The thing I loved most about this one is the way they did the interaction between Briareos and Deunan. The two used to fight together and they were lovers. Briareos almost died in a battle and the only way to save him was to make him into a cyborg. While that is all well and good for fighting, it changes completely the relationship between the two. Both are obviously frustrated with the impossibility of being lovers again while their feelings for each other have not changed much. I think the beauty of this movie is that tension between the two main characters.The story is not really original, but it's coherent. The animation is great and the action sequences are sometimes brilliant. My favorite is the first battle scene.

This certain type of a futuristic sci fi animation is mostly scene from Japanese animation studios and most of them are literally mind blowing. They carry purely creative futuristic settings, technology, action and eye popping details to start with. Though most of the serious sci fi fans will despite the plots in most of them still they are the kind of movies that will keep you engaged for a long time if you are a fan. Appleseed (2004) is one of such wonderful animation movies from Japan and first one of its trilogy. And it's based on the comic book by the creator of Ghost in the Shell (1995).Appleseed follows the earth after the 3rd world war which has almost wiped out the entire economic and social system as we know now. And the world is completely in ruins and several groups keep on fighting for their territories. The war is taken over by high tech machinery and only the bravest fighter's fights in flesh in the front. And in a distant place a Utopian society exists in harmony with humans and human like half machines knows as bioroids. Worrier Deunan is bought in to this peaceful society from the action packed front line to realize that her known to have disappeared boy friend Briareos also lives there and he is also a different kind of half machine half human right now. Deunan starts to wonder what purpose she can serve in this society when she soon realizes that the battle for mankind is far from over.Appleseed has simply jaw dropping quality animation. It will be the first thing that would grab the viewer from the throat and then the action kicks in. The animation is a mix of 3d and 2d graphics which gives a certain blended beauty. Though this type of action and animation is witnessed earlier Appleseed does it really well. The viewer gets to engulf in a deep and thoughtful plot which reveals with solid explanations to the technology and rational of its existence. If you're watching a subtitled version this section can be a bit tiresome. (I have seeing both subtitled and English dubbed so I know this for a fact). Though the plot is not perfect it is quite good for a war based action sci fi and it's entertaining enough.With limited character development and superficial plot Appleseed has the potential to fail. Yet I feel like it had done a good job in most legs though it is not perfect. As I have now seeing the trilogy in full I certainly admire it more. This is a good start.

Appleseed(2004) Review: This is the new wave. Motion capture is taking storm and it looks good, but beauty is only skin deep.....Appleseed is none too different then the usual cliché. You will notice right away that it's beautiful. The first anime I saw that finally used motion capture instead of animation. No question it looks fantastic, but it's ultimately wasted here due to a flat and cliché story.For example, our hero is the ultimate fighter, has special parents, is significant to our story, and cliché villainy. I would like something original like maybe our hero is a nobody and has no special significance to the story and had worthless or just regular parents and nothing more. The clichés were just too much for me to digest.Also things get a little to over-dramatic as well. The action is good, but not enough. With the use of motion capture and the stunning visuals, I wanted more action.The Last Word: It's worth looking at, but that's it. This is otherwise nothing special. The use of motion capture and the visuals are impressive. I would like to see this art used more often. Hopefully next time, we get a good and original story.

There is no denying that Appleseed is a striking film to look at with its use of cel-shaded 3D characters, but I had expected a lot more from this movie and was disappointed.First the imagery, while stunning, had a lot of problems. For me, the biggest problem with it was that while the characters were cel-shaded, the backgrounds has a pseudo-photo-realistic look and so the characters really felt out of place. I would have felt happier with the look of this film if the backgrounds were more in keeping with what you would expect from animated features, ie, hand-drawn backgrounds.Another problem with the imagery showed up during action scenes. At first I couldn't put my finger on it but eventually I realised that there was no motion blur. The result was fast-moving action was extremely jarring and disorienting to watch. Even a limited amount of motion blue here would have helped greatly.However, for me the biggest failing was in the execution of the story. Exposition was handled extremely sloppily in my opinion, with vast amounts of information being reeled off in a couple of scenes that threw off the pacing of the whole movie and were just plain boring to watch. I think the story might have flowed better if the same information was given to us in smaller chunks distributed more evenly throughout the film. The fact that the plot relied heavily on things that sounded like unbelievable pseudo-scientific hand-waving didn't help matters much either.All in all, I'd say go see it for the remarkable CG work, but don't build up expectations of this being a great movie, because it isn't. I couldn't recommend that you buy the DVD of this either, because the bonus material is all in Japanese with only subtitles. An English soundtrack would have made all the difference here.