Review for Appleseed XIII Complete Series

Introduction

There was a time when Masamune Shirow was synonymous with Appleseed. Back in the eighties it was his manga masterpiece and fans awaited each subsequent instalment with a palpable intensity. That same appreciation wasn’t initially given to his nineties creation, Ghost in the Shell, as that only achieved 2 volumes of manga, compared to 4 for Appleseed. That’s where the power of anime comes in. Appleseed was the first to the screen, in an OVA adventure created in 1988. That OVA was licensed and released in the West by Manga Entertainment if you want to look it up, but it isn’t all that great, a futuristic cyberpunk story very much of the eighties, animated in lurid colours, with only the mechanical designs to make it really stand out. It didn’t get a follow up. Ghost in the Shell on the other hand got that ground breaking movie, which begat another movie, and 52 episodes of the Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex series, and the Solid State Society movie, and most recently the Ghost in the Shell Arise OVAs. Today, Masamune Shirow is synonymous with Ghost in the Shell.


That doesn’t mean that people gave up with Appleseed, and it did eventually return, but it took some revolutionary technology and a whole new approach to anime to make it happen. In 2004 Appleseed was reborn as a feature film, and it came to us in the form of cel-shaded CGI. This was anime, but in 3D, with rotoscoped characters, and a level of detail and complexity to truly bring its future, post-apocalyptic utopia to vivid life. It also had the chops to get its cyberpunk story across with far greater effectiveness than the OVA. It wasn’t perfect, and the character animation had its limits, but it did enough to justify a sequel, and when the John Woo produced Appleseed Ex Machina appeared in 2007, it looked as if the Appleseed franchise would finally get the plaudits it was due, take its place up there with kid sibling Ghost in the Shell. Alas, an attempt to get a TV series off the ground in 2008 floundered, and it was only in 2011, that this OVA series, Appleseed XIII got made. Taking its cue from the films, it too is a cel-shaded CGI anime, but rather than building on that movie universe, it once again reboots the story.


Barely surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland might make you desirous of an Earthly paradise to seek refuge in, but for ES.W.A.T members Deunan Knute, and her cyborg lover Briareos, Olympus turns out to be a flawed paradise indeed. It’s a utopia created for the survivors of humanity, run with absolute precision by an artificial intelligence called Gaia, and where the minority 20% human population has its every need met by the artificially created Bioroid race, robots engineered from human DNA to serve as administrators in the shining city. This utopia remains in danger, with not everyone happy with the controlled paradise that humans have to live in. Prejudice still exists between humans, bioroids and cyborgs, and terrorist groups seek to overthrow the Olympus government. It falls to ES.W.A.T to protect the city, but Deunan grows ever more disillusioned with paradise, and that drives a wedge between her and Briareos. 13 episodes are presented across two DVDs from Manga Entertainment, plus a whole extra disc of extra features.


Disc 1
1. The Nemean Lion
2. The Augean Stables
3. The Ceryneian Hind
4. The Cattle of Geryon
5. The Cretan Bull
6. The Erymanthian Boar
7. The Stymphalean Birds

Disc 2
8. The Mares of Diomedes
9. The Girdle of Hippolyta
10. The Lernaean Hydra
11. The Apples of Hesperides
12. The Capture of Cerberus
13. Paradeisos

Picture

Appleseed gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer on these discs. The image is clear and sharp throughout, and the animation gets a smooth native PAL conversion on these discs courtesy of Australia’s Madman Entertainment. The issues aren’t with the transfer; they lie with the source material, which is a poor relation of the theatrical Appleseed features. Just like the films, the animation here is cel-shaded CGI, but unlike the films, there is no consistency among the episodes (mostly because each episode was farmed out to a different studio), and the quality of the animation is poor. Detail levels are low, the rotoscoped animation is lacklustre, and at times the whole thing looks like a 15 year old videogame cutscene. At times the texture rendering even wanders off model, with edges prone to shimmer and aliasing. It can be distracting on the DVD, and I shudder to think of what it looks like on Blu-ray. And yes, Appleseed XIII is indeed released on Blu-ray on the same day as this DVD.

Sound

You have the choice between DD 5.1 English and Japanese, with player forced English subtitles to go with the Japanese audio track. You can’t turn them off (or on if you’re watching the English dub and need a little assist in deciphering the dialogue). I sampled the English audio and it seemed adequate enough, with the characters cast well, and appealing performances from the voice cast. The Japanese audio certainly has some big hitters among its cast, not least Maaya Sakamoto and Koichi Yamadera as Deunan and Briareos. As for the audio, despite the surround track, it seemed a rather subdued affair that doesn’t really push the action sequences as well as it should.

