Appleseed

Following the footstep of Ghost in the Shell, the celebrated manga artist, Masamune Shirow's another work, Appleseed, became a gorgeous 3D animated feature. But it's plagued with flaws that mark the decline of anime quality in recent years: the story, the characters, the script.

I haven't read the original manga, but the screenwriter only borrowed the basic storyline and characters, ditched whatever layers of story elements in the text, made into generic action flick that a high school kid could've written. And not even a bright kid at that.

Long on exposition and surprisingly lack on action, you can't help marvel if the writers and director didn't care to reference the venerable GiTS or other great anime movies but lavished their attention on futuristic techno stuff. They spent more time explaining how robots function rather than how this utopia managed to function despite there was a world war waging for years.

I know why people never talked about this gorgeous looking anime since it was released despite its high production look and Masamune Shirow's material. Bad movies like this gives me a hope that I can actually do better, given a chance. (Yes. I can.)