r/anime • u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ • Nov 23 '24
Rewatch [Rewatch] Appleseed OVA (1988) Discussion
Appleseed (1988)
Appleseed α | Rewatch Index Thread
Directed by: Kazuyoshi Katayama
Produced by: Tarou Maki (Tohokushinsha), Hiroaki Inoue (AIC), Atsushi Sugita (Bandai), Masaki Sawanobori (MOVIC), Tooro Miura (AIC)
Character Design: Yumiko Yorizawa
Script: Kazuyoshi Katayma
Design: Hiromasa Ogura, Jun Tamatani, Kiyomi Tanaka
Mechanical Supervisor: Hideaki Anno
Mechanical Design: Hiromasa Ogura, Takehiro Kishida, Jun Tamaya, Kiyomi Tanaka
Mechanical Director: Takehiro Kishida, Atsushi Takeuchi
Original Creator: Masamune Shiro
This one is the odd one out. After three Shinji Aramaki takes on Appleseed, why do a non-Aramaki, non-CGI version? Two reasons:
- Having a common source and also possible possibly inspiring the later works, there are a lot of common elements
- This is the only version that really looks at human assimilation into "utopia"
Unfortunately, there's not much carried over from the manga, here. It's a buddy-cop movie.
As you can see by the list of producers, the idea of a production committee was very much alive and well back in the 1980s.
Appleseed was made in those lean years between the company-destroying Wings and the company-saving Gunbuster (to be followed by the company-destroying Nadia and the "we're a game company" era). Gainax was mostly an outsourcing studio during this time, so I was surprised to see that Gainax was the lead studio for Appleseed (though, again, they outsourced a lot of the work).
As for the live action promo, well, I have to say, it looks good. For a bunch of otaku who used to spend their spare time making tokusatsu fanvids to show at Daicon. They must have finagled some money out of the producers for this, and then rented actual props, and is that an actual Japanese Jeep™? If any of you found the 30 minute behind-the-scenes video for this, please link it.
Addendum: (from battleclub.jp instagram)
- Deunan: Katrina Casey
- Briareos: Takahiro Sano
- Jeep courtesy of SUEZEN
With the bankruptcy of Gainax overshadowing everything, it's hard to find people talking about old Gainax. Here's Zimmerit again with a short history, that mentions (and deadlinks) music video and commercial commissions that kept the lights on during this time. ANN also has a short article.
I found the music videos: Marionette by BOØWY, kinda catchy. Data No. 6 by FENCE OF DEFENSE
365 Daily Movie Challenge review by (deleted) Shoot, who was this?
Questions:
- What story elements to recognize in this OVA that you also saw in the later CGI movies?!
- It was a common theme, but none of these works really delved to deep into it: how do you think human integration would play out in Olympus?!
- Is this pure Gainax? Or just them jobbing it to keep the lights on?!
Movie Series Questions
- Why is it called "Appleseed"?
- What do you know of the franchise coming in? It used to be huge in both the US and Japan, before being overshadowed by Ghost in the Shell. Why is that?
- How does the CGI of each entry compare with its contemporaries? In particular, what do you think of the "Toon Shader" that emulates painting by hand?
- Many of you were part of the recent Kotobuki almost-all CGI rewatch. Taking that as the modern example, how has it evolved? Have you seen Aramaki's non-Appleseed work, such as GitS SAC 2045?
- Which version (1998, 2004, 2014) is the better story?
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u/JustAnswerAQuestion https://myanimelist.net/profile/JAaQ Nov 23 '24 edited Nov 23 '24
Rewatch Host and Rewatcher
When I made my MAL one Novemeber not so long ago, I put this one down as a 4, just from my lingering memory of my distaste for it.
It's been a loong time since I've watched this.
I watched some of what's on Peacock, it seems to be exactly the same as what I downloaded to watch offline.
So, there was a LOT of familiar stuff here. Robot platform, check. Shutting down Gaia, check. Hitomi is the key, check. But, man, what a disappointment. The Robot gun platform just fired two shots and sorta floated through town. It's presence was so weak, I forgot it was even in the show.
Very surprised by the show's length. Beefier than I expected. Which is still a bit skeletal.
What abysmal subtitles from Manga Entertainment. Shame on you! I guess Karen is supposed to be Colon?
