Went a bit out of sequence, and watched the Appleseed movie (new one). Keeps the co-worker happy, and since the co-worker has a day job and only shows up here on the weekends for the anime, keeping the co-worker happy is quite important. ;p

Also, I find that watching stuff with him present gives me a good perspective on the show other than mine. There are plenty of shows that I enjoy, but he doesn't, especially if we're talking about comedy that relies too much on oddball Japanese references or things like that; at the same time, if an oddball reference crops up, I can generally field it for him. But it keeps the weekend viewing from going TOO otaku-oriented, which is probably a good thing...

Anyway, back before Appleseed had been produced, we got a demo tape of it, and my opinion was that I'd have gladly traded some of my favorite anatomy to have worked on it. Alas, wasn't to be. Review below the fold...
The good:

-Gorgeous animation. The mix of cel-shaded and CG worked very well for me. Superb fluidity. Not everyone's taste - especially in close-ups of some of the characters, the hair looks pretty unnatural, and it's close enough to photorealistic that it's hard to make the mental abstraction, like you do when you're watching anime. But overall, yay.

-AJ liked the way the story played out. I was a little less enthusiastic, being a long-time fan of the manga, but giving him a synopsis of the manga just made him say, "Wow, the anime story sounds a lot simpler and better." Gotta agree there - I don't think they could have done justice to the manga plot, and the original story certainly wasn't too terrible.

The bad:

-If you're a big fan of the manga, massive changes await. Basically a different story altogether. If you're not prepared to roll with it, you'll hate the whole package.

-There's more than a few elements that were preserved from the original because they look really cool, but don't make so much sense in the new story. This includes a couple of scenes from parts of the manga which occur after the Gaia stuff, incidentally. Generally I give these a pass -because- they look cool. But they don't help the story achieve coherence, which...

-is a serious problem with this movie. It's harder to do the kind of "swirling faction fight" storyline in a movie format, given that you only have so much screen time, and...

-too much of that is being used to describe stuff as it is. Lots of explication of Olympus and pontification on the nature of bioroids and stuff while pretty graphics flash by on the screen. Right, okay, you can't get past it with a Shirow story, but at some point the unrelated computer graphics get kind of silly-ish. I don't need swirling pictures of DNA to get the idea, folks. (Kind of reminiscent of the GITS: SSS ending, really.)

The ugly:

-Characterization. There ain't any. Deunan and Bri are acting different - okay, story imperatives - but we don't see them interacting much and so it's hard to get a read on their new characters.

The movie was a success on the "let's do an action flick and make things go boom" level; no complaints there. As far as story goes, not so much, but it's at least enough to hold an action flick together. I think I still have the original OAV in mind (gawd, what a mess that was), and for all the differences, this is a far better adaptation. Then again, a lot of the credit this movie is getting comes purely from the visuals - they're NICE, and so I'm okay with a lot of stuff I wouldn't otherwise be okay with precisely because I'm luxuriating in the animation.

Overall, good, but probably a better rental than a purchase, unless you're the type to enjoy really good animation, or a huge Shirow fan (but not so much that the story changes will set off your jihadi instincts!)

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 05:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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