Waste of time

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Brilliant and touching

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Before you watch this film, I suggest you read the manga first, or at least get a good idea what it's about, otherwise you'll probably be lost. Though the plot between the original comics and this adaptation differs, the characters and setting stay the same and it's a good start to get an idea of what it's about.Also, another recommendation: watch it in Japanese with the subtitles on if possible. In my time I've heard some pretty bad dubs, but 'Appleseed''s English dub is just appalling.At least in my point of view, this was a very enjoyable film. During action sequences and chatter between characters I laughed and smiled constantly. I don't think there was a point in it where I felt bored, it's pretty entertaining the whole way through.But the main thing I loved was the music and animation style. It really reminds you of old 80s cartoons, and I loved the nostalgia. The music, a kind of synthy, jazzy-type score, was constantly engaging and enlightening. I really loved that too.The story, too, may seem a bit silly, but it had a few interesting twists, and was often engaging too.A lot of other reviews have compared 'Appleseed' to "watching from a weird CCTV camera". I have not got a clue where that criticism has come from, other than a poor quality VHS release. But the DVD version I have looks brilliant, the animation was way above the standard for the time it was made.Fans of the manga will love it like I did, and for anime fans it's a must, but it probably isn't for everyone.Overall: 9.7/10

Pretty decent for his early work and no Kokaku Kidotai without it, and gets an 2 points extra for the easter eggs. For Shirow definitely a rung in the ladder. I am biased as a Shirow fan but this was a big step from Dirty Pair which was what I knew of him. Violent fun with a porno soundtrack! You cannot help but notice that. I know people appreciate him for Ghost in the Shell..but all of the deep spiritual overtones were dealt with in Appleseed. ESWAT killing terrorists, the struggle for humans to stay viable as bioroids phase them out, and Deunan staying thin despite her intake of junk food. Definitely like the characters even the traitor..and I do not know why.

I saw this OAV in the early 90's, mainly because I was such a fan of the original Appleseed manga. Fortunately for me, I decided to rent the video as opposed to buying it. These days, I don't remember a great deal from the OAV, which is probably understandable, since there really isn't much that IS memorable. The things that had attracted me to the manga are simply missing in the OAV. Gone was the manga's overall grittiness, graphic violence, and occasional tinges of humor to keep the story from being too dark and nihilistic. When I watched the OAV, I felt as though I were watching some sort of weird animated security tape The pacing of the story was too slow for my taste, and the characters themselves lacked detail, as they were often were far away from the camera and placed neatly in the center of the frame. And then there's Olympus itself, it just seemed too antiseptic, I didn't get much sense of the city's dark underbelly as I did with the manga.I haven't seen the recent Appleseed movie yet, I can only hope it did the manga justice, this OAV sure didn't.

The animation quality here is decidedly below par IMO, regardless of the age of the OAV. The plot itself makes sense, but the characters don't.This might sound picky, but considering that the city of Olympus is almost exclusively populated by living machines, would YOU feel comfortable there as a human? Would any machine ever emulate human arrogance, short-sightedness and greed quite so effectively? I doubt it. There are some pointers towards this in the movie, but only when the team can be bothered to put them in, by and large the 'bioroids' (or whatever they are) are interchangeable with human characters. Seems sloppy to me.The main characters seem to have some kind of emotional entanglement, though no light is shed on this. Little light is shed on the backstory at all, a great pity. The short length of the film coupled with the focus on mecha and the crime means that we don't see any character depth. The groundwork's all down, yet we're left with no finished product. A cropped version of this OAV would have made a great TV episode, once some character sub-plots had been established.The highlights of this short film are the mecha designs and the action/espionage.The flaws really start to show through once you've had a chance to digest all the goings-on, so I couldn't recommend this for owning, but it's certainly worth a watch or two! Whilst this review is mostly negative, I really do think it's worth your time to watch this, but it's not something to rush out and buy. In a nutshell: A watchable wasted opportunity.