AppleSeed Sucks

[electric indigo]

Appleseed impressed me since it was the first manga (along with Akira) that I bought. I went crazy over all the mechanic design, but once I tried to get into the story, there were many shortcomings. IMO Shirow failed three times, in Black Magic, Appleseed, and GITS, when he tried to paint a big picture and lost himself in police routine or his attempts at humor, with the political plots never really working out, let alone the philosophical debate. The conspiracies are so over-contrived that you feel constantly pulled at a nose ring by the author, and the abundance of his smartass comments doesn't make it any better.

I see the first Appleseed movie the same way: The 3D CG action is terrific, but don't waste too much attention to the plot.

The first GITS movie managed to pull all the good stuff from the comic and turn it into another great Mamoru Oshii movie. BTW I recently purchased the GITS 1.5 Human-Error Processor comic collection and was surprised how much elements from there went into the movie.

Oh and here's the link to the new Appleseed movie site:

http://www.exmachina.jp/

Check the wallpapers!

-i-

PS on the subject of CG in animation: Say what you want about Yukikaze, but IMO it is a good example how to blend the CG objects with the traditional animation look.

Edited November 12, 2007 by electric indigo

[chrono]

PS on the subject of CG in animation: Say what you want about Yukikaze, but IMO it is a good example how to blend the CG objects with the traditional animation look.

The largest hindrance to 3D anime is the amount of time it takes to polish both the 3D and 2D so they are seamless. It's completely doable on a series budget in the US, but it takes an OVA or Movie budget for the Japanese. It's want I've said for years now they just don't have the work flow experience nor the technical experience to make 3D mesh well with 2D.

So as long as the 3D is terribly easy to spot then it will forever be considered by the masses as "bad".

sketchley, all well pointed out. But as you read through AppleSEED you see that the writting and art both get better and it seems to 'come together' for Shirow. I think by the middle of the AppleSEED series he had a firmly laid out idea of what he wanted to write about during the near future in his career. GITS's basically shows that Shirow is now a mature mangka of his own.

[Area88]

Lastly, the music in the Appleseed OVA is funky! It's classic cheese from the '80's.

The music is awesome, that high pitched, squeaky electronic score is epic. I wish I had the soundtrack to it!

The original Appleseed OVA is way under rated, I guess it's time to bring back one of my favourite backgrounds:

[eugimon]

The largest hindrance to 3D anime is the amount of time it takes to polish both the 3D and 2D so they are seamless. It's completely doable on a series budget in the US, but it takes an OVA or Movie budget for the Japanese. It's want I've said for years now they just don't have the work flow experience nor the technical experience to make 3D mesh well with 2D.

So as long as the 3D is terribly easy to spot then it will forever be considered by the masses as "bad".

meh, GitS has very easy to spot CGI work, and I rarely hear people complain about it. Those that do, frankly, are usually the people that have to find somthing to complain about it. Even shows like Naruto have a fair amount of CGI work in the backgrounds and there too, I don't hear people complaining.

Honestly, I think it's just hard for some people to accept change and that the visual style of anime has changed and will continue to change.

Appleseed might not be the best looking representative of CGI animation but efforts like Appleseed need to take place in order for the medium to mature and develop.

[bsu legato]

Honestly, I think it's just hard for some people to accept change and that the visual style of anime has changed and will continue to change.

Pretty much my feelings. Some people just can't accept that it's not 1985 anymore.

[EXO]

Pretty much my feelings. Some people just can't accept that it's not 1985 anymore.

Frankie says relax or you'll find your Broken Wings One night in Bangkok!

*moonwalks out of thread*

[Warmaker]

After all,

"One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble"

(shakes head)

[Warmaker]

Pretty much my feelings. Some people just can't accept that it's not 1985 anymore.

If it looks bad, it looks bad, regardless of the intent or required practice & experience for the staff.

Edited November 12, 2007 by Warmaker

[eugimon]

If it looks bad, it looks bad, regardless of the intent or required practice & experience for the staff.

only "looks bad" is very subjective.

[Batou]

Funny, I actually re-watched this just last night ...

