"Appleseed," Shinji Aramaki's sci-fi animation based on a Shirow Masamune comic, was hailed as ground-breaking when it opened in 2004. Not so much for its story, which recycled tired dystopian, man-as-machine tropes from many sources, including Masamune's better-known manga "Kokaku Kidotai (Ghost In the Machine)," as for producer Fumihiro Sori's vividly realized future world and hypercharged battle scenes that outclassed the average arcade game, not to mention the average live-action pic.
For industry types, however, the film's real attraction was its innovative use of out-of-the-box animation software to create Hollywood-style effects at a tiny fraction of Hollywood budgets. "Appleseed" cost about ¥100 million to make, which is probably about what Pixar spends annually on staff massages. Studio Ghibli President Toshio Suzuki told me at the time that "Appleseed" would revolutionize the animation business, though Ghibli itself continued to cling to its distinctive "hand-drawn" aesthetic, with great success.
Aramaki's new film, "Appleseed Saga: Ex-Machina," is not just an "Appleseed" sequel but a version upgrade — the animated equivalent of going from Windows 98 to XP. Not 3D state-of-the-art, in other words, but still a dramatic improvement. The film's world, from its cityscapes to robots and other mecha (mechanical devices), is realized with a solidity and detail, down to the scratches on the chopper doors, that give it an uncanny reality. Walking out of the screening room into the Ginza, I had the disorienting feeling that I was still in the film's city, Olympus, albeit many decades before the story starts in 2138.