Extras

This is a three disc release, with the third disc devoted to extras. You can still find a smattering of goodies on the other two discs though.

The discs present their content with static menus, and jacket pictures for compatible players.

On disc 1 you’ll find the audio commentary on episode 7, with Mike McFarland (voice of Magus), Ian Sinclair (Alcides), and Monica Rial (Deia). It starts off as a high-pitched gigglefest, but rapidly turns into an interesting informative commentary, before ending with the giggling again. Of note is the difficulty of dubbing CG anime, where lips actually form vowels instead of just flapping.

Disc 2 offers a commentary on episode 12, with ADR director Colleen Clinkenbeard joined by voice of Briareos, David Matranga.


You’ll also find the English language trailer on this disc, as well as the textless credits.

Disc 3 offers Appleseed XIII The Inside. This is a behind the scenes look at the making of the show and it lasts a whopping 144 minutes. No single studio wanted to make an Appleseed anime series in the style of the feature films, but studios were certainly interested in contributing to part of the show. In the end, the only way to get Appleseed XIII made was to offer 13 studios the chance to make one episode each. What we have here are 13 featurettes, taking us to 13 CG animation studios and showing what each brought to the show. Incidentally, you know how the less enthused about a show you are, the less inclined you are to take in the extra features on a disc? All I know about this two-hour plus featurette is that it exists, and that it plays without issue on my DVD player.

Conclusion

Pretentious twaddle! I have never been as let down by an anime series as I was by Appleseed XIII, although it’s a rare thing these days to go into a show blind, with only the hyperbole of the feature films preceding it informing my expectations. The Appleseed films were great stuff, with strong characterisations, great production value, and once you got used to it, really good animation. When you couple that with Masamune Shirow’s source material and a healthy dose of cyberpunk, then Appleseed XIII should have been my cup of tea. Alas Appleseed XIII turned out to be anything but.


Let’s put to one side the animation for a minute and concentrate on the actual show. The story isn’t up to much, the usual terrorist conspiracy plot that tended to work with the previous Appleseed incarnations. But it is a dumb story filled with dumb characters doing dumb things. They know full well who the villain is halfway through the story, but they keep allowing the villain to keep doing villainous things, instead of simply arresting them, or at the very least, throwing them out of the country. Through the episodes, Deunan is constantly dumbstruck at the villainy of the, well, villain. I’m dumbstruck at the ineptitude of this Elite Special Weapons and Tactics police unit.


There’s a fair bit of character assassination as well, with Deunan Knute, previously a strong, sassy, but capable female role model, turned into a dithering school girl with occasional combat skills. She’s more worried about her love life and her vacation than doing her job. But it’s okay, as in this CG incarnation, her boobs are bigger and her butt is more rounded. But when again and again, dumb characters keep doing dumb things because the story requires them to, it’s hard to even focus on their physical attributes.


Of course there is that pretentiousness as well, as if the city of Olympus, run by an AI called Gaia wasn’t allegory enough. This incarnation of Appleseed hammers in the Greek mythology without restraint, referencing the twelve tasks of Hercules in its episode titles, the segues between scenes populated with heroic statues, images from ancient Greek style pottery, and mosaic images of the myths referenced in that episode. I don’t need someone metaphorically yelling in my ear every two minutes, “Hey! We’re referencing Ancient Greek Myth! Get It! Pay Attention! We’re Being F****** Profound Here!” No, you’re not, you’re being annoying.


And everything, but everything has weight and meaning in this story. Every scene is followed by a flashback, as we’re drip-fed motivation from ten years previously, and by the end of the series, I was ready to seriously slap Deunan if she wouldn’t stop looking at that wretched compass.


I suppose I should comment on the animation. When you have thirteen studios working on thirteen different episodes, consistency comes only through fortuitous chance. It doesn’t happen too often in this series. Some episodes, particularly the first episode, and episode 12, look spectacular. You have CG animators at the top of their game. But then some episodes look like they’ve been put together by the lowest bidder, and look like an old videogame cutscenes. There’s no set model for the characters to drift off, and how people look vary from episode to episode.


So how much does a Grecian Urn? Not enough to buy back the hours I wasted reviewing this thing...