Reviewer: Craig Phillips
Rating (out of 5): **½ (higher for mecha die-hards)

Appleseed: Ex Machina is a follow-up to the popular first new Appleseed movie (there was a halfway decent 1988 cel-animated Appleseed as well), which was based on the characters created by Masamune Shirow in the manga of the same name. If you haven't seen the first one, don't fret - a quick, expository narration covers all the basics at the beginning. For the most part Ex Machina's a slight improvement over the original, which also looked terrific and yet featured even clunkier dialogue and plotting.

Set in 2131 AD, the story centers around a female soldier named Deunan Knute, who survived the Third World War and now lives in the utopian city-nation of Olympus. Deunan is involved romantically with her partner Briareos, a veteran soldier who happens to be more cyborg than human at this point; both serve in E.S.W.A.T., an elite special forces unit working to protect Olympus, which is run by AI and by bioroids, genetically engineered humanoids. The main plot here has the two lover-fighters finding their partnership tested in a new way by the arrival of Tereus, an experimental bioroid. (Olympus, Tereus, Briareos...the whole film is hit or myth.) When random violence by groups of terrorist cyborgs begins to escalate during a global summit, it's up to the E.S.W.A.T. team -- Robo-cops wearing suits that look like Transformers -- to save themselves and, oh yes, the course of mankind.

Continue reading "Appleseed: Ex Machina" »

Posted by at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Maria Komodore
Rating (out of 5): ****

Anyone who has seen Hayao Miyazaki's extraordinary Princess Mononoke, marveling over its breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative visualizations, or enjoyed the striking look of The Animatrix, won't be surprised to hear that Tekkonkinkreet director Michael Arias was involved in both those films (and also had a hand in the visual effects for The Abyss (1989), The Prince of Egypt (1998), The Road to El Dorado (2000), among others.) This wonderfully dreamy anime marks Arias' feature directing debut.

Based on the manga by Taiyo Matsumoto, Tekkonkinkreet focuses on two young orphan boys, who look after each other in an effort to survive in Treasure Town, a rapidly evolving city somewhere in Japan that's becoming less and less friendly with every passing day. White (wearing his outrageously shaped hats) and Black (steeped in negative feelings and a certain blood thirst), spend their days roaming around the city, hopping on roofs, and climbing up electricity poles. That is until Mr. Snake (representing real estate interests that want to transform Treasure Town into a Disneyland of sorts), and old yakuza leader Suzuki (representing the good old times when the crime world was kinder), engage in a power struggle. The two youngsters inevitably find themselves in the middle of this mess, in which fighting change proves unfruitful.

With its realistic, busy, and rigorous background, its weird camera angles, and its masterfully dark and magnificently innocent inner-state and dream sequences respectively, Tekkonkinkreet comments not only upon economic interests devouring the humanity of the world, but also on big city isolation, life on the margins of society, and most of all on the choice one has to make between immersing oneself in unhealthy consuming feelings, or adopting a sunnier attitude towards life.

The DVD also includes a fun interview with British band Plaid, whose soundtrack works well for the film; an informative short documentary/diary shot during the making of Tekkonkinkreet; and Arias' own audio commentary.

Posted by at 3:52 PM | Permalink

Picking up right where the Karas: The Prophecy ends, in the new beautifully animated (using 2D/3D hybrid animation) film Karas: The Revelation [official site], Otaha seeks vengeance against the yakuza that murdered his brother and almost killed him. Meanwhile the old Karas, Eko, unleashes his wrath and contempt for the pitiful humans infesting the city. Yurine, Nue, and Otahajoin forces for the final epic battle to save the city and protect the will of the people...as Prophecy becomes Revelation! "Karas the Revelation not only lives up to the amazing first volume, but exceeds it in every way," raves Play Magazine. The sequel features the voices of Jay Hernamdez, Matthew Lillard and Cree Summer.

And now, thanks to the generosity of Manga Video, ten (10) lucky winners of our Karas: The Revelation contest will receive a copy of the new DVD. Entrants should send an email to contest@greencine.com, including your name, email address and, if you're a GreenCine member, your username in the email, and "Karas" in the subject header. Entries without all this information will not be considered. (You will not be added to a mailing list!)

Winners will be selected at random from all valid entries. The deadline is Monday, October 29. Winners will be notified by e-mail and announced in future editions of the GreenCine Dispatch newsletter.

