Appleseed Saga - Ex Machina

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Director Shinji Aramaki made a significant statement in 2004 via a remake of Appleseed, a direct-to-video anime classic from 1988. The fresh variant presented traditional anime design choices with high-end computer graphics unleashed on the buildup, the first occasion we could witness excessively detailed 2D anime vision claiming and successfully conquering a grateful third dimension.

Appleseed is quite massive of a saga already, as a series of thick graphic novels are accounting the events to take place in Olympos, the utopian city that gravitates this future vision. The tale has it's trademark characters and assumptions, while these new generation animes by Aramaki do sew independent narratives one could intake and enjoy immediately without prior knowledge about this fictional anime universe. The second CG installment is meaner, rawer, and bites tighter than it's predecessor: having the world and it's highly usual melodramatic philosophical issues precisely accounted on via the prior episode, now Olympos and the main characters are to face not just questions, but a blatant threat to endanger the integrity of the utopia.

The Appleseed universe depicts the grimmest future conceivable, in which humanity permanently damaged and desolated almost the entire Planet via generations of warfare, yet managed to establish it's last sanctuary in the form of Olympos, a high-tech bubblecity to feed and live through on and by a rather classic cyber ideal. The reason Olympos is capable to maintain it's functionality is Gaia, a supercomputer which's calculations and recommendations are closely monitored and usually accepted by the brightest elders of the community, though the focal points Gaia is able to rely on are the bioroids, the new species the Appleseed universe introduces.

Bioroids are very reminiscent of humans, yet they are incapable to feel emotions. Wow, how morally intriguing, yes? Some Japanese creators tend to pass quite simplistic, half-dimensional moral judgment on humanity, as all this conclusion to fuel Appleseed of how mankind would be better off without it's emotions does seem more of an effect craver than a truly meritorious fictional input, nevertheless the prior episode could deliver a stupendous eye-candy marathon with but a tolerable amount of a blaming index finger in your face to it. Fortunately though, Ex Machina puts emphasis on totally different aspects, and handles bioroids at their "proper place": transfers them to the supportive department to enrich the narrative, and it does enrich it via cunning possibilities, indeed.



The trademark Appleseed characters are Deunan and Briareos. Beauty and the Beast, though they love each other as brother and sister from the very start. Better yet: you are free to develop your impression that there were times when they maintained even a massively intimate relationship during the endless foams of war, yet, unfortunately: handsome Briareos's ass got like - fried badly during a firefight, - he was saving Deunan if I recall correctly, though if he was not, then this is a definite mistake from the author - and the only way to save him was to install his remaining body assets - absolutely intact psyche included - to a top-level, permanent combat suit, making an actual cyborg of the protagonist. Now Briareos is in a state where feelings of intimate love are very circumstantial to live through for their fullest extents, so Deunan and him are forced to keep their relation as a friendship scheduled for all the times they take part in consensus reality. In the afterlife though - who knows what is to unravel, if an afterlife you would be OK with at all?

As we were hinting at, Ex Machina generally speaks in a more raw and more fluent narrative language, and fortunately lost all intentions whatsoever to entertain you with exquisitely strait moral directives - it is instead recognizes how stable a fictional universe it has at it's disposal to present a clever story in. Yet, even the bioroid aspect is smartly utilized during the story, as Deunan has to face quite a massive bioroid-issue in the buildup. Let us see into this.

Ex Machina develops the fiction in a sane way by informing you briefly that bioroid responsibilities are scheduled to unravel on an even wider scale, thus mass production of elite superforces made up from emotionless biorods could commence to ensure Olympos's defense. Deunan, a peacekeeper herself, is assigned to team up with a prototype bioroid, so she could inform the government if she found the soldier ready to be cloned. The narrative goes for an intriguing turn, as the best soldier the Appleseed universe ever saw was:

You guessed that correctly. It was, and, in fact, still is: Briareos. The bioroid constructed from Briareos's DNA though naturally lacks the damage the originator suffered, thus this artificial creation stands there in full 3D flesh and bone glory, looking 100% as the "yet-human" Briareos, informing Deunan that he is ready to follow directives. Cool design, yes?



- YOU stay the HELL away from me, you hear!
- You got yourself a DEAL.

Times are scarce to face ensuing inner dilemmas, yet by the moments Ex Machina submits to inspect these aspects, it does a super job, and, more importantly: does not OVERDO it. These are the periods in which you have an immense chance to feel for Deunan as her reaction to this wicked situation is totally human and totally disciplined, also a very believable it is.

Crysis hits in out of nowhere: electronic military forces and even human military personnel go insane for short periods of time, causing both casualties and excessive damage in public property. These events are taking place by the time the countries of Olympos are negotiating about the possibilities of the installation of a shared satellite system to monitor the Planet mutually, thus ensuring peace and harmony. And you got that: immense privacy, too.

The Prime Minister of Olympos is a masterful anime character, this female radiates sane, authoritative dignity only her sober decisions and beauty could reach up to, also, the somewhat-sly yet simultaneously extremely strict and honest character of a Poseidon Representative - Poseidon is a huge conglomerate to manufacture military hardware, they would be very happy to produce satellites for some benefits not necessarily of paper origins- is a superbly realized figure, as well. Similarly female, similarly beautiful and well-operated, though in a much more secretive, dare we say: sinister way. All in all, the characters have definite, legit personas, content and agendas to them, a figure palette you are quite ready to watch a nice story unfold through.

Following pleasant anime traditions, you won't leave the Appleseed universe without a terrible secret unraveled, even better: the archenemy of this particular buildup has a very logical, though surely very radical aspirationfoam to fulfill in the name of a transhumanistic ideal. He is a very dangerous character as he possesses a belief system no one could hope to modify, and has the tools at his disposal to realize his ideal of mutual existence. Or, more precisely: "just" existence. Via it's archenemy, Ex Machina offers you a quite legitly presented character who assumes he could be able to invent a much better universe than it's originator, and even has powerful statements and powerful instruments to backup his demands, mind you I though: his words are immensely dangerous only if you ever fall in for them, but they possess weight and posses a massive amount of it, nevertheless. Enough weight to force you to object against his claims via your own defendable prospects. See if you can come up with one.

So, heed his words, and express your own personal answer of why the archenemy stuck in the darkest corners without a flashlight in hand. In case there are not many of us remain to come up with an answer, then his idea could be realized, and probably will be. If you do have an answer, then the mere consensus of finding and possessing one connects us nicely and cleanly all the time, and we certainly should anticipate some more sophisticated forces to form us further later on, by any means they see it fit and useful.



Let me wrap this review of Ex Machina up by assuring you that you won't leave without a good old Boss Fight, either - Shinji Aramaki and his immensely masterful team deliver possibly the most fluent feature film anime to date, one that is superfresh and reigns free both of misplaced melodrama and of the bitter taste in the mouth. Via Ex Machina the Applesseed universe finally accepted itself for what it is, and grew twice as powerful throughout this much welcomed recognition. No matter if you are an anime geek or a huuuge, huge anime geek: missing this one out is a waste of state of the art eye-candy with a very strong story to legitimize a blatantly powerful, superintact presentation foam.



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