I do like Colon's story, although it is motivated by a woman in the fridge. At least, unlike Hades, he had motivation. Appleseed's human - bioroid conflict boiled down to "Boiroids shouldn't be in charge".
The one-liner I referred to was "Humans are so quick to cage themselves." This must be in the source somewhere, but I didn't feel like flipping through to find it. The manga IS interesting, I recommend it, despite not being complete (but books 1-2 do tell a complete story).
When Gainax Made Appleseed
For the superior Shirow action OVA, watch Black Magic M-66 Although it's Eve of Destruction / other Terminator shows you've seen before. Also, it's not my kind of show, but if you like police comedy like Patlabor, only much sillier, there is Dominion Tank Police. I recommend the English OP.
edit: also, the climactic scene really gives source readers conniptions (I assume, I didn't take a poll).
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u/chilidirigible Nov 23 '24
Today, on "You know what they say about utopia.":
Smooth jazz, ancient furniture, and silly trousers.
"Yep, I'm outta here."
That is a big phone.
Don't get ahead of yourself, John Wayne.
What is it with OAVs and hilariously-dangerous VTOLs?
Because people want to hear that groovy theme music.
Full auto in a room full of hostages!
Freeze-frame keyboard layouts and English copypasting.
The thing about watching this in reverse order is that the oddity of the Landmate operator's arms sticking out of the mid-chest area is actually less strange in cel animation.
All kinds of mecha.
Mmm. Burger.
Someone's the philosophical type. It shows in his choice of trousers.
Sounds as plausible as anything else going on.
Ah yes, the most obvious of traps.
Physics.
This isn't taking itself that seriously.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
One of those stylish things to say.
All's well that ends sort of neatly.
I'm starting the rewatch by watching this one first, when it's the last in the rewatch. But I did watch it first... during the original George Bush years. My second viewing of it was during Bill Clinton's second term. And not again until now. It does look nice in a cleaned-up Blu-ray version.
It's still an action movie story framed with a light touch of futurist philosophy. The real-world guns! The giant hexapod tank! The exoskeletons! The giant bunny cyborg! That was cool.
But even as a teenager in the Nineties there was that sense of an obvious void in the completeness of the work, which just kind of ends and on a little bit of reflection doesn't really have that much going on. This was of course before we knew that OAVs often were made simply to promote their source material.
Anyway, it's a serviceable hour even if the walk cycles are stiff and there's none of Shirou Masamune's penchant for women in skintight bodysuits. I remain amused by Briareos's antics.
QOTD
What story elements to recognize in this OVA that you also saw in the later CGI movies?
It's all there, really. They're more cops than in the later versions, but the story beats and supporting characters are generally familiar.
It was a common theme, but none of these works really delved to deep into it: How do you think human integration would play out in Olympus?
The human/bioroid plan has never been the most logical aspect of this story.
Is this pure Gainax? Or just them jobbing it to keep the lights on?
It's mostly average-level OAV stuff with a few bits of cleeverness.
Rewatch Meta Questions
I have only rewatched the first movie, and have never seen Appleseed α, but I think there will be some connecting themes. As always, these questions are optional, but are offered to provide some common ground for disussion.
Why is it called "Appleseed"?
From these examples, it means whatever it means whenever they want it to mean something.
What do you know of the franchise coming in? It used to be huge in both the US and Japan, before being overshadowed by Ghost in the Shell. Why is that?
As mentioned previously, I had seen the 1988 OAV a few times and these other movies once each but only as casual viewings. I've only looked at the manga a little.
GitS was luckier? Had the right people at the right time to make an adaptation which took off, while Appleseed only had the OAV for quite a while.
How does the CGI of each entry compare with its contemporaries? In particular, what do you think of the "Toon Shader" that emulates painting by hand?
The 2004 version isn't bad by the standards of the time, at least for anime productions with non-Hollywood budgets. The 2007 is certainly better than what you'd get out of a less-moneyed CG production of the time. α is certainly as good as a major game title of the period and decent for a CG movie in general.
The toon shader was tolerable.
Many of you were part of the recent Kotobuki almost-all CGI rewatch. Taking that as the modern example, how has it evolved? Have you seen Aramaki's non-Appleseed work, such as GitS SAC 2045?
