Appleseed
2004 - Japan - Canadian premiere
Japanese language dialogue with English subtitles
Rated 14A (Adult accompaniment if under 14 years of age)
© 2004, Masamune Shirow / Seishinsha / Appleseed Film Partners
All rights reserved
Official Appleseed website:
Japanese
English
Movie trailers (Windows Media):
Japanese only
Presented by Gemini Jetpack
Director
Aramaki Shinji
Based on manga by
Shirow Masamune (Seishinsha)
Production
SORI, APPLESEED Film Committee
Synopsis
The year is 2131. A non-nuclear war has left the Earth barren, and Deunan Knute roams the Badlands,
one of the many soldiers who continue to fight, unaware that the war has ended because the lines of
communications have been cut.
One day, an assault force subdues and captures her for reasons unknown.
She wakes up in a shining city named Olympus to the voice of an old lover who she had thought was dead.
Adding to her confusion, the city of Olympus seems to be a heaven on earth
- an utopia populated by happy and wealthy citizens, in stark contrast to the desolate Badlands. But
she is filled with a sense of disquiet when she discovers that many of the citizens are precision
clones, or Bioroids. Soon she is thrust into events that will force her to judge whether Olympus is
a dream or a nightmare... and she must face her tortured past, overcome the disorienting present, and
battle for the future of humanity.
Reviews
As in many other Japanese anime films, Appleseed is a film with a manga
(Japanese comics) heritage - thus inheriting and bringing to life an enormous background and
fantastic detail. The author
of Appleseed is perhaps the best-loved sci-fi and certainly the most secretive of all living
mangaka (comic book artist) in Japan, with an incredible attention to detail, realism, science
and characters with profound outlooks on humanity. Also well-known for his other sci-fi masterpiece
Koukaku Kidoutai (Ghost in the Shell), Shirow has engineered the new Appleseed film
himself, taking full advantage of current 3DCG technology to, in his own words, "make it possible to
freely move characters and mecha within space." The film is Japan's first completely 3DCG
feature-length film, with cel shaders.
That sense of dynamic motion is what makes the film such a treat to watch, technically speaking.
Adding to that sense is a pulse-pounding soundtrack by artists from around the world, including Boom
Boom Satellites, Paul Oakenfold, Basement Jaxx and Atom.
And have we mentioned the groundbreaking mecha-on-mecha action?
Profile: Director Aramaki Shinji
Aramaki Shinji was born in Fukuoka prefecture, and has concentrated on anime concept creation
and mecha design. In
recent years, he has expanded his purview to include work on 3DCG movies for video games. He has
worked on numerous animated television programs, primarily on mecha design, including Genesis Climber
Mospeada (Fuji Television Network, 1983), Garasaki (TV Tokyo, 1998), Scryed
(TV Tokyo, 2001), and Astro Boy (Fuji Television Network, 2003). His work on Original
Video Animation includes the original story, concept design, mecha design, and direction
for part 3 of the Megazone 23 series, and direction, concept design, and did production design for the
Bubblegum Crisis series.
On the movie front, Shinji did the model design and story boards for the CG special effects scenes
for several movies, including director Ishii Tatsuya's Kappa (1994). He will be teaming up
once again with Sori Fumihiko, the producer of Appleseed. The last project they did together
was Ping Pong (2002), for which Sori Fumihiko was director, while Aramaki did the
storyboards for the ping-pong scenes.
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