There is no denying that Appleseed is a striking film to look at with its use of cel-shaded 3D characters, but I had expected a lot more from this movie and was disappointed.
First the imagery, while stunning, had a lot of problems. For me, the biggest problem with it was that while the characters were cel-shaded, the backgrounds has a pseudo-photo-realistic look and so the characters really felt out of place. I would have felt happier with the look of this film if the backgrounds were more in keeping with what you would expect from animated features, ie, hand-drawn backgrounds.
Another problem with the imagery showed up during action scenes. At first I couldn't put my finger on it but eventually I realised that there was no motion blur. The result was fast-moving action was extremely jarring and disorienting to watch. Even a limited amount of motion blue here would have helped greatly.
However, for me the biggest failing was in the execution of the story. Exposition was handled extremely sloppily in my opinion, with vast amounts of information being reeled off in a couple of scenes that threw off the pacing of the whole movie and were just plain boring to watch. I think the story might have flowed better if the same information was given to us in smaller chunks distributed more evenly throughout the film. The fact that the plot relied heavily on things that sounded like unbelievable pseudo-scientific hand-waving didn't help matters much either.
All in all, I'd say go see it for the remarkable CG work, but don't build up expectations of this being a great movie, because it isn't. I couldn't recommend that you buy the DVD of this either, because the bonus material is all in Japanese with only subtitles. An English soundtrack would have made all the difference here.
First the imagery, while stunning, had a lot of problems. For me, the biggest problem with it was that while the characters were cel-shaded, the backgrounds has a pseudo-photo-realistic look and so the characters really felt out of place. I would have felt happier with the look of this film if the backgrounds were more in keeping with what you would expect from animated features, ie, hand-drawn backgrounds.
Another problem with the imagery showed up during action scenes. At first I couldn't put my finger on it but eventually I realised that there was no motion blur. The result was fast-moving action was extremely jarring and disorienting to watch. Even a limited amount of motion blue here would have helped greatly.
However, for me the biggest failing was in the execution of the story. Exposition was handled extremely sloppily in my opinion, with vast amounts of information being reeled off in a couple of scenes that threw off the pacing of the whole movie and were just plain boring to watch. I think the story might have flowed better if the same information was given to us in smaller chunks distributed more evenly throughout the film. The fact that the plot relied heavily on things that sounded like unbelievable pseudo-scientific hand-waving didn't help matters much either.
All in all, I'd say go see it for the remarkable CG work, but don't build up expectations of this being a great movie, because it isn't. I couldn't recommend that you buy the DVD of this either, because the bonus material is all in Japanese with only subtitles. An English soundtrack would have made all the difference here.