Chalupa’s Movies

This is my first-ever sponsored review. I haven’t done anything like this before. If you’ve never heard of Appleseed: Ex Machina before, you should know it’s an Anime sequel to Appleseed. This film does come from Japan, but the Region 1 DVD release has been dubbed into English. Directing this film is the legendary Shinji Aramaki. I say legendary because this man has been very influential in the world of animation and the drawing of cartoon machines. This guy worked on the drawings and designs of the first Transformers toys, MASK, the Genesis series, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Producing this film is John Woo of action and martial arts fame.

If you know anything about Anime, you know it’s a style of animation from Japan. John Woo happens to be from China. The two of them working together, in a creative manner, is nothing short of amazing due to the long history of being at odds that their two countries have. The fact Woo is involved leads a lot of credibility to the project and puts the film on the radars of many potential fans. Even though Woo is known for his fight scenes, there’s the element of emotion that many miss. The emotion and depth to the characters and story turns a film like this from being just eye-candy into a truly wonderful work of art. You’ll definitely see his influence in scenes where slow motion, creative fighting styles and lots of bullets are used.

The word Anime is really just an abbreviation of the English word animation and has its roots in Japanese Manga. Anime is traditionally hand drawn, but computer animation is becoming more and more common. Having majored in computer science as an undergrad, I know a tiny bit about the work and processing power it takes to make cartoons and animated films. The 3-D animation is this film is nothing short of amazing. Everything looks so realistic from the body movements, facial expressions, fully animated jaws, backgrounds, sceneries and landscapes. The visual aspects of this film are breathtaking.

I haven’t seen the original film, Appleseed, so I may be a little clueless to the story. I think this is a good thing when it comes to a review because I have no pre-conceived notions of what’s happening. Ex Machina takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world. At some point in the past there was a global, non-nuclear war which took out pretty much everything. Olympus is a Utopian-like city where peace and order stand with the help of its elite fighting force, the ESWAT. This isn’t the only city in the world though. There are still other countries and governments. There are also three types of people: humans, cyborgs, and bioroids. I’m going to assume you already know what humans and cyborgs are. Bioroids are clones, genetic copies, of real people made with the best technology available. They also lack some of the bad qualities that seem to contribute to the not-so-great aspects of humanity.

The three main characters are Deunan, a human, Briareos, human turned cyborg, and Tereus, a bioroid that is a copy of Briareos when he was human. I’m sure you’re already imagining the drama between the main trio. Deunan and Briareos were partners back in the day and continued to be after he was severely injured and turned into a cyborg. As far as I can tell, they exist in the original film. In Ex Machina we find ourselves in another classic, Confuscist battle of good versus evil; there are organized terrorist attacks trying to bring down the peace and order of Olympus.

In the midst of peace talks between all the countries and governments of the world, humans and cyborgs are being turned into mindless zombies. These remotely controlled drones are being made to massively attack anything of strategic value in the city. At first it is thought the cyborgs are just susceptible to rogue, controlling frequencies, but humans are being affected too. Are Deunan, Briareos, and Tereus susceptible to this mind control? Will they be able to take down a terrorist mastermind that makes Dr. Octopus look like a distempered man-child? Well, I couldn’t really tell you or I’d be ruining the movie for you.

I highly recommend this film. I think it will be dearly loved by existing Appleseed fans. It is a great addition to the already wonderful Anime genre and there’s enough story, action and drama to keep everyone else wanting to find out what happens next. Rent it or buy it, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

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