Review of Appleseed: Ex Machina (2007) by Keith T — 02 Aug 2008

Another Appleseed reboot, this time with John Woo producing, complete with doves!

It's coming pretty soon after the last Appleseed movie, which did a great job of updating things and looked incredible to boot so there's obviously been a focus on pushing the visuals even further this time. It's all CG this time, and the action is absolutely stunning (well, it is Woo), incredibly stylish and breathtaking to watch. The plot on the other hand isn't quite as hot. The original Appleseed plots were pretty complex, something that the previous films have done a great job with, but it seems things have been dumbed down somewhat here. It's far more of an identikit anime plot, and while the romance seems to have been pushed to the forefront in order to increase the emotional immediacy it worked a little better then it was bubbling under the surface.

It's hard to fault the the animation, as it's absolutely faultless, but being so slick it doesn't quite have the warmth of the earlier films, and can veer to close to plasticky videogame territory at times.

All these minor gripes are forgotten when the action kicks in though, these are some of the best action scenes ever seen in anime, and at those times you forget any criticisms and just enjoy the eye candy.