Appleseed

A good anime and faithful (loyal, adequate) to the manga.

This animate movie, from the manga of Masamume Shirow "Appleseed", remains faithful. It includes the design, the characters and theirs characters, the tone and his comic, and one of the major story lines of the world of "Appleseed" are developed . Namely, through the city Olympus, the new world created for humans after the major global conflicts and their management by broods race created to manage and keep safe the humans. This "golden cage", as it's call in the animate movie, poses ethical problems through governance for the human world by non-human entities.

We can be a little unfortunate (disappointed) that the introduction out of the Olympus from the manga, is deliberately set aside to penetrate directly into the film's plot and probably to be consistent with the desired duration. But this shelving (lack) is recovered by a sequence in the film where the role (part) of Hitomi is explained about it.

The action, intrigue and pace (rhythm) of the film is very consistent. It's a very satisfactory achievement for this time and probably his budget.

The soundtrack is unobtrusive (discrete) but perfectly accompanies the action. A good and faithful manga.

The film is short (a little bit more than 1H) with a very good "rythm".

I don't really know about this one. Appleseed is watchable thanks to how appealing anime from this era looks and feels. There are some ideas here that are broadly interesting (not a lot's done with the premise or world; even less than you'd expect in something that's only about an hour long), and all the character designs are really cool. The music's definitely not bad either; the aesthetics are all there, and I think I would've dug this overall if the story had been a bit more interesting. I don't know if it's a good or faithful adaptation of the source material, but I do think that whatever storytelling was on offer here in this anime take on the story, it could've been done better.

Probably worth it for anime die-hards, but otherwise I don't really feel it's super worthwhile.

Based on the manga (comic) of well-known artist Masamune Shirow, this animated feature was a slight disappointment to me.

The story is good, but the animation is merely "OK" while it could/should have been mindblowing. The movie is IMO adequate, but seems somehow flat & uninspired, if you know what I mean. A wasted opportunity, if you consider that another work by Shirow, "Ghost In The Shell", is considered a classic in many respects. It set new standards for Japanese animation, and spawned, among other things, a brilliant series called "GiTS: Stand Alone Complex".

I consider this worth a rental, unless you're a fan of Shirow and want it all. Do check out the original manga, which comes highly recommended.

Appleseed is an anime based on Masamune Shirows manga of the same name before he became famous with Ghost in the Shell in the mid nineties. Being released just before Akira it got unfavorably compared with the latter and could never hope to reach the bar that was set so high by Katsuhiro Otomo's creation.

This is in fact the first installment of the Appleseed franchise although there is a gap of 16 years between this OVA and the 2004 movie.

Although this 1 hour OVA never covers the entire manga, in terms of plot and story it still does a good job albeit the story being kept rather simple. Nevertheless the philosophical and political tropes of Shirow are well dealt with albeit not so deep as in Ghost in the Shell or in the two later Appleseed-installments.

Animation-wise it is clearly a product of an era before Akira gave anime that huge boost.

If you like cyberpunk anime from the 1980s and early nineties and if you enjoyed Shirows earlier work from the same era, like Black Magic M-66 (1987) or Dominion Tank Police (1988), then you will surely like Appleseed the OVA.

Just finished watching the new restoration of Appleseed, which is sourced from the original camera negative for the first time ever -all previous versions were sourced from inferior video tape elements- and I have to say I'm impressed.

The backgrounds are true pieces of anime art, and they pop like never before. The quirky character designs, the robots, and especially all the vehicles look gorgeous!

Aside from the anticlimactic ending, my second viewing experience, especially with the comparatively low key original Japanese dub, has elevated the original Appleseed for me as one of the best OVA to come out of 1980s Japan.