My Cultural Diet

Along with Black Magic M-66, Bubblegum Crisis, and Project A-Ko, Kazuyoshi Katayama’s adaptation of Masamune Shirow’s classic Appleseed manga was one of my first forays into the world of anime back in the early ’90s. (This should not be confused with Shinji Aramaki’s Appleseed adaptation, which was released in 2004.) As such, there’s definitely a nostalgic aspect to Appleseed, but nostalgia only gets you so far. Or in this case, not very far at all. At just 70 minutes, Appleseed feels very rushed and truncated, and punctuated with weird tonal shifts. One minute, it wants to be a hard-edged cyberpunk tale raising heady existential themes, and the next, a goofy buddy cop flick. To be fair, the English translation and dub don’t help matters, as characters speak in broad accents while powering through awkward dialog and dropping lots of amusingly unnecessary profanity. The same goes for Norimasa Yamanaka’s city pop-lite soundtrack, which might be enjoyable on its own but is really out of place here. Unless you have a real fascination with late ’80s OVAs or are an Appleseed completist, in which case you’ve probably already seen this, just stick with Aramaki’s version instead.

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