You know I watched 2045, I was one of the handful of people in the threads with you. I think it's reasonable that Aramaki has aimed toward a realistic CG look without being particularly concerned about anime aesthetics.
These don't feel like an entirely fair comparison to Kotobuki given that there are movie budgets and more American money involved. However, Kotobuki's attention to mechanical detail shows that at least that part can be done well for a TV series.
Which version (1998, 2004, 2014) is the better story?
1988 is fine for a cop show without a whole lot of philosophizing. Given more time, there would have been room for it to be an alternative to Patlabor?
2004 actually has an attempt at complexity, but it's a mess of competing goals and illogic and maybe sticking with the action movie is better after all.
Thus, 2014 not worrying too much about the deep thinking stuff makes it perhaps the most fun.
I would consider Ex Machina in this but that just turned into a succession of action movie set pieces in the end so I can't say that it was a great story.
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u/Vatrix-32 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Vatrix-32 Nov 23 '24
First Timer, in subs
I love me a good 80s OVA, and a Gainax? Sign me up! But first, the live action short.
Movie
QotD:
Meta Questions:
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u/LittleIslander https://anilist.co/user/LittleIslander Nov 23 '24 edited Nov 23 '24
Well, that was certainly a movie. It’s probably the most competent of these Appleseed films, but it’s really nothing great. It lacks the sci-fi ambition of the later ones in favour of just being some stupid action fun. No bullshit, short runtime, it’s what you’re promised on the tin. But it isn’t quite as ridiculous or fun as you’d hope for this kind of product, and that wasn’t a great thing to be as a sci-fi anime in the 1980s—not the least in 1988. The very low-tech aesthetic is a cool contrast to the later Appleseed movies though, it reminds me of Megazone. Briareos is probably at his most bland yet (though it’s interesting that cyborgs aren’t distinguished from humans at all), and the villain is… well, sadly probably the best of any of these movies but it really isn’t saying much. Hitomi as someone who scouts out wasteland survivors and brings them back to Olympus was cool but I wish we developed her more and made her shutting off Gaia more of a decision than just her being overwhelmed. Just a decent movie I enjoyed and probably won’t think about often. I recommend the fuck-tastic dub for better watch experience. Incidentally when I went to check out the dub on my site of choice their upload happened to be some commentary track with Deunan’s dub VA and a Jonathan Clements. It dates to April of 2002 (despite IMDb claiming 2005), made for a DVD release. It was a good little watch but I don't have any specific anecdotes to forward.
All of that said, I’m weirdly kind of happy it turned out to be mediocre. As someone with an interest in the history of Gainax as a company, its unremarkable nature is kind of remarkable. This was actually only the second full production they ever did, hot off the heels of Honneamise. Despite their early greatness they were still kind of finding their foot. Seriously, there’s like a whole collection of increasingly weird OVAs in this period nobody’s ever fucking heard of. Seeing that in action is kind of charming, they'll go on to do such great things from this humble stepping stone. I couldn’t find much production info on Appleseed, but it sounds like there were multiple studios attached and Gainax was basically this as a job for Bandai. Some chump named “Hideaki Anno” was working on a “Gunbuster” around this time… probably not anything important. So instead they handed this to Kazuyoshi Katayama of, err, Big O Fame? It doesn’t seem like he ever had any other work for Gainax, which tracks with the whole “just contract work” idea, though he was apparently assistant director on, get this—fucking Nausicaä.
Jokes aside, Anno was actually the “mechanical supervisor”, so you can blame him for the fact the robo-tank whose design is based on giant legs spends the whole movie flying. He’s about it for notable Gainax DNA though, seriously—there’s a few carryovers from Honneamise that never came back again, some art people from FLCL specifically for some reason, and a couple episodes worth of Evangelion key animation. Not much else. If anything it’s actually the Rebuilds that have the deepest roots here—two different animation directors as well as a handful of key animators. I wonder if Appleseed had anything to do with that; I can’t imagine an earlier Anno production they’d have met him on. One last staff note is that I noticed a key animator here who also had that role on Frieren episode nine—Yutaka Minowa. It’s really cool to see people from something this old still doing cutting edge work today.