Yeah, the movie was technically very beautiful to watch and the action scenes were amazing, but I think they took so many "creative" liberties, it's a little hard to swallow for longtime Shirow fans like myself. The Appleseed manga was very very special to me, and still is. I take them out and read all four released books maybe once a year to this day. More a disclaimer than a defense of the movie: Shirow's plots are hideously complex and have never really translated to the screen very well, so it's easy to see how the movie could be difficult to make any sense of if you're not intimately familiar with the source material already.

Too lazy to look back and quote: Whoever suggested that Appleseed was Shirow's test run for GITS is off mark. Appleseed was released in four volumes between 1985 and 1992, several years prior to GITS or . His characters have almost always involved a female lead, which may (or may not) be attributed to his getting his start in shoujo manga (essentially, manga for girls), more often not in a police unit of some sort (Appleseed = SWAT, GITS = elite special forces, Dominion = tank police, etc), always with an underlying reflective and introspective theme as well. Point being, this pattern was already well established in his work prior to either of these.

Then again, GITS does borrow quite liberally from Appleseed - Imperial America, Posieden, and of course all the bio-cybernetic tech that allows completely artificial bodies just off the top of my head. You might almost perceive a hint that GITS is in fact the preface to the Appleseed universe (just several decades in the past). And of course the Wachowskis went so far as to credit him in the Matrix films for stealing so many of his concepts ... there's nothing new under the sun, I guess.

Anyway, The White Drew Cary pretty much summed it up right: You can't really condense disparate plot elements from all of four different books, each developed and setup in painstaking detail and thoughtfulness, and then regurgitate them into a 2 hour movie with anything resembling coherency. That said, Shirow always used to call Appleseed his life's work and that he intended to finish it one day. If you've never read the original manga, you're really doing yourself a disfavor if you write it off because the movie was very pretty but impossible to make any sense of (kinda like my ex). Do yourself a favor and grab a copy ... it's arguably Shirow's best work, and none of it was computer aided (for you purists).

[JsARCLIGHT]

I am probably not the best person to respond to this but is it just me or do Shirow's graphic novels not really translate well into anime because his creations take full advantage of the print medium? What I mean by that is if you ever sit down and really chew into one of his books his art and his layout style is very dynamic, dynamic in ways that you can't really "do" in anime. At the same time his method of story telling, which usually involves several very verbose exchanges between characters replete with liner notes in some cases, flows very well when read as it allows the reader a chance to go at their own pace and fully absorb the material... but when those same long, talky scenes are transcribed to video you always feel like you are playing catch-up to what is being said and a half second of missed dialog can cause confusion. In that same vein, Shirow is almost too heady for his own good... and as we all know "complex" and "action" don't blend well unless the author has a firm grasp of dialog, timing and plot flow (something that IMHO most "anime" directors don't have in spades). That has to be one of my biggest gripes about the GITS movies and the TV show to a good degree... they try just a tad too hard to match Shirow's long winded chunks of dialog and it winds up slamming the brakes on the flow of the show and the viewer gets bored. But if they simplify things too much like they did in Appleseed the viewer can get grumpy from feelings that things are being "too dumbed down".

[Radd]

only "looks bad" is very subjective.

That's why you ask the person to expand on the comment. Saying "it looks bad" may be subjective opinion, but it also may be based on some rather objective observations. Saying, "The characters looked awful!" is subjective opinion, but pointing out the issues the animators had with movement and facial expressions, or the plastic looking saran wrap look the shading engine gave everything and comparing it to the 2D shading it was attempting to emulate, then you've turned the corner at Subjective Opinion, and Artistic Criticism.

[eugimon]

That's why you ask the person to expand on the comment. Saying "it looks bad" may be subjective opinion, but it also may be based on some rather objective observations. Saying, "The characters looked awful!" is subjective opinion, but pointing out the issues the animators had with movement and facial expressions, or the plastic looking saran wrap look the shading engine gave everything and comparing it to the 2D shading it was attempting to emulate, then you've turned the corner at Subjective Opinion, and Artistic Criticism.

sorry, but this is still subjective. in the end, different viewers will take away different things. Maybe person A is more concerned with character animation and textures and person B is more concerned with action seuqences and set pieces.

