. The 2004 Appleseed movie left me scratching my head at times. The story seemed a little flat. This John Woo produced movie was much, much better in terms of plot and animation.
I strongly suggest Vexille for even more cel shaded goodness. I watched this straight through with my dogs and we enjoyed the “Japanese-against-the-world” story. Sorta sad when you think about it, though.
I thought “Appleseed” was about a crazy mountain man that wandered America planting trees?
Chip, you’re thinking about the 1970’s apple fetish documentary about Johnny “Appleseed” Holmes. That one had way too much Granny Smith for my taste, which is odd because I like sour apples. I was talking about the Japanese stuff (which you would have noticed had you read the post). More bullets than hobos with “walking sticks” in this one. I prefer my anime that way, actually.