Appleseed

Another video previously released by Manga as a dub, it appears here as a sub release, one of a number that MV is supposed to be releasing on a limited basis.

OK, so who here has never had anything to do with Appleseed? For those that haven't, it is a story by Masamune Shirow (of Dominion and Ghost In The Shell fame), and is based around the life and times of two human "misfits" in a world of "bioroids", namely Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonacles (sp?) who are rescued from the bad lands of a war-torn Earth by a bioroid girl called Hitomi to live in Olympus, a city built out of the ashes of human excesses but with an 80% bioroid population. The easy life was a problem for the pair, so they took up the challenge of life in a SWAT team. That's history (look up the Studio Proteus graphic novels, now published by Dark Horse, for the real poop on Appleseed, including the reason behind the name!)

The video is a cut down version of a couple of stories that appeared in the original. It seems that Deunan and Bri aren't the only ones finding life a problem in Olympus. When a young woman throws herself out of an upper storey window because life offered her no challenge, her husband falls in with a sometime terrorist called A.J. Sebastian who is out to wrest the control of the world from Gaia and the bioroids (no, that is NOT the name of a pop group!) and put it back in the hands of humans. Whatever the cost. This includes killing and blowing things up. After a partially bungled hostage situation, Deunan and Bri sign up for the Special Investigations tour of the sleazier parts of Olympus in search of Sebastian and the identity of the collaborator.

I liked it the first time around and this version, titled by US Renditions, is great too. If you want a good animation, a reasonable plot and lots of action, give this a go.

[4 stars]

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