fter the Third World War ended, a group called the General Management Control Office formed to help salvage what was left of humanity. Together, the combined governments of the world built an "experimental city" named Olympus and staffed it with half-human, half-robot constructs ("bioroids" in the sub, "biodroids" in the dub) who handle all the administrative work. The inhabitants of Olympus, rescued from the chaotic postwar landscape of "the Badlands," live in beauty and luxury. For some of them, however, it's just not enough.
Two of Olympus' more satisfied residents, tough tomboy Duenan Knute and her partner Briareos (who, due to the extensive physical damage he suffered in the Badlands, underwent extensive cybernetic prosthetic work and now looks like a gigantic bipedal robot cyclops-bunny) seem to end up dealing with the disaffected relatively often--as members of the Olympus SWAT team, they're first on the front line when a terrorist attack takes place in a downtown building. Their expertise ends the standoff, but one terrorist, the mysterious cyborg fanatic A.J. Sebastian, escapes and immediately starts planning his next move.
Sebastian has an unlikely partner in Calon, a melancholy policeman whose wife--who couldn't handle what she interpreted as the artificial confinement of Olympus--commits suicide in Appleseed's opening scene. Calon believes Olympus murdered his wife, who must be avenged, but Sebastian seems to have loftier goals. He claims that the bioroids comprise 80 percent of the inhabitants of the city, and that they're planning to institute a control system that would keep humanity under control forever.
Duenan and Briareos don't really deal with the possible morality or ramifications of Sebastian's claims. They're just cops, and they show a certain bias towards kicking terrorist tush over all else, even if they have to quit the force and chase Sebastian down on their own time. It certainly doesn't help Sebastian's case that the key to his plot is a cute-as-a-bug bioroid named Hitomi--a personal friend to half the city, and the social worker who personally rescued Duenan and Briareos from the Badlands.
Something lost in the translation
Appleseed is yet another old classic that Manga's only now putting out on DVD. It does show its age: The animation, circa 1988, is mostly simple and static, though the mecha are nicely detailed--which is hardly surprising, considering the source material: a manga series by mecha master Masamune Shirow (Ghost In The Shell). The essential themes, similarly, were explored better and in more depth in later years. (The Patlabor movies, which Manga also recently released on DVD, come immediately to mind.) But Appleseed is still a relatively serviceable adventure/thriller that moves along at an even pace and displays some of anime's old thematic roots.
The main problem with the animated adaptation of Appleseed is that it never quite addresses whether Sebastian's dire assertions have any validity. Is he insane? Is he hiding a darker goal under his altruistic claims? Are Duenan and Briareos really working for a cabal of humanity-dominating robots? Sebastian's hardly a kind man, and when he briefly achieves his goals, his actions are far from philanthropic. On the other hand, the bioroids' leader is hardly a humanitarian herself. Are there any good guys here? Are there supposed to be? Appleseed may be trying to address some very fine moral points, but it doesn't dig nearly deep enough in getting them across.
The translations on this hybrid DVD further confuse the issue. As with several of Manga's DVD releases, the sub and dub seem to come from different planets. The dub uses extensive, gratuitous profanity to put a harder edge on its characters, with mostly laughable effects. (Here's an example from when Duenan and Briareos meet a hologram of Olympus' Inspector General: In the sub, Duenan gripes "Too good to talk directly to us humans, huh?" In the dub, the line is "It really gets on my tits that she wouldn't meet us face to face!") But the dub confuses the movie's moral issues considerably when the Inspector General orders Duenan and Briareos to find and arrest Sebastian in the sub, and to quietly track him down and murder him, in contravention of Olympus law, in the dub. Granted, neither version really answers all the nagging questions, and both are still entertaining. But both versions leave something to be desired.