Posted by at 11:57 AM | Permalink

Reviewer: Isaac Bernhard
Rating (out of 5): **** (Full series)

Planetes is the story of "Half Section," an orbital garbage collection service which operates out of a corporate space station in the near future. Ai Tanabe is a new recruit who finds herself assigned to the least fashionable job in space -- retrieving space debris -- and a member of a team of misfits and outcasts. But her unenviable position at the bottom of the space-faring hierarchy puts her and Half Section squarely in the middle of a very terrestrial struggle for control of the vast resources of the solar system.

To review, there are essentially three kinds of science fiction stories, and you usually know which kind you're watching once you've seen something explode in space. If the explosion makes a big bang accompanied by a plume of smoke which rises upward, then you have schlocky sci-fi on your hands (not always a bad thing, depending). If the explosion makes a loud noise and an impressive fireball, but with no smoke, you have a film or animation which follows the now-standard generic norms of science fiction fantasy. But if the explosion is silent, perhaps accompanied by a seemingly small puff of debris, then you are probably watching that rare bird, "hard" science fiction. Planetes, a thoughtful and realistic speculation on the near future of space exploration, is very much in this last category.

Continue reading "Planetes: Astronomical series" »

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink

Reviewer: Isaac Bernhard
Rating (out of 5): **½

It's surely a good sign for American Go enthusiasts that a sports anime about the game of Go, designed essentially as a recruiting tool for young people – a commercial, really – has been distributed in this country. This would have been unthinkable a few years ago. I decided to give Hikaru No Go a look mainly because, as enthusiastic as I am about this particular board game, watching an anime about Go sounded a bit like watching plants grow. Sure, I might be into it, but how could Go, a game which visually consists of black and white dots on a grid, be made interesting to non-players? How could a game which takes quite a bit of study and experience merely to begin to understand its subtleties possibly be given the Rocky Balboa treatment?

Continue reading "Hikaru No Go: No go." »

Posted by at 10:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Isaac Bernhard
Rating (out of 5): **** (Full series)

The essentials of Elfen Lied are as follows. A teenage girl, having suffered horrible abuse and deprivation for most of her life, develops multiple personality disorder. One personality is a gentle, pre-verbal little girl who communicates entirely by meowing like a cat. The other is older and has lost all ability to empathize with most humans. She can talk, but rarely does, and seems incapable of dealing with others without lashing out at them.

Of course, her abusive family is not really a family, it's a shady, top secret government project. And she doesn't exactly live at home, it's more like a hidden fortress. And when I said she "lashes out," well, she mostly does this with her uncanny ability to decapitate people from a distance just by thinking about it. As she's understandably a bit angry at the world by now, she does this quite often.

Elfen Lied is extremely well made and very effective, but it's not quite a work of high-minded seriousness. When this girl runs away from home (i.e., lays waste to the government fortress she's imprisoned in) she is eventually taken in, while in her cat-girl incarnation, by a boy who, for some reason, owns a large house. This house is apparently a magnet for girls, because two already live there with him.

Continue reading "Elfen Lied" »

Posted by at 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Alan Hogue
Rating (out of 5): ****

Genshiken (full series review)

A mild but sharply observed comedy about a college manga/anime ("otaku") club known as "The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture," Genshiken is an absolute delight for those with even remotely geek-ish tendencies. It is a gentle show with an eye for everyday details, but as its seemingly minor, personal stories unfold, Genshiken begins to take on an almost achingly nostalgic feel without ever becoming sappy or cheap.

Continue reading "Genshiken" »

Posted by at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviewer: Alan Hogue
Rating (out of 5): **½

The word that best captures volume one of Speed Grapher is "naughty." At first I thought "tawdry," but that's taking it too seriously. It's as if I can sense the creators trying to one-up each other by inventing fresh lewdness to unleash on us. And I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be shocked and secretly titillated by it all.

Continue reading "Speed Grapher, Vol. 1" »

Posted by at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

GreenCine's Julie Newcomb has contributed her own list of the Best Anime of 2006. Some of these are new volumes in a series, while some - such as Paradise Kiss, the first volume of which is out this month - are first time on DVD. All of them are unique, above par, and well worth a look.

Read on >>

Posted by at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)