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Audio Format: DD 5.1
Video Format: Letterbox
Languages: Japanese
Subtitles: English, Chinese
Region Code: 3
Year Made: 2007
Running Time:
Release Date: 01/28/2008
Back in 2004, when the sci-fi anime "Appleseed" was released, Studio Ghibli president Toshio Suzuki told me that it was the "future of animation." Not so much for the story, which was a retread of a Shirow Masamune manga about a half-human, half-bioroid (biological android) future society, as for the animation, which was a groundbreaking mix of 2-D and 3-D, with dazzling action sequences made for, by Hollywood standards, a pittance.
Three years have passed and "Appleseed" has sold 300,000 DVDs in the United States alone — a small marketing miracle — but Suzuki's revolution has yet to arrive. Advances have been made, of course, but the Japanese animation box office is still dominated by the same low-tech series for kiddies, while boundary-pushing anime of the "Appleseed" sort have been slow to break into the theatrical mainstream. "Appleseed" producer Fumihiko Sori intends to change that with "Vexille," an SF animation that tries to pick up where "Appleseed" left off. Here, there is more high-speed, visceral action that would make for a terrific arcade game, not to mention an eye-popping experience with the latest hi-def DVD players.
Meanwhile, the "mecha" — the various robots, vehicles and other mechanical stuff — are designed in such realistic detail that I could imagine the obsessed animators making blueprints for every last drive shaft and gear. Their design coolness quotient is also high, though the dune buggies reminded me of similar contraptions in the "Mad Max" series, while some of the bots gave me "RoboCop" flashbacks. Finally, the huge "sandworms" that threaten the heroes are visually striking as they slither like dragons, twist like tornadoes and crash to Earth like huge, dirty waves — but David Lynch used similar ones in "Dune." The story, an original written by Sori and Haruka Handa, is likewise on the derivative side, beginning with its standard action premise of a mission that, for whatever reason, has to be completed in a short period of time, by a small squad of heroes. All that's lacking is a digital clock, with red numbers ticking backward.
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