It's a pretty good show; It's got some pacing problems, though. If you like extremely long shots of Deunan expressing dull surprise, interspersed with a lot of slo-mo, soft-focus flashbacks and/or lovingly slow pans around a complicated piece of monumental sculpture depicting the Labors of Hercules, Appleseed XIII is definitely for you. :)

(Also, from the neck up Deunan looks like she's about 12. I mean, unusually so even for an anime character. And why they decided to go with that design for Briareos I really couldn't tell you. But these are quibbles. :)

Animated adaptations of Appleseed have always been a bit uneven. I just re-watched the 2004 movie and Ex Machina the other day, and so was reminded of what a weirdly mixed bag they are. The 2004 movie gets Deunan's ancestry wrong (her mom's a white lady who does sinister science things? wha?) and has that baffling twist in the middle where you find out that the incomprehensible weapon of mass destruction in the middle of Olympus is actually a different incomprehensible weapon of mass destruction, but it's also got some stonking good action (I adore Deunan's dispatching of Chief Bad Guy Minion) and the animation has held up reasonably well for ten-year-old CG.

Ex Machina (2007) has aged even better visually, the designs are better (that's my favorite version of Deunan and Bri, visually speaking), and while the storyline doesn't have much that's new to say (I can only assume that the world war happened before the Doctor Who episode about the parallel-universe Cybermen would've gotten made in the Appleseed universe :), it is at least not as confusingly arbitrary as the 2004 movie's. It does have the weird subplot where they set Bri up in a romantic rivalry triangle with Deunan and, um, himself, which is... yeah, but to be fair, they did resolve it pretty well. Briareos spends a little too much time clutching at his head and going "UAAAARRGGGHHH" and Deunan spends a little too much time shouting his name with dismay, to the point where both of them start resembling hooks for a drinking game. Still, it's a fun film, and in my opinion the better of the two.

I haven't seen Alpha yet, but I'm a little dubious about what I've heard regarding it. I'm generally not a big fan of prequels, and given that Deunan and Bri spent the time immediately preceding Appleseed grubbing around in the post-apocalyptic part of the world eating 200-year-old Salisbury steak*, well, probably not my cup of tea. We'll see, though. I probably won't be able to leave it unwatched forever, I mean, Deunan and Bri.

--G.
* Obligatory Fallout 3 reference.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
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