*So I am in the middle of a Yu-Gi-Oh! binge, and I figured that I don’t want to let this enthusiasm go to waste. Therefore, I am going to try and write a few blog posts about certain games from that franchise that I have fond memories of. I am also writing under the assumption that you, dear reader, have the basic rules of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game down pat up to around 2008 – the 5Ds cycle and the advent of Synchro Monsters and Synchro Summoning. In this post, I’ll be looking back at Yu-Gi-Oh! Tag Force 4 for the PSP. But a lot of what made this game memorable for me could be applied to other Tag Force games.*

If you watched enough of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series (any of them, honestly), you’ll run into episodes where characters engage in tag duels – 2 players alternating their turns against another pair doing the same. A precursor to this format came all the way back in the Duelist Kingdom Arc, where Yugi and Joey played a very modified version of Duel Monsters against the Paradox Brothers. Then we need to wait until the Battle City storyline where Yugi and Kaiba fought against Lumis and Umbra for a tag duel that is much closer to how the non-anime version of Yu-Gi-Oh! Plays. Maybe these duels are written into the story to explore a dynamic between two characters; are they polar opposites who must learn to work together? Or is this a chance to show the unshakeable bond between two people who can overcome any and all obstacles together? Or maybe in the case of 2 vs. 1 duels (like Yugi and Kaiba versus Dartz in Waking the Dragons), a tag duel is a way to show how one character is so dang powerful that two opponents are needed just to keep up.

But when it comes to players like me, tag dueling is far less common than the usual 1 on 1 format. This is where the YGO Tag Force series, beginning in 2006 and ending at around 2015, sets itself apart. As someone who sank many hours into Tag Force 4 (and had some brief excursions into TF 1 and 2), I found it to be a welcome change of pace from other Yu-Gi-Oh! game series I played. The character and story writing has its moments, though the real joy comes from working together with my AI partner to triumph against progressively harder enemies.

From personal experience, the general game flow of Tag Force 4 feels similar enough to its predecessors. To summarize the game’s genre, it is the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game plus a watered-down relationship sim. You are a duelist MC who moves around an overworld to interact with (and duel against) an assortment of nondescript NPCs and characters from the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds anime. Like other video games from that franchise, you progress by defeating the starting roster of opponents to gain currency reserved for buying booster packs; then you use those new cards to beef up your deck to take on the next tier of duelists, leading to booster packs for better cards and the next set of harder enemies and so on.

UNLIKE most of those other video games, you can choose to partner up with those same opponents you defeated to engage in a Tag Duel against two other characters (more on that later. Partnering up with characters is also a prerequisite to access certain booster packs). Regardless of how you go about playing the game, you will gain the trust and affection of the duelists you defeated and/or worked with; this is represented with a slowly filling heart meter that could be further bolstered by gifting them items or playing some mini-games disguised as dialogue options. Hitting one of four relationship thresholds for a character (even the non-anime ones) triggers an event where you must help that person with some request or another; all of these episodes resolve with a duel, usually a tag duel putting you and that character on the same team.

Hitting the max relationship rank with a duelist ends in you getting copies of their signature card - that you could not access anywhere else in the game - plus a declaration of deep-friendship-or-love to signify the bond your MC has with that character. You can then continue the game to build up your relationships with other duelists, while characters you share a strong connection with remain in the overworld if you ever want to see them again. They would come up to you and ask to partner up rather than the other way around, and they would even gift you some cards or items if they see you teaming up with someone else.

The relationship events for 5Ds’ main protagonists are rough adaptations of that anime’s Dark Signer arc. That is, you’re going to help those guys save the world from an impending apocalypse perpetuated by the titular Dark Signers. These condensed versions of that storyline are decent enough, even if they lacked the emotional depth of the anime which really makes you care about the character struggles of the protagonists. But outside of those narratives, I have to say that there is a disappointing lack of detail when it comes to fleshing out character dynamics outside of those events. When you move around the overworld with a character from the anime, this partner would say most of the same dialogue towards all other characters you interact with – including those who share a personal connection or history with. For example, there is this classist, mean-spirited police officer named Tetsu Trudge whose entire storyline is about hunting down Yusei Fudo, the main character of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds. Even watching the first episode of the anime reveals the highly hostile relationship between the two. But bringing them together in the overworld does not lead to unique dialogue or the like. There are other examples of that sort of narrative dissonance - Yusei and Jack, Misty towards Akiza, Leo and Luna and so on - that I will chalk down to laziness more than anything else.

It’s not all bad, however. On the positive side, I give credit to Tag Force 4’s attempt to flesh out the show’s minor characters. It’s fascinating to see what decks the game gives them – especially when those characters were never shown to have dueled on-screen. Furthermore, their relationship events are more interesting just by virtue of you not knowing how their stories would unfold. And given the top-heaviness of the anime plot, where only a small minority of main characters get the lion’s share of wins and (admittedly well written!) character development, it is a tad bit refreshing to see someone else be the story’s hero of the day for a change. And if the game doesn’t do justice to the relationship between characters outside of events, at least it does a better job of showing how your MC is getting closer with the duelists they interact with. As you slowly fill up the heart meters, the dialogue from the mini-games also changes to reflect that developing closeness. Characters start to open up about themselves or admit other things going on in their lives. And your exchanges with those you are familiar with are intimate more often – maybe even romantic.

So, the game does a passable job of making me care about its characters – some more than others. But the novelty of Tag Force 4 (and by extension the series it is from) comes from the dueling format. The changes feel so simple – you are alternating turns with your teammate while sharing the same zones and graveyard – but the implications that come from those tweaks change the experience of dueling in a meaningful way. The simple mechanic of ‘bouncing’ a card from the field back to its owner’s hand (through effects like Hane-Hane, Giant Trunade or Penguin Soldier) turns from a minor inconvenience to a major hindrance. Rather than just waiting for one opponent to finish their turn to play that bounced card again like in a 1 vs 1 duel (which are still possible in Tag Force games), its owner now needs to wait on three other players and their turns (the two opponents and one teammate) before doing so. Effects like Giant Rat, UFO Turtle, Shining Angel and so on that help a duelist find certain monsters or cards may be valuable for one character. But that powerful benefit can whiff if it activates on the turn of the other teammate whose deck lacks the search targets for those tutors. You can theoretically set spell cards face down as a way to ‘give’ your teammate an extra card to be used on their turn, but the duo opposite you can then counteract this by using spell removal cards.

I took joy from noticing and taking advantage of these little nuances in a tag duel, but the real fun comes from realizing the most important difference between a normal duel and its tag team version: to really go far in either the available tournaments in this game - or even the relationship events - the deck you play should synergize with that of your teammate. A stall-and-burn deck with cards like Gravity Bind or Level Limit B, no matter how well built or carefully thought out, could flop if working alongside a beatdown counterpart. A player who counts on Solidarity as a reliable source of bonus attack points (which only triggers if all monsters in the graveyard share the same type) faces a