Appleseed (1988), spoilers

Appleseed was pretty nice. I saw this about ten years ago, so I had a vauge idea of what it was about, but forgot a lot of the key points.

As a cyberpunk cop anime, this one is pretty laid back. Although there's LOTS of action, the pacing feels somewhat slow. Not to it's detriment though, it almost feels dreamlike in some parts. The story is simple, but effective. The animation is pretty good when it counts, but I can't say it super stands out when compared to other stuff from this era. There's about as much chill jazz and funk as there is fast intense rock music, and for a film that's basically an hour long, that stands out. I quite like the dub for this, even though it's weirdly verbose at times. Despite this, I'm a fraid to say that Appleseed does not leave that strong of an impression. And that's a lot coming from Gainax, most of the other shows I've seen of theirs really stood out to me (Gurren Lagann, EVA, FLCL, Gunbuster, Panty & Stocking, Daicon...).

You'll probably like it better than Flying Ghost Ship if I'm being honest since it's a lot grittier and kinda funnier too, but yeah idk it didn't leave as strong of an impression as Ghost Ship did. I feel like Appleseed is slightly more rewatchable than Ghost Ship is too (ghost ship starts to feel a little boring while they're on the ship in the last quarter) whereas appleseed keeps the same pace throughout.

If I thought so highly of this show, where's my enthusiasm? Eh, I guess I'm as enthusiastic as I felt after I finished it. I've seen a dozen of these cyberpunk cop shows by now, and being that this is one of the earlier entries in the subgenre, there's not much about this that differentiates it other than the goofy dub. I'm sure the estute meme lord could pull some funny clips from this.

Stuff that stood out:

• The soundtrack is quite good, I liked every single track
• Athena
• I really dig the diversity of cyborgs in this show. Briareos's head looks like an iphone camera with rabbit ears (the ears are really cute btw).
• Sebastian walking out to take a piss made me think he knew he was gonna get smoked if he stayed behind
• The part where the cops pulled guns on each other and then the guy tried to play it off was really funny
• Briareos' voice is nice. In fact, all the voices are nice. Edgy 80s anime dubbing ftw.
• It's easy to see why one of the antagonist was swayed by the terrorist faction, but that didn't make him any more interesting. He was kinda just some guy with ideals and a few friends. I think this movie probably needs a bit more soul.

Should you watch it? Yeah, you should watch it. It's simplicity is a plus honestly, don't let my jaded tone fool you. It's fun. I only compared it to Ghost Ship since it's the last anime I saw in full. Don't expect to be blown away by Appleseed though, come in with no expectations and I think you'll enjoy yourself.

I'll probably check out the other works in this series at some point.