Appleseed Ex Machina
an anime movie
Netflix | Amazon
Overall Rating: 5/10
Meets Expectations: -1
Apparent Rating: 4/10
Normally I have a strong opinion about a movie I’ve watched, even if it is a strong “Meh.” type feeling where I don’t care. Appleseed Ex Machina was a really strange viewing experience since I’ve seen the previous one (Appleseed) and had been told over and over that it was great and profound until by the time I actually watched it, I had convinced myself I liked it a lot. So when I watched the new one, I was expecting to like it a lot and have no opinion positive or negative.
On the whole, I think this was a more interesting story, but so little of the story made it onto the screen that it was hard to notice. That was the problem with the previous movie too. What I hate about anime is how they leave out 80% of the story and just show glimpses that might indicate that the characters have actual motivation behind their actions and what those motivations are is left up to the viewer. It means the story is as rich and textured as the viewer’s imagination and if an anime movie seems to suck, there is a strong implication that the viewer is somehow at fault. You get out of watching anime what you put into it.
The idea in this series is there is non-nuclear armageddon and the world chooses to start a special city where the population is part cyborg or android and does not get angry or feel strong emotions. That way all the citizens live in peace and harmony. It supposedly gives hope to the entire world that there is something to strive toward. But what they show on the screen is the population of that special world gets angry and feels strong emotion and there sure seems to be a lot of violence and cheating. So I don’t understand.
In this instance, the government of the special Appleseed city is trying to convince the world that they should have control over all surveillance satellites because the rest of the world is irresponsible. Emperor Palpatine anyone?
The side plot is how the characters who fell in love in the previous movies are being separated by their boss at work.
I guess I didn’t bring my imagination because I don’t care. I don’t believe in the Appleseed project, I think it’s ridiculous to take people who are inhuman and say they represent hope for humanity. I think it’s ridiculous to expect emotionless people to strive toward anything more than monotony— there would certainly not be the level of innovation which would be needed to sustain some sort of seed project. I was surprised that anyone who had lived through armageddon would trust their government at all.
The reviews all say the animation in this was incredible. I thought it was mediocre and they spent way too much time on stuff that was hard and too little time on everything else. The integration between the characters and the CG backgrounds is vastly improved, they no longer look like Colorforms™ who merely float atop their environment. But there were a lot of hair close-ups and not much face-to-face dialogue.
I think I might like this movie, or these movies, more if I could actually see the whole story. Maybe there’s a book version that uses its words to explain the backstory and why things are important.
I did not really like this movie, but I wanted to and I expect if you are an anime fan, that you would have a lot of joy in seeing this, but I’m not sure since there was a love interest and not so much gory fighting with fancy laser blasters.