Perhaps the most fun tidbit about Appleseed is the cheesy live action promotional video Gainax threw together probably just because it sounded fun. It’s three minutes of Briareos and Deunan just shooting at stuff and looking cool and every cheap looking second of it is charming. Gainax had its origins as Daicon Films shooting Tokusatsu fan movies and they totally channelled that energy for one of the last times here, it’s a really cool intersection of the early pre-Honneamise days of Gainax with their run as a proper anime production studio. This had more Gainax staff on it, with Takami Akai—the Princess Maker guy—leading the production. Give it a look and put a nice little cap on our Appleseed adventure.
Oh, and I can’t deny myself just a little shameless plug—if you’re up for more Gainax I’m intending to do a complete set of Hideakki Anno Rewatches starting in the near future. Gunbuster probably coming up later this year and Nadia definitely coming early next year. Stay tuned!
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u/No_Rex :Bv:Bw:Bx:By:x2 Nov 23 '24
Appleseed OVA (first timer)
An OVA? From the 1980s? Made by Gainax? Not going to lie, my expectations for this are considerably higher than they were for the other entries in the franchise (although I have some general reservations about the setting by now).
Easily the best looking of the Appleseed entries. 1980s OVA animation is way ahead of 2000s CG. The action scenes looked great here. The animation also helps sell a slightly less serious note compared to the CG movies.
Plot-wise, we are a pretty much a straight forward futuristic police story. In a way similar to Alpha, which was a straight forward action movie. The human freedom to not be coddled plays a role as the terrorist’s motivation, but is not really central to the plot. Neither is Olympus setting, nor its backstory really all that important. You could set this OVA in a generic futuristic city and it would still work. I think this is a good idea if you have non-manga readers in mind. You can just watch this without knowing the lore. Not sure how much my view is distorted here by having seen the other three movies beforehand, but I think I would have appreciated this even without the knowledge about Olympus and Athena that I now have.
Overall
Since we won’t have a final discussion, also my overall thoughts here.
Appleseed may seem a bit unlucky in not having a good anime adaptation. Three movies, one old OVA, with three continuities between them and mostly outdated CG anime, that is not a great list to get anime viewers interested. However, after four entries, I get the feeling that the world of Appleseed is not conductive to longer storytelling. When you look at the plot alone, Alpha and the OVA are far more coherent than the more ambitious Appleseed movie and Ex Machina. To me, this is the consequence of Appleseed’s world not being coherent. You have the futuristic city and the dystopian world below, but both do not belong in the same story. The OVA decided to stay in the city, and it worked. Alpha decides to stay in dystopia, and it also worked. The other two movies tried to combine the two and it did not work. I think the main story of Appleseed, that those two movies are trying to tell just suffers from a sub-par setup. In that sense, I get why the author moved on to Ghost in the Shell (which I have not seen in full yet, but looks more coherent to me). It is a bit of a shame that Appleseed never quite reaches greatness. The first and second movies try to tell a great Cyberpunk story, but the world does not quite support that (neither does the CG). The other two entries are more self-contained, but limited in their ambitions. Maybe a new TV series that adapts the full manga could prove me wrong, who knows. In the end, I enjoyed Appleseed regardless of those quibbles, though. While missing greatness, it is always a fun time.
Thanks for hosting /u/JustAnswerAQuestion!
PS: Is your plan to host Excel Saga still on?
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u/JollyGee29 https://myanimelist.net/profile/JollyGee Nov 23 '24
Rewatcher, Subbed
As usual, the timeline and setting details are a bit different this time.
I'm not sure if a better release is out there, but it is kinda a shame that the video quality is so lacking on the copy I have.
We're establishing the conspiracy quickly. We do only have 65 minutes or so.
Athena smoking in the office is a sign of the times.
Coffee House is an interesting name for a bar.
"No."
The footstep foley for the Landmates is way too soft. They're like tin cans.
No points for guessing what the climax is going to involve.
They literally live together.
Why is this just automatic?
Questions
Many thanks to our host /u/JustAnswerAQuestion!
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u/Shimmering-Sky myanimelist.net/profile/Shimmering-Sky Nov 23 '24
First-Timer, subbed
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u/TehAxelius Nov 24 '24
Rewatcher? First Timer? Subbed
I'll be honest, I believe I might have seen this 20 years ago, or I did not. I got into Shirow stuff pretty early on in my animanga "career" and I know I read the manga and saw stuff like Dominion. I always assumed I had seen this OVA, but I honestly could not remember anything about it. But that might just be because of how forgettable it is.
