Appleseed World Preview Minireview

darrellberry writes "We went to see the World Sneak Preview of Masamune Shirow's Appleseed at the ICA tonight. Complimentary sake and sushi, a loving but silly flipchart presentation from the producer about the politics of the world in which it is set, then the film. The animation is amazing the rendering of the city of Olympus is beautiful, the battle set-pieces are fluid and very well choreographed, and the fine line betwen genre conventions and attempts at hyper-realism is treated with respect. Although the first few minutes owe too much to The Matrix-meets-Avalon, and in parts (to my eye) the human characters suffer somewhat from traditional anime styling, Appleseed is something genuinely new in animation. Detail everywhere, lovingly rendered. Way too much exposition, in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s, and music supervision that was entirely wrong: it was nice to see Basement Jaxx turning up for the premiere, but their music and that of Oakenfold and the rest on the soundtrack made no sense thematically or emotionally. I can see that they are going for a big international release with Appleseed, but the music is just wrong. On the plus side, the motion capture-based character animation is very convincing, and the Mobile Fortresses out-scale any other city-stomping weapons platform I can remember. And lovely to see anime at a high frame-rate, not jumping in triples. Go see it at a big cinema with decent Dolby when it's on release next month, or get it on DVD (evidently on release in July) and turn up the sub-woofer." I don't know if we linked to the official site in our last story.

just saw the trailer

its pure eye candy!!!. Last thing i've ever seen like this is ONI FPS game. Cant wait to watch it, although it means i have to wait like 8 months till it gets to Chile. 2 years if you are thinking of a legal copy.

Stop with the fucking spoilers!

I was going to see this movie but since you gave away the frame-rate I might as well stay home.

Bittorrents of Trailers?

Anyone got Bittorrents for the Trailer(s)?

Re:Bittorrents of Trailers?

appleseed trailer torrent [aixgaming.com]

Yow!

Sounds like something to check out... but on a side note, PLEASE use the "Read More..." link! That writeup eats an entire page on my browser, I thought the Ruskies dropped the bomb when I first loaded the page.

Re:Yow!

Ahh, the Achilles heel of 640x480.

Bad Anime Hall of Fame

IMO ... Appleseed was the beginning of the wave of bad anime that unfortunatly became the dominant style of the 90s. Everything about it is just as boring and contrived as American superhero comics. The last Appleseed movie nearly put me to sleep 10yrs ago, I assume this will be no different.

Re:Bad Anime Hall of Fame

Actually this movie is a remake BECAUSE the last one was that bad. There would not be an audience if the last one truely rocked, like AKIRA or GITS still does today.

If you read the Appleseed comic books (and I mean books) then you'll see that they're among the best comics around (imho).

Re:Bad Anime Hall of Fame

Read the manga, from which the anime was derived. Judging Appleseed on the first anime version is like judging Frank Herbert's _Dune_ on David Lynch's 1984 movie.

The challenge that any attempt to realize Appleseed as anime faces is that the manga has a *lot* going on. Global politics, layers of social and racial turmoil, the affects of high technology on society (and vice versa), etc. With such a rich world and story line, creating a compelling version of that story in even one or two movie length features is very difficult.

Last but not least, if you want your notions of superhero comics turned on their head, go pick up one of the graphic novels from Kurt Busiek's _Astro City_ series. Great characters, detailed world, and compelling storytelling. Oh, yeah, and with superheroes. 8-)

Wheres the gong?

Im hoping they include the trust Gong 10-gauge pistol from the original in this one. That thing was bad-ass (Though in reality would result in broken wrists).

direct URLs for trailers

http://www.a-seed.jp/trailer/mov/aps_to-1000.wmv [a-seed.jp]

http://www.a-seed.jp/trailer/mov/apy-1m.wmv [a-seed.jp]

Appleseed official page all in Japanese

Just in case you were hoping to get some information out of it. Head thee to Babelfish first!

Anime good!

DVD release is supposed to be in July, but is this the Japanese release or NA with English subtitles? I would have RTFA, but it's all in Japanese :)

people!

come on people! how come any form of media that involes sci fi elements is ripping off the Gaytrix....the Matrix ripped off so many other things that is stupid to compare to anything.

best quality trailer - quicktime - direct URL

http://www.filerush.com/torrents/appleseed_trailer -anime.mov.torrent [filerush.com]

Exponential Exposition

Way too much exposition, in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s

What series isn't filled with way too much exposition? I mean... Have you ever seen Gundam W?

