Studio: Warner Bros. Genre: Action •
Scifi •
Animated Street Date: March 11, 2008 Director: Shinji Aramaki Number of Discs: 2 MPAA Rating: PG-13 Cast: Ai Kobayashi, Jûrôta Kosugi, Rica Fukami, Kara Greenberg Running Time: 105 Minutes Format: DVD Specs: Languages: English, Japanese, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Brazilian Portuguese
Subtitles: English SDH, English (from foreign language), Complex Chinese, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean
Presented in 16X9 Full Frame Format Special Features: •“Team-Up: John Woo and Shinji Aramaki” (Documentary featurette) – The story of two top talents, John Woo, lauded live-action filmmaker, and Shinji Aramaki, acclaimed animation director, working in tandem to launch a shared vision for Appleseed:Ex Machina.
•“Revolution: Animating Ex Machina” (Documentary featurette) – A team of revolutionary animators introduce a new technology to the trade, while facing the challenge to balance frenetic action and slick, sci-fi visuals with real emotion and humanity.
•“Audio Commentary” – An audio-only commentary featuring producer Joe Chou and renowned anime expert Jerry Beck (Behind the Tunes).
The 2 disc Limited Edition DVD Collector Set will feature even more incredible extras include:
•“Shirow’s Journey: The Appleseed Chronicles” - (Documentary featurette) –. From manga to anime, this is the definitive Appleseed history that doubles as a testament to the legendary writer/artist Shirow Masamune and the complex world he created in this vision of the future.
•“Appleseed Ex Machina: East Meets West” (Documentary featurette) - Examining the anime phenomenon from the perspectives of both the Eastern and Western cultures, while exploring the similarities and differences in the ways that fans enjoy the art form. Version: Standard/Blu-Ray Store Exclusives: None So Far, one can only hope. Review: Anime is a tough love genre, when it's great it's just amazing, when it's bad it's amazingly bad. Sci Fi and Horror are pretty hit and miss but not nearly as much as Anime can be.
That said when you find something that's just mind blowing you tend to once again have hope that the rest of the filmmakers will follow suit and step up their game. I'm happy to report that Appleseed Ex Machina is one of those bar raising films!
With a nice blending of anime and CGI it tells a much broader story this time out and really just packs a punch in the action department. On Blu-Ray it’s only just that more impressive.
Not only does this one dive deeper into the relationship between Deunan and Brialeos, as well as Brialeos back story it pulls in common theme’s and moments from dozens of other Sci Fi and Horror flicks. Normally this could be a bad thing but the usage here is kept on target and just adds to the conflict. Seriously this thing has everything from some familiar looking swarming robots (ala The Matrix) to Zombie like hordes on the move (pick a zombie movie). The story does have a sort thin commentary on how our society is a little too plugged into technology but it drives the story so it’s fine.
Masamune Shirow has had some major bull’s-eyes and I’m sure this would have been another notch in the gun belt but they added John Woo into the mix and holy crap they knocked this sucker up a notch on top of it. So expect to see some classic Masamune Shirow moments melded with Woo’s gun play and action standards. WOO HOO!!
If you enjoy Anime know you are safe picking this one up, if you need a good intro to the world of Anime this is a good place to start. Buy It Now: Rating:
