I sure as hell wasn't expecting what I saw. Anime Nirvana. I'm going to have to watch it again and in English this time so that I can really absorb the beautiful imagery. It's a 3D cell-shaded modeling anime. The colors are simply unsurpassable stunning and fleshy, the motion capture is beautifully perfect (No arms passing through the same persons head or chest, which often happens in motion, capture animation). The action scenes are the best that anime has ever offered. The women are of course impossibly and perfectly framed and moulded, but that's to be expected with animation. The men, as with most Japanese animation are of course metrosexuals (I don't get it, but what do I know). But the robots, those sublime gorgeous robots, made me go berserk. The design is pure anime but the 3D modeling and superior animation and frame rate make them come alive.
And the score... yes the score. Most anime scores just suck, usually cheesy synth musak, but here we get ultra trippy industrial music and classical scoring that almost approaches the perfection that is the Akira soundtrack.
OK so we've established the near-perfection of the construction of this masterpiece. Now is there a story? Yup. Is it good? Damn right it is. And it is not simple either. In the future, after a devastating world war (it's a Japanese anime, what did you expect? Certainly not puppies and daffodils) a new utopic society is being built in a mega-city populated with humans and bioroids. Bioroids are synthetic humans so perfect that other than the lack of a sexual drive, they pass as human. No sex drive means no aggression, attachment. These bioroids are used to temper human aggression and violence. And they are not dumb machines either; they live lives, they govern the city with humans, which is regulated by a huge AI called Gaia. And there's a failsafe, should the bioroid society attempt to take over human society, a huge virus that will kill all the bioroids. But since there's no roid rage, it shouldn't be there right? (Ponder that) .
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
The visuals on this disc are simply stunning, no question about it. It's a beautiful mix of 3-D CG backgrounds with 2-D CG figures. Simply lovely.
2 - JELIEL³
Actually even the characters are fully 3D
3 - Phillip Winn
You're right, but they're different.
Less texturing, except for the bionic dude.
They seem "flat," is what I'm trying to get across. It's an unusual mix, and very beautiful.
4 - JELIEL
Yeah I see your point. I think they wanted to keep the old-school anime look of characters, which probably explains the cell shading instead of texturing. It looks like old-school anime, but better.
5 - Phillip Winn
Yeah. I hope readers understand that this is a mind-bogglingly beautiful piece of filmmaking and should definitely be seen.
There's a bit of violence at the beginning, with the crushing of skulls and such, but I think it largely settles down after that, and remains a rollicking good show throughout.
The scenes in the rain are simply breath-taking.
6 - azoric
A new ROBOTECH series is in the works and the CG & cell animation look to be even better integrated than Appleseed.
http://www.robotech.com/gallery/galimage/viewgalimage.php?id=1278
http://www.robotech.com/gallery/galimage/viewgalimage.php?id=1279
az!
7 - JELIEL
Azoric, thanks for the intel. This is fantastic news :D