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Appleseed World Preview Minireview
darrellberry writes "We went to see the World Sneak Preview of Masamune Shirow's Appleseed at the ICA tonight. Complimentary sake and sushi, a loving but silly flipchart presentation from the producer about the politics of the world in which it is set, then the film. The animation is amazing the rendering of the city of Olympus is beautiful, the battle set-pieces are fluid and very well choreographed, and the fine line betwen genre conventions and attempts at hyper-realism is treated with respect. Although the first few minutes owe too much to The Matrix-meets-Avalon, and in parts (to my eye) the human characters suffer somewhat from traditional anime styling, Appleseed is something genuinely new in animation. Detail everywhere, lovingly rendered. Way too much exposition, in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s, and music supervision that was entirely wrong: it was nice to see Basement Jaxx turning up for the premiere, but their music and that of Oakenfold and the rest on the soundtrack made no sense thematically or emotionally. I can see that they are going for a big international release with Appleseed, but the music is just wrong. On the plus side, the motion capture-based character animation is very convincing, and the Mobile Fortresses out-scale any other city-stomping weapons platform I can remember. And lovely to see anime at a high frame-rate, not jumping in triples. Go see it at a big cinema with decent Dolby when it's on release next month, or get it on DVD (evidently on release in July) and turn up the sub-woofer." I don't know if we linked to the official site in our last story.
its pure eye candy!!!. Last thing i've ever seen like this is ONI FPS game. Cant wait to watch it, although it means i have to wait like 8 months till it gets to Chile. 2 years if you are thinking of a legal copy.
"The quality of life is inversely proportional to the number of keys on your keyring."
I was going to see this movie but since you gave away the frame-rate I might as well stay home.
Anyone got Bittorrents for the Trailer(s)?
I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines.
Sounds like something to check out... but on a side note, PLEASE use the "Read More..." link! That writeup eats an entire page on my browser, I thought the Ruskies dropped the bomb when I first loaded the page.
Actually this movie is a remake BECAUSE the last one was that bad. There would not be an audience if the last one truely rocked, like AKIRA or GITS still does today.
If you read the Appleseed comic books (and I mean books) then you'll see that they're among the best comics around (imho).
With great power comes great electricity bills.
Im hoping they include the trust Gong 10-gauge pistol from the original in this one. That thing was bad-ass (Though in reality would result in broken wrists).
"Hand me the bullet-shooty-thing and a box of little hurts" -Overheard on a USMC Rifle range
http://www.a-seed.jp/trailer/mov/aps_to-1000.wmv
http://www.a-seed.jp/trailer/mov/apy-1m.wmv
come on people! how come any form of media that involes sci fi elements is ripping off the Gaytrix....the Matrix ripped off so many other things that is stupid to compare to anything.
Geneon (aka Pioneer) has the license according to Yahoo! Japan, but no R1 release date is set that I'm aware of.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Way too much exposition, in the style of some Russian epic from the 60s
What series isn't filled with way too much exposition? I mean... Have you ever seen Gundam W?
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
It's funny how the Japanese appears on the site when you don't have the fonts installed. Looks like a fanboy forum. :)
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Ghost in the Shell?????????
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Innocence, the new Ghost In The Shell movie, is playing this weekend:
The Theatrical Release in Japan (English Subtitled Version)
Roppongi Hills -Virgin Cinema-
Released from March 6th 2004 (Late Show Only) LInky
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
...we get that. But I really want some of you to take a look at this guy's rant about Anime nerds. He's spot on. Sure, I've got my DVD of Akira, some old VHS tapes with Ghost in the Shell, Armitige, etc... I've enjoyed Totoro, Iria, and the like. I even took Japanese (long before I watched anime with any regularity) because I am into it. But, you wouldn't catch me anywhere talking about the philosophy behind an anime film and how it applies to the real world. I will never get into heated discussions about the balance of good and evil in a cartoon, or come to the defense of my favorite anime character (must admit that I don't have one) when someone else assails them for being a weak person. Get a life people! Oh... and the link I referred to above is hillarious. Check it out. Really.
Un-news
Read the manga, from which the anime was derived. Judging Appleseed on the first anime version is like judging Frank Herbert's _Dune_ on David Lynch's 1984 movie.
The challenge that any attempt to realize Appleseed as anime faces is that the manga has a *lot* going on. Global politics, layers of social and racial turmoil, the affects of high technology on society (and vice versa), etc. With such a rich world and story line, creating a compelling version of that story in even one or two movie length features is very difficult.
Last but not least, if you want your notions of superhero comics turned on their head, go pick up one of the graphic novels from Kurt Busiek's _Astro City_ series. Great characters, detailed world, and compelling storytelling. Oh, yeah, and with superheroes. 8-)
Pretty pictures, pretty girls, and entirely empty. At least The Matrix was filled with something which captured the imagination; was filled with human reactions.
They presented a flow chart to explain the politics in the story? Oh dear. That sounds like an exciting time.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a fan of Shirow's art and design. I loved the early Appleseed books, (which actually HAD some story and some interesting characters. For a little while, anyway. .
Frankly, he isn't fooling anybody, and his shyness at just openly loving the stuff which he clearly loves, (Pretty picture of Pretty girls and Big Technology), without trying to justify it through important sounding horseshit, is the very thing which is going to make people look down upon him.
One should leave the ego alone. It'll take care of itself when you follow the things you love without worrying about how others judge you.
And most interestingly. . . I think Shirow actually likes story and character most of all! --Yes, I know, there's virtually none of either anywhere to be found in his work. But I remember reading an old, old interview where he said that when he was young, he preferred reading girl's manga over the boy's manga. And then he quickly promised that there would be no drama or love in his work, as though that were something shameful.
The guy grew up in Japanese society and he's got a repressed personality? Well, there's a shock!
One of the best insights into human nature I ever heard was this:
"Judge the potential by the inhibition."
I hope Shirow grows up soon. He's spent an entire career so far avoiding himself.
-FL
Yes, it's true, I am a nerd
-Redundancy Man strikes again!
Actually, I went to go see Spirited Away. I didn't see a single type of the person he mentions. In fact, there were a number of older couples, and a lot of normal teenybopper middle school kids. Plenty of people went to see it here in Boston because it got a great review in the Globe.
The guy has more pent up anger than I've seen in ages. You want a perfect example? How about this. He's mentally ill, complaining about people who go "Hmmmm" while thinking about things, for example- and speaks of murdering women by bashing their heads against walls. A very disturbed and dangerous individual who needs psychological help, much more so than any of the individuals he described.
Please help metamoderate.
Well, definitely true. That's why I really like TV series like GiTS SAC (and SAC op.2), GiTS the movie was pretty short and understanding what's going on was almost impossible unless you knew the story already. To be fair, I found the story in SAC much more gripping, detailed and fascinating. . SAC 2 is going good, so far I watched the first two and they were as interesting as the first series.
There are so many bad anime out there, I can understand who never liked the genre. It is a pretty hard thing to pick the good ones out of the rubbish if you don't know anything about the genre.
Last tip, if you liked GiTS SAC, you might like Paranoid Agent. It is good.
Oni was third-person.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
If you only watch the tentacle-monster infested Hentai titles, you will really miss the real beauty of this wonderful genre.
I'll be the judge of that, thank you very much.
Freedom: "I won't!"
As far as I know (which, I admit, isn't as complete as I'd like), this is the first feature-length movie which renders its human characters completely using cel-shaded CGI. (The buildings and machines are rendered more realistically using 3-D shading.)
Cel shading is used extensively for humans in some other media, most notably MTV's "Spider-Man" series, but this movie looks like a step up. The more common cel shading becomes, the more I think we can expect traditional animation to fade into a quaint and over-expensive technique. (I wouldn't be surprised if this is already the thinking at Disney's studios, now that they've closed their traditional animation departments.)
About time someone did Appleseed AGAIN. The first effort was not so good, I didn't like it at all. It's very, very difficult to pull off Shirow's style in animation, you would almost need him to draw every 10th frame to get it right. I was just thinking yesterday that if someone where to animate Appleseed , they should use the book's illustrations as a starting point and build it out from there. I don't know why the characters have to be completely redrawn for animation, it seems like it would be less work to use more of the original art. Fans would love it if the characters 'came to life' off the pages instead of being restyled for the screen. In short, too bad Shirow does not have more to do with the artwork when his works are put on screen.
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I think the larger question, the one I was attempting to address, was that most sci-fi writers tend to be immature in some sense. Whether this is simply knowing one's market, or a byproduct of focusing too narrowly on one's craft, I couldn't say. As to taking things personally... yeah, you could probably level that criticism at me. But you're not exactly above it yourself, gauging from the tone of your reply.
On the other hand, I think you are absolutely right on several counts. But to deconstruct someone's psyche based on his or her work and some interviews you've read, and then present it as a (rather damning) criticism of the same author ('typical Shirow'; 'needs to grow up') is in many senses extraordinarily flippant. To truly understand someone requires a lot more information than you suggest you have. If you extrapolate to specifics from limited data, it tends to reflect more upon you than your subject. Had you been more upfront about this to begin with...
But you happen to be right about his work deteriorating over time... I didn't enjoy Ghost in the Shell nearly as much as earlier Appleseed, but I think this is partly his loss of touch with more profound, overarching ideas, and not his lack of dramatic flair (which IMO was never particularly good - all his character interaction ever did [well] was serve as exposition or sounding boards for his ideas).
Anyhow, sorry if I hit a nerve.
- Bachelorhood is the father of necessity.