Film: Appleseed

If you like anime or you just like having your visual senses blown away, you'll fucking love this movie. I am a huge dork who never gets laid, and I'm OK with that because it gives me time to watch badass animation and CGI-laden fight sequences involving hot Japanese cartoon characters beating the shit out of things.

Like Ghost in the Shell, the movie explores issues of machine consciousness and technological progress as an extension of human evolution, etc. I just ignore these philisophical implications because the nuances of such a complex discussion are going to get lost in the translation anyway. I prefer to just watch these movies and be blown away by the awesome animation. If I want to have intelligent discourse on the morality of spiritual machines, I'm certainly not going to look to anime for it.

Appleseed uses a lot of really dope CGI. Traditional animation (primarily for the human characters) is used in tandem with CGI in varying resolutions. A lot of the movie resembles the cut-scenes from Final Fantasy X for instance, just to give some perspective.

I love the Japanese.

Apparently all that radiation we gave 'em has crippled their ability to write anything half worth watching, though.

This movie was awesome. I think.

If I want to have intelligent discourse on the morality of spiritual machines, I'm certainly not going to look to anime for it.

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thats a real shame dude... i've always found japanese philosophies presented through anime to be quite remarkably well spelt out. ie, you don't need to be that smart to understand the main principles of the set argument which the plot is derived from. even the animes that i learnt nothing from often provided me with nice methods to use for when teaching others, or even simpler explanations for things than my own.
then there's the almost-unbelievably unique perception i've no other way of being exposed too... see "Grave of the Fireflies"

but yeah visually they fkn pwn too XD

^^By the way, Grave of the Fireflies is easily one of my favorite films.

I saw Appleseed a long time ago when it was my mission to see all anime movies released in the US, back when I was an uber-geek. I remember it being quite awesome, but I haven't seen it in ages.

I don't turn to movies for morality plays, though. I mean, its nice, but I want a little depth in the characters, too. Very rarely do characters in anime ever progress past the point of being set pieces to move the plot along to the end, when the story tells us in no uncertain terms what the "message" is.

I really love ghost in the shell (best thing to watch on a high dose 2c-e trip especially) but I just did not like appleseed at all. It just doesnt have the same political and spiritual context that gits has.While I have liked everything else I have seen by shiro massumoni(sp?), I was just too let down by this one.