Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Appleseed XIII: Complete Series (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray]



Enjoyable For Sci-Fi Anime Fans But The Story Is Not As Riveting As The Movies Or GITS Series
Obviously anyone who has watched Ghost In The Shell movies or series will see the connection between these two series and while the Appleseed movies were pretty good the series seems to lack that little touch that made those movies much more entertaining to watch. The basic story of the series is also one that while expected is also pretty boringly generic with a lot of sci-fi action drama animes we've seen in the last ten years,you have the villain or villainess who feels that the current government or society is wrong or obsolete and so seeks to rectify this problem with their own ideals on what the proper or perfect lifestyle for humanity should be.

Also the animation is definitely sub par to what you see in the two movies,while I wasn't expecting it to keep up with that level of animation it still would have been nice if they upgraded their animation a little more that what we saw with the series.It's not that the animation is atrocious as you get spoiled on the detail...

Beats NOIR for flashbacks
After having see half the episodes, so far, I have to agree that, while enjoyable, it just doesn't hold up.
Previous to this series, NOIR held the record for the use of flashback scenes. This one blew it out of the water.
The animation wasn't disgraceful; just distracting, especially the teeth. Ovarall, it actually reminds me of the rotoscoping that was used for "A Scanner Darkly".
The characers just don't have the same vibe as before nor do they really reflect the characterization from the manga; except, maybe, Lance and Kotus. I can forgive this because the original characters are pretty complex and it's difficult to portray this in a short form like a video or series. Perhaps the best portrayal of Deunan that I remember is the old cell animated ova.
The writing isn't bad. It should be noted that Appleseed came before GitS, so the material is a little dated to begin with, and the writers are putting their own spin on things. While it's not classic Masamune...

Different... but good.
If you liked the previous releases of Appleseed, you'll _probably_ like this one... but it is a different beast.
The art style more reminiscent of Shirow's actual early comic Manga work, and not the more "polished" CG
work of Appleseed EX Machina.

The story is interesting, but they use some static "art shots" too often, which at times seems to disrupt the
flow of the animation experience itself.

I've been a fan of Appleseed since I read the first Manga back in the 1980s, so on that basis alone, I liked it.

However, the art/story direction is not as polished as in AEX, but overall it does stand on its own.

English voice acting was fine as well.

Worth picking up if you're a fan of the characters and setting.

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