Enthusiasm or shock?

It's funny how the Japanese appears on the site when you don't have the fonts installed. Looks like a fanboy forum. :)

????1995?????
Ghost in the Shell?????????
???3D????
2004?????????
CG?????? ?

FYI If you're in Japan at the moment

Innocence, the new Ghost In The Shell movie, is playing this weekend:

The Theatrical Release in Japan (English Subtitled Version)

Roppongi Hills -Virgin Cinema-

Released from March 6th 2004 (Late Show Only) LInky [animaxis.com]

OK... a lot of us like anime...

...we get that. But I really want some of you to take a look at this [xmission.com] guy's rant about Anime nerds. He's spot on. Sure, I've got my DVD of Akira, some old VHS tapes with Ghost in the Shell, Armitige, etc... I've enjoyed Totoro, Iria, and the like. I even took Japanese (long before I watched anime with any regularity) because I am into it. But, you wouldn't catch me anywhere talking about the philosophy behind an anime film and how it applies to the real world. I will never get into heated discussions about the balance of good and evil in a cartoon, or come to the defense of my favorite anime character (must admit that I don't have one) when someone else assails them for being a weak person. Get a life people! Oh... and the link I referred to above is hillarious. Check it out. Really.

Bad review

Although the first few minutes owe too much to The Matrix-meets-Avalon

Um, you do realize that Appleseed was conceived long before The Matrix, and The Matrix stole much of its styling from Anime in the first place, right?

the human characters suffer somewhat from traditional anime styling

HAhahah. The next thing you're going to tell me is that film noire is just too dark and brooding. I mean, seriously, "This Anime is too Anime-ish!"

Way too much exposition, in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s

Part of what makes Anime in general and Shirow's work specifically interesting is the utter depth of the universe in which it takes place. I wouldn't put too much stock in this review at all.

SNR

This article's comments have the lowest signal to noise ratio I've seen in a long time.

Does anyone have a link to still shots of the movie? I can't get streaming media through our company's proxy.

Review says it all. - No mention of STORY.

Shirow to the core.

Pretty pictures, pretty girls, and entirely empty. At least The Matrix was filled with something which captured the imagination; was filled with human reactions.

They presented a flow chart to explain the politics in the story? Oh dear. That sounds like an exciting time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Shirow's art and design. I loved the early Appleseed books, (which actually HAD some story and some interesting characters. For a little while, anyway. . .) But honestly! Shirow is clearly trying to make up for some percieved self-lack by pretending that he spends all his true higher thought upon "very clever", "very important," "very adult" political bullshit which, BTW, is none of the above.

Frankly, he isn't fooling anybody, and his shyness at just openly loving the stuff which he clearly loves, (Pretty picture of Pretty girls and Big Technology), without trying to justify it through important sounding horseshit, is the very thing which is going to make people look down upon him.

One should leave the ego alone. It'll take care of itself when you follow the things you love without worrying about how others judge you.

And most interestingly. . . I think Shirow actually likes story and character most of all! --Yes, I know, there's virtually none of either anywhere to be found in his work. But I remember reading an old, old interview where he said that when he was young, he preferred reading girl's manga over the boy's manga. And then he quickly promised that there would be no drama or love in his work, as though that were something shameful.

The guy grew up in Japanese society and he's got a repressed personality? Well, there's a shock!

One of the best insights into human nature I ever heard was this:

"Judge the potential by the inhibition."

I hope Shirow grows up soon. He's spent an entire career so far avoiding himself.

-FL

Can someone please translate?

I bought and loved the Appleseed books back in the early 90s, but I'm not generally an anime person, so the idiot-level questions that I have aren't really covered by this article or the links. Can someone translate into stupid for me?

1) If there's a "world sneak preview," does that mean this will come out in US theaters anytime soon?

2) Will the July DVD release be Japanese only, subtitled, dubbed, what?

In other words, how soon - if ever - can someone who's not that big on watching a movie in just Japanese see it?

Finally, a movie to do the books justice!

This movie looks amazing! Personally I can't wait to see it.

As a 13 year old American kid who read mostly Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, Appleseed struck a chord with me in a way no other manga series had before or since. With a combination of Masamune's amazing art, a complex story, and intriguing characters, this is a comic which was more than the sum of it's parts, and has always deserved a movie that lives up to it's promise, as the origional did not do it justice. Can't wait for the US premier!!

dl the music video (it's tight)

The techno group Boom Boom Satelites are on the soundtrack for this anime and they recently released a music video to promote this with scenes from the anime and some original footage. It is in perfect quality and is probably the best quality video you can see of this on the net. You can download it with bit torrent at this page:

http://bunko.theppn.org/details.php?id=4151

I wonder...

