Posted on: Friday, January 14, 2005
'Appleseed' has sleek look, a blurry vision
By Kevin Thomas
Los Angeles Times
HOLLYWOOD — Shinji Aramaki's anime "Appleseed," a post-apocalyptic sci-fi action-adventure employing 3-D computer-generated imagery, is dazzling visually but is flattened by corny dialogue better suited to the 1936 "Flash Gordon" serial, a needlessly hard to follow plot and heavy-handed exposition clotted with pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo. These problems reportedly also plagued the Japanese-language version and surely have been exacerbated in this typically stilted English-language version.
"Appleseed" is therefore yet another example of a Japanese anime released in an inferior English-language version. The distributor missed a chance to simplify and clarify the plot through some succinct soundtrack narration and to come up with more sophisticated dialogue and characterization in keeping with the film's imaginative futuristic vision. It's too bad this didn't happen because "Appleseed," based on Shirow Masamune's acclaimed comic-book novel, which was first filmed in 1988, poses a timeless question: "Are humans doomed to destroy themselves because of their inherently violent nature?"
It's 2131 and the world has been so thoroughly ravaged by global warfare that the only remaining oasis of civilization is the vast city-state Olympus, run by a redhead named Athena but governed by a supercomputer called Gaia, which is mediated by a council of seven elders. It seems the survivors of the apocalyptic global war decided that the best way to ensure peace in Olympus was to create a race of clones called bioroids, whose reproductive urges would be suppressed to curb their emotions so that they might be better suited to run the city-state government.
However, the military remains in control of humans who believe, not without justice, that the bioroids, distrustful of the human capacity for violence and destruction, are trying to take over instead of serving them.
"Appleseed's" super warrior heroine Deunan (squeaky voice of Jennifer Proud) is plucked by bioroid Hitomi (voice of Mia Bradley) via an incredible flying machine from a scary skirmish with cyborgs in the ruins of a metropolis.
Speaking of cyborgs, Deunan understandably does not recognize her long-lost lover — and co-rescuer — Briareos (voice of James Lyon) until he begins to speak, for he has become a cyborg himself after suffering the ravages of war.
Deunan learns she has been recruited as a "reinforcement" to protect Olympus, whose serene surface masks a thicket of intrigue and treachery. At 103 minutes, "Appleseed" seems even longer, thanks to its overall murkiness.
