Appleseed: Ex-Machina

We have finally arrived to our third Appleseed movie, perhaps the most popular one too. This third movie was made completely out of computer generated images. With lots of very fast action, coolest ever mecha and big guns. This is a squeal to the movie released in 2004. We think new and old Appleseed fans, will enjoy the action, there is enough of it to keep everyone happy.

Ex-Machina was created with wider audiences in mind. It doesn't follow the original manga by Masamune Shirow. Directed by Shinji Aramaki, with a lot of influence from producer John Woo, the movie becomes more of a cyborg ass-kicking movie made in CG, than everyone's loved Appleseed.

The story takes place after the events of the first movie. These have different stories, but don't worry if you haven't seen the other two, you can go back and enjoy them after. In between all the bullets and jumps we can see some type of story, although pretty predictable and seen many times before.

Ex-Machina starts with a cool scene in a real world cathedral in Germany, where very cute cyborgs are keeping a hostage. Deunan and Briareos steal the action from the beginning, without waiting for anyone. At the end of the scene, Briareos covers Deunan from explosion, they take him away to hospital because of the damaged he received from that last explosion. There is a new type of bioroid soldier, Tereus. Based on Briareos's DNA, looking and acting just like Briareos who is going to be Deunan's new partner for a while - she is not happy about it.

We would love to write more about the story, but since it isn't so deep we would not want to spoil it for you. It is probably the only thing that cloud have been done a differently, but that's what you get when John Woo is involved.

There were lots of artists involved in creating and designing characters, backgrounds, animation, effects, lighting, even Prada was invited to design character costumes. We can only say very well done to character and mecha designs. The detailed textures were from another level of CG animation. Mass scenes with lots of boiroids and technology around. We loved the red flying bombs at the end of the movie, very well done.

We can't really compare the animation to any other CG movie or anime. It does not fit in. It is too good or kinda bad. It is amazing to look at, an eye candy, the detailed action can be watched again and again, to only see more and more details. They had really good animation actors for this movie. This is the part were this film scores the most points. The cool CG was something different than the previous Appleseed. It may look like your watching a FMV sequence of some game but it doesn't stop for a long time and won't disappoint. Some may think the animation changed for better some say it changed for worse, we are just thankful to see more Appleseed so soon after release of 2004 movie.

The soundtrack is not that noticeable while your eyes are trying to follow the action, but it does make a bigger impact, especially in the slow motion scenes. It is a kick-ass soundtrack for a kick-ass movie. We really loved the ending track with Lina Ohta.

In summary Appleseed: Ex-Machina is a pretty good squeal to the Appleseed movie from 2004. Filled with enough action to make you want to watch it again. It can be placed in your collection as a classic kick-ass cyborg movie made in CG. The story is way too much predictable and with lots of holes, but again, we gathered here for the mecha and the bullet action. It scores low in story and character depth, you may feel like there is something missing, but it scores over the ranks with detail of characters and background scenes. We recommend this movie to almost everyone, it does not have many scary scenes, since it was created with Hollywood and money making in mind. We loved it over all and are proud to have the DVD in our collection. We can't wait until the fourth movie is out, until then we just have to be satisfied with Deunan and Briareos in amazing action, here in Ex-Machina.

Thanks for reading, we hope you enjoyed this review.