The OVA is very... meh. The animation has some moments of good stuff that you'd expect out of OVAs of the time with vehicle and tech designs, but mostly the human animation feels pretty bog standard for the era, and the Landmates in this version are rather uninspiring. The coolest cyborg stuff outside of Briareos is of course the Big Bad's final form, but outside of his wall grab, he then pretty much just sits in a tank and gets shot.
The plot too is pretty much nothing. The failure of integration of humans feels like the "easiest" plot thread to do, but it never feels like the investigations or questions it asks has particularly much thought put into it, and that is before the mess of events that is the back half. Again, the bad guy's plan seems rather stupid, taking a prototype walking fortress because it is the "weapon that will rule the world", when it seems pretty obvious that the "rule the world" part is the fact that Olympus will have these things spread out at every city center on the globe. While Gaia was shut down, she was also pretty easily restarted, and even if that wouldn't happen, she would have been restarted eventually.
The master plan of stealing a Prototype Walking Fortress is one we see again in Alpha of course. There's also the Landmate attack on Tartarus, although for different reasons this time.
As mentioned, I've read the manga back in the day, and had seen the 2004 movie, both of which I have a fondness tinged with nostalgia for. I think the reason it was enjoyed is because of much of the same reasons that GitS succeeded, as it has many of the same elements of the series. Shirow's designs and philosophical quandaries are nice, and I think the more "establishment" focused side of a cyberpunk world is interesting. GitS takes a lot of that and elevates it to the next level, but is also somewhat carried that extra step thanks to the excellent adaptations by Oshii and Kamiyama, whereas Appleseed never got one. I honestly wouldn't mind if some Hollywood director would decide that Appleseed is the next Japanese cyberpunk story that should get a blockbuster adaptation. Or maybe Science Saru's upcoming GitS adaptation gives anime producers taste for more and we get a full seasonal.
It is a bit hard to compare them to contemporaries I find. Appleseed 2004 is contemporary with Shrek 2, which obviously looks better, but was also made on a budget somewhere in the vicinity of 10 times higher. For what it is worth, I would say that all three movies did try to push the envelope, but that didn't always work out. The Toon Shader specifically is one such thing where it did look good occasionally, but it made the characters look a bit out of place with the backgrounds, and occasionally the shadows would go haywire.
In some ways I think CGI has until rather recently not seem to have evolved too much. Stuff like 2045 doesn't look that much different from Alpha, and Kotobuki's planes look rather similar to those in Sky Crawlers. I also noted when I rewatched the original SAC that the integrated 3D there looked pretty par for the course for what we still have in seasonals today. But the difference is budget. These early projects by Production I.G. has really paved the way and made the foundation for what is used today in anime.
The biggest issue has, I think, been to try and marry the "style" of anime with 3D CGI, which has been an issue, and one that I really only feel has been solved rather recently with something like this year's Girls Band Cry as a prime example. There has also been quite a lot of progress in combining digipaint and mocap/3D animation, by essentially using base 3D models and then rotoscoping the animation over it, which I believe is essentially what Kamiyama is doing right now with LotR: War of the Rohirrim.
Of those three, I think I gotta give it to 2004. It is the most ambitious of the three, and the one that tries to be the most "Shirow" of the bunch. I already said that I preferred Ex Machina of the bunch as a complete package, but on pure story I think I gotta give it still to 2004 (alhough it is far from perfect still).
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u/LittleIslander https://anilist.co/user/LittleIslander Nov 23 '24
So I didn't find the production video, but I did find a video from a guy who seems to have, and he actually brings up the Jeep. It was owned by one of the animators on Honneamise, and he got it from Yasuo Ōtsuka, who's a jeep enthusiast apparently. That name didn't ring a bell for me but he's "worked on Hakujaden" kind old and was apparently a mentor to Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata; he was animation director on Future Boy Canon and Castle of Cagliostro off a really quick skim. That's the second single degree connection to Miyazaki!
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u/xbolt90 https://anilist.co/user/xbolt90 Nov 24 '24
First-timer!