Can't read worth a damn at their website... But.. I know it's a remake.. Did they keep the original characters??

People like Arugess, Brontes, Athena, Nike, Fang Berylbone A10F, Briareos Hecatochires and of course.. Deunan Knute... ;-)

Appleseed Rocks!!

How's the plot?

Aside from the comment about "Way too much exposition," I didn't catch any reference in this review to how the story was- all they talked about was the animation and music. I'm taking this as a bad sign... I've seen lots of anime that had amazing visuals and great music but was painful to watch because of the horrible dialogue/plot.

Technical milestone?

As far as I know (which, I admit, isn't as complete as I'd like), this is the first feature-length movie which renders its human characters completely using cel-shaded CGI [celshader.com]. (The buildings and machines are rendered more realistically using 3-D shading.)

Cel shading is used extensively for humans in some other media, most notably MTV's "Spider-Man" series, but this movie looks like a step up. The more common cel shading becomes, the more I think we can expect traditional animation to fade into a quaint and over-expensive technique. (I wouldn't be surprised if this is already the thinking at Disney's studios, now that they've closed their traditional animation departments.)

Slashdot Editors: Please EDIT

There's no reason why this story needs to be three times bigger than every other story on the front page.

Wrong Company

Saw Apple, Mini, and review, and my brain somehow inferred quite independently of actually reading that Appleseed was a new video player device from Apple. After having read the actual post and visited the website, I have to say that an Apple video player was a heck of a lot more exciting, although it would probably really be named iSeed if it were truly an Apple product.

Oh well.

Europe?

And I'm guessing us Englanders won't get this (or Innocence) until at least christmas, if it's deemed wothy of being taken here at all...

England - the Debian-Stable of anime...

"turn up the sub-woofer?"

"turn up the sub-woofer?"

What the hell? That eliminates any pretense of accuracy. I suppose a lot of people gladly trade accuracy for something that's just loud and boomy.

Oh well.

This looks great but...

When will these GREAT animators STOP making the eyes so damn big?

The rest of the animation is mindblowingly superb but the noses, eyes and faces are pretty disturbing.

If a woman had eyes and an iris that big, she could star as ET's sister.

Another appleseed?

About time someone did Appleseed AGAIN. The first effort was not so good, I didn't like it at all. It's very, very difficult to pull off Shirow's style in animation, you would almost need him to draw every 10th frame to get it right. I was just thinking yesterday that if someone where to animate Appleseed , they should use the book's illustrations as a starting point and build it out from there. I don't know why the characters have to be completely redrawn for animation, it seems like it would be less work to use more of the original art. Fans would love it if the characters 'came to life' off the pages instead of being restyled for the screen. In short, too bad Shirow does not have more to do with the artwork when his works are put on screen.

Re:Hmmm

Anyone care to explain what this is all about? I saw "an" Appleseed movie a while ago, I'm guessing this is a sequel or remake? I mean the "review" posted sounds like I walked into some Anime/UK Garage name-dropping contest.

A little help?

Re:Whose got the torrent?

There's a cool association called MPAA (Moviez Pirate Association of America). You may want to google for it and try asking them.

Re:Well for me....

The TV Series of Read or Die is Read or Dream (the T.V.)

Actually, the opening credits state Read or Die the TV. The story, however, is based off of the comic "Read or Dream."

Yes, it's true, I am a nerd

Re:The grammar! Oh, my eyes!

didn't realise slash can't cope with unicode tags for proper punctuation -- it all looked ok in the preview!

Re:I dont get it

Animation: Give me FLCL

SF: Give me Evangelion

Comedy: Give me Excel Saga any day

Drama: Give me Narutaru.

If you only watch the tentacle-monster infested Hentai titles, you will really miss the real beauty of this wonderful genre.

Re:Well for me....

No, it is called Read or Die.

Re:Manga

As a fan of the manga I really wish to see this new Appleseed - the old movie was quite awful.

Half the fun in the old one was all the Engrish [engrish.com]. I think they spelled "Olympus" about 8 different ways in various scenes. Olumpis, Olumpas, Olimpus, etc. I think they finally got it spelled right towards the end of the movie ;-)