Anime film wows all

General Mars

By: Craig Eisenberger

Posted: 1/7/05

I realize that publicly admitting this will reduce my slim chances of getting a date from one millionth of a percent to a percentage based on the weight of an atom ... in metric tons. However I really do not care about that, as I enjoy having my weekends free to sit and watch something wonderful, something amazing, something Japanese - ANIME.

Now, I know what some people are thinking. "Anime. Isn't that cartoons or porn or something like that?" Well to the ignorant out there, anime is a form of art that does utilize drawings to portray a story, but calling it a cartoon is like calling a Tom Clancy novel a storybook with a bunch of pretty pictures.

Still for those of you who enjoy anime, let me tell you that I have witnessed the next evolution in anime and its name is Appleseed.

For those of you who know about it and are jaw-dropped that I was able to see it (as it only came out on DVD in Japan recently and its American release date is set for Jan. 14, 2005) I can only smile. I watched the entire movie with the joy of subtitles, though each of these proved to be a daunting task.

Getting the movie was one thing, but I will not go into details here. We can all take a guess how a college student at Drexel with an uber-fast internet connection does things.

Once I got the movie, I realized one thing. They were all speaking Japenese. Now this normally isn't a problem, but when there are no English words at the bottom, things stop making sense.

Especially when there are all these mechanical things running around, fighting between this chick who looks like something crossed between the dude from Splinter Cell [Sam Fisher] and the chicks from Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. Aside from the sweetness of that, having her wear a sleeveless shirt actually proved useful because in one scene our main character, Deunan, uses a Sharpie to mark her shoulder with X's, indicating the number of enemies that she killed.

The movie also has this bad-ass named Briareos who is basically a person within a mechanical body. Unlike Vader, it's sleek silver instead of black. And he doesn't kill people with his mind, but his bare hands.

The effect of a metallic humanoid crushing a person's skull between their palms is just a freaking amazing thing to witness. And with no mouth, he did it without any expression, which made it all the more cool.

The overall plot of the movie is rather simple and straightforward. Girl has been fighting in a world of war.

Robot-looking suits come and attack her while other robot-looking suits defend her, only to knock her out and take her back to their city, Olympus. If you haven't been paying attention, this is the most obvious hint that the names are based on Greek mythology.

Once in the city the chick learns that the metal dude is someone she once knew, her one-time partner in war and lover. (All I can think of the latter is the sound of a hydraulic pressure and an automated voice saying "Warning - please stand clear. Three feet clearance required.") So after that she gets a tour of the city, attacked by the bad robot-looking things again, and then she meets the seven old dudes who rule the city.

From there she undergoes "training" which is just her looking better than everyone else in ESWAT (their version of the police). She then gets in one of the robot-looking things, and learns to operate it just seconds before an alarm sounds and all hell breaks lose. Doing the only thing a girl can do, she locks, loads, and kicks some ass.

Then there is some plot stuff after that, establishing that the Military, under General Uranus (the name is a joke enough) is against a group of genetically engineered people called Bioroids.

Another "they are evil, kill them" v.s. "let's all get along" archetype, however this one works because it is just a means of going from action sequence to action sequence, which really makes the movie awesome.

I won't reveal too much of the plot to this one, or the ending other than to say it is a good ending, not to be confused by some anime endings that leave the viewer going "What the f....?"

So what do you get when you take one part hot combat chick, a giant robotdude who was once a commando and love interest of aforementioned chick, join them together in a peaceful Utopia that somehow happens to recently have a lot of killing and violence, and give them big robots to get inside, huge guns, the ability to fly and kick more ass than ever though possible? You get my dreamworld ... if only I was a robotdude.

Appleseed is scheduled for release in select cities Jan. 14, 2005. For all you who will have to wait to see it ... you suck, I rule, I am the freaking man. And by the way, [TEXT CUT FOR PLOT SPOILAGE.]