Case in point, in the Justice League thread, Fatalist tore me a new one because I didn't like animation team behind Beowulf. Fair enough, to me, character animation trumps textures and model complexity but not everyone may think so, I'm sure a lot of people may find the realistic models and textures to be more important than motion capture/animation.

In the end, who's right? Each viewer has a different set of criteria going in and each viewer will take away somthing different.

[Radd]

Not quite. Whether or not a person liked what the end product was is opinion, but when it gets right down to it, stating whether or not an artist can draw a straight line or not is entirely objective. Unless you're saying different people can have different opinions as to what constitutes a "straight line"? What I'm saying is you need to separate the opinion from the observation.

*edit*

Hmm, upon rereading your last post, I believe you're misunderstanding me. Take the animation team on Beowulf, I remember the thread, and I believe the discussion was how the realistic textures threw the models into uncanny valley in a rather hard way, and that this was further hurt by the awkward, marionette-looking animation. These statements are all observations. Whether or not it bothers any given viewer is subjective, but stating, "Well, I thought the animation was incredibly fluid and natural!" does not get a free pass to ride the, "That's my opinion" train.

Back to how it relates to Appleseed, so Subject A might not care that the characters all had wooden, robotic facial expressions, but that's immaterial and irrelevant if the characters were indeed displaying wooden and awkward facial expressions that could be observed and compared. From there I suppose one could argue, "Well, it's only your opinion that they were awkward and wooden", and that's entirely correct in the, "Well it's my opinion that Groening can draw a more realistic human figure than DaVinci" camp of subjectivity.

Edited November 13, 2007 by Radd

[Vermillion21]

I thought this movie was okay ... not great, but worth a viewing IMHO.

[eugimon]

Not quite. Whether or not a person liked what the end product was is opinion, but when it gets right down to it, stating whether or not an artist can draw a straight line or not is entirely objective. Unless you're saying different people can have different opinions as to what constitutes a "straight line"? What I'm saying is you need to separate the opinion from the observation.

*edit*

Hmm, upon rereading your last post, I believe you're misunderstanding me. Take the animation team on Beowulf, I remember the thread, and I believe the discussion was how the realistic textures threw the models into uncanny valley in a rather hard way, and that this was further hurt by the awkward, marionette-looking animation. These statements are all observations. Whether or not it bothers any given viewer is subjective, but stating, "Well, I thought the animation was incredibly fluid and natural!" does not get a free pass to ride the, "That's my opinion" train.

Back to how it relates to Appleseed, so Subject A might not care that the characters all had wooden, robotic facial expressions, but that's immaterial and irrelevant if the characters were indeed displaying wooden and awkward facial expressions that could be observed and compared. From there I suppose one could argue, "Well, it's only your opinion that they were awkward and wooden", and that's entirely correct in the, "Well it's my opinion that Groening can draw a more realistic human figure than DaVinci" camp of subjectivity.

I think you're misunderstanding me as well... I'm not debating the individual merits of either production or their particular qualities. What I'm saying is that the individual viewer may have different opinions on what's important.

I'm just saying that a particular viewer may not view the same things as important. So yeah, the facial expressions might be wooden and the "cell shaders" may not be up to snuff (hell, the naruto game on the 360 looks better) but maybe some particular viewer just doesn't care about that stuff. Maybe they think the animation was smooth and they liked the "why is everything so damn glossy" textures? So what could be bad to one person, might be passable (in the case of appleseed) to another because each has a different set of criteria.

So when somone says " wow, appleseed has bad CGI" based on their own particular set of criteria, someone else using a completely DIFFERENT set of criteria might rightly disagree.

Besides, we're talking about a highly stylized production. It's like arguing who has more convincing humans, Family Guy or Simpons.

Edited November 13, 2007 by eugimon

[chrono]

meh, GitS has very easy to spot CGI work, and I rarely hear people complain about it. Those that do, frankly, are usually the people that have to find somthing to complain about it.

Honestly, I think it's just hard for some people to accept change and that the visual style of anime has changed and will continue to change.

The only place I use to ever hear that argument was on 4Chan! Where hate = love. But the people who generally say what you've said was that are the people who are rampant fanboy's who are so wrapped up in their 'love' for GitS they'll shout down anyone and everyone who remotely disagrees with them. Survival of the loudest if you will, I guess.