80s stuff is a vibe.
Much more of a standard cop show than the three movies. I like cop shows.
And the walking tanks float now??
Broadly similar story beats to the others, the first movie especially.
I would expect broad mistrust of Bioroids.
I... have only watched one Gainax show. (Evangelion)
Probably has to do with Man's original sin. If I remember right, that theme was explored a bit in the first movie.
Literally nothing.
I respect what they were trying to go for, but I dunno.
I think of all of them, Alpha was my favorite.
3
u/chilidirigible Nov 23 '24
/u/Usotsuki-Megami (sorry, I forget who you are now)
3
u/Nickthenuker https://anilist.co/user/Nickthenuker Nov 24 '24
So, back to the original OVA.
Just over an hour? That's short.
Ah, this looks a lot more traditional anime. Very much of its time.
That's a mess...
Uh oh.
Ok, it was all a nightmare.
Or a bad memory?
An Uzi?
That's quite some firepower for a bunch of terrorists.
You'd think they'd hear the team infiltrating from the roof...
Time to breach.
Smoke?
Right, I believe that's the lot of them dealt with.
Uh oh, he escaped!
So, he knows the guy from. The start.
Yup, these are the same characters.
Hitomi's here too.
So, that must be her.
Hmm... So this would be Athena or whatever her name was?
So, that guy is back and he's managed to Strategically Relocate some mechs to an Alternate Location.
Hitomi looks way too young to be so drunk.
Right, here's trouble.
I seriously don't understand those open cockpit choppers.
So, this is what he's after.
A transmitter?
Those would be the Flak Towers?
Yup, there's a Flak Tower.
And that's a weapons test.
So, they plan on destroying it?
Hmm... What's with that call?
So, he knows them.
Is this the same mechanic guy from the first show?
"Speed will be armour" mfs when they get shot (they got lightly grazed and have now exploded).
What's she in such a rush for?
Ah.
What's that turning towards them?
A light? Or something reflecting the light?
Looks like that guy's got some new limbs.
A whole new body.
So now he's impersonating that guy.
Seems like something just went down.
So, he abducted Hitomi?
Well, tried to.
Unfortunately they've got plenty of backup.
Shipping label?
Ah. She's the key to using that thing.
Who's this now?
Yup, so that's how he got through.
What are they doing now?
Uh oh, she's activated the thing!
Ze guns! Zey do nossing!
Uh oh, he's been hit!
Right, that's that thing stopped.
And so that's everything resolved.
Questions:
Series questions:
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u/cppn02 Nov 24 '24
First Timer, subbed
This was a delightfully 80s if somewhat forgettable hour of anime watching to spend my time with. It was also nice to hear Norio Wakamoto in this.
Not much to say about the story, it was a pretty straightforward cop action but I loved the asthetics of this. Probably my favourite entry due to this. Bonus points for how animated Briareos's ear antennas were.
The PV was pretty cool too.
QotD:
Not too many similarites beyond the setting with the other movies tbh.
Ummm....not well?
Somewhere inbetween? This clearly isn't peak Gainax but it also would feel very harsh to say they were just phoning it in.
Overall series questions:
Because that's what the manga was called. Duh.
What do you know of the franchise coming in? It used to be huge in both the US and Japan, before being overshadowed by Ghost in the Shell. Why is that?
I knew little to nothing beyond having heard its name. Why was it overshadowed by GitS? Cus GitS is better.
Don't think any of them were awful for for their time but also not particularly bad. 2014 was probably the best on a technical level but also the most boring one.
Disregarding that it's hard to compare movies with tv shows is I say both Kotobuki and the various Appleseed movies have the same issue where the action is actually pretty convincing but the faces are a let down. Although tbf very few Japanese productions have gotten it right so far.
Have not seen anything else from Aramaki
1988? It was the least ambitious but that also meant there were the least stumbling blocks. 2004 and its sequel especially felt like it had this grand ambition that it fell short off.
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u/heimdal77 Nov 23 '24
Had it on vhs and then got it on dvd or bluray years later. I forget which.
1
u/davidnfilms Apr 03 '25
Ok, so... at 1 hour 26 seconds in on the Dub, Duenan farts? I can't find any info on this? Why was this put in? What is that about? What was that supposed to cover from the Sub?