What a waste of my time!!!

Best movie of this year hands down!

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

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.

Masamune Shirow's best-selling manga is packed with political, ecological, technical, and literary references and subtexts, but it's also an enjoyable science-fiction adventure. Although this version was made on a limited budget, and is showing its age, it's still worth its shelf space. Gainax, whose artistic success with Royal Space Force: The Wings Of Honneamise (1987) the year before had established their reputation for excellence, made the video adaptation, although the quirky design touches they brought to their own film are absent in Appleseed. Olympus is 1980s Japan with robots, which nicely highlights many of the concerns Shirow is expressing. References to US shows and the classic science-fiction film Blade Runner (1982) are easy to spot.

I saw this OAV in the early 90's, mainly because I was such a fan of the original Appleseed manga. Fortunately for me, I decided to rent the video as opposed to buying it. These days, I don't remember a great deal from the OAV, which is probably understandable, since there really isn't much that IS memorable. The things that had attracted me to the manga are simply missing in the OAV. Gone was the manga's overall grittiness, graphic violence, and occasional tinges of humor to keep the story from being too dark and nihilistic. When I watched the OAV, I felt as though I were watching some sort of weird animated security tape The pacing of the story was too slow for my taste, and the characters themselves lacked detail, as they were often were far away from the camera and placed neatly in the center of the frame. And then there's Olympus itself, it just seemed too antiseptic, I didn't get much sense of the city's dark underbelly as I did with the manga.I haven't seen the recent Appleseed movie yet, I can only hope it did the manga justice, this OAV sure didn't.

This anime is unique on the grounds that it explores more 'science-fact' rather than 'science fiction,' and makes the viewer believe much of what is being viewed is a factual prediction of the future earth.Appleseed, which is based on the 1985 manga of the same name, is set in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of WWIII. A new breed of governemnet and scraped what remains of the world's government to put together an experimental utopia, 'Olypus' suposidly free of the past-world's troubles and strives. Deunan Natt, and Buliareous Heckatonickles are two of the best in the Police Force, and just when they thought they couldn't get more bullets coming their way, they're asigned to takeout a camatose terroist, AJ Sebastian, who's goal it is to destory Olympus. on the gorunds of it 'enslaving' human destiny.Firstly, anyone who watches this can see how cheesy it is, but despite this, theres is alot more to consider about it than meets the eye. For stance, your confussed into believing who is the real bad guy-- the terrorist's moral values outway those of the Police & Government, yet what they're doing is rightly good also.The animation goes from strength to strength, and isn't anything like AKIRA, but it's moderate for 80's B movie OVAs. The mecha design is seemingly bizzare, but factual and controversial. There are also references to make us aware of the physics side of the technolodgy used. One thing which puzzled me about this anime were that there were contious references towards greek mytholodgy, especiallin the characters names.The analogue quality of the film though, doggs the whole thing from start to finish, with poor lighting, and fuzzy AV-recording.All around, it's a highly enjoyable watch, with some laughable scnes in place, if your into anime of cause. ***8/10***