I do think that people have long ago accepted the style change in 2D CG, but find the pure 3D CG work too jarring from the norm when it's not heavily smoothed out like in the Gits2 movie, and that's part of the issue. It just wasn't polished enough.

AppleSEED suffered from inconsistent work and a switch to an immature medium that doesn't have enough talented (not just skill taught) people in it yet to make it look 'great' straight from the beginning. But even when people say that "It looks bad!" it maybe a single scene, area, or object OR even half the show to the entire show. However it nowadays can not be so casually dismissed as "subjective" because of the shear amount of CG that is thrown at us on an hourly basis builds up so much exposure to it at ALL levels of quality that if it's not equal to the mediums leading style it truly is substandard and thus "Looks bad." through long experience & exposure to the standard.

-----

@Batou, GitS did start directly after AppleSEED ended. AppleSEED ended one month and GitS took it's place the next month. Appleseed had some SWAT action in it but the leads were moved quickly into Special Forces (you don't go out of country on military counter-terrorist or riot actions otherwise). I throughly believe that SEED focused Shirow's ideas for GitS with SEED's nearly continuous talk of defining human(ity) and all of the geo-political talk.

[gerwalk25]

I'm surprised nobody posted this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=14...85184&hl=en

[promethuem5]

You know, after pondering it over more, I have little faith in a second AppleSeed film titled 'Deus Ex Machina' being any good if I had problems with pulled-out-of-arse lot resolutions in the first film...

[Mr March]

I am probably not the best person to respond to this but is it just me or do Shirow's graphic novels not really translate well into anime because his creations take full advantage of the print medium?

*snip*

Definitely don't want to get off topic here, but I largely agree. Manga, much like literature, is a creative medium in which writers can diverge and weave large, detailed and off-point stories into the narrative without loosing the reader. This is very much one of the advatages of the written medium. IMO, the first GITS film adaptation worked well because the exposition and existential dialogue, while lengthy, was directly on point. The dialogue combined brillantly with the theme and, most importantly, maintained a consistant subtext throughout the entrie film that culminated in both an exciting action sequence and a fulfilling conclusion of the spiritual journey. The second GITS film suffered from a lack of that merging and the dialogue often became almost non-sensical and too abstract in the context of the events.

Anyway, just didn't want to let a very good post go unanswered even at the risk of being a little off topic

[Warmaker]

Definitely don't want to get off topic here, but I largely agree. Manga, much like literature, is a creative medium in which writers can diverge and weave large, detailed and off-point stories into the narrative without loosing the reader. This is very much one of the advatages of the written medium. IMO, the first GITS film adaptation worked well because the exposition and existential dialogue, while lengthy, was directly on point. The dialogue combined brillantly with the theme and, most importantly, maintained a consistant subtext throughout the entrie film that culminated in both an exciting action sequence and a fulfilling conclusion of the spiritual journey. The second GITS film suffered from a lack of that merging and the dialogue often became almost non-sensical and too abstract in the context of the events.

Anyway, just didn't want to let a very good post go unanswered even at the risk of being a little off topic

I have to agree. Regular 'ol books are much more fleshed out with all kinds of details and events to move the story along better and develop the characters. Movie adaptations are constrained with time, usually 2 hours, to get everything done.

I'll even use the Lord of the Rings movie "Fellowship of the Ring" as an example. I'm just now reading the books (on Two Towers now*). But the "Fellowship of the Ring" book had an insane number of things that the movie completely lacked or not even mention. I kind of understand why since the movies were long enough anyways and were going to be a trilogy, but it was disappointing to find out so many events, locations, and even big characters were completely left out simply due to the constraints of making a movie.

* = Edited as per Mr March's correction

Edited November 14, 2007 by Warmaker

[Mr March]

Hehehe, you said "twin"

In the case of LOTR, not every exclusion from book-to-film was what I'd call a loss. The first 150 pages of Fellowship has always been rough and it never gets easier after multiple reads

Must...get...back...on...topic...

[bandit29]

Appleseed Ex Machina English trailer

http://anime.ign.com/articles/834/834615p1.html

The movie.. plot was dumb but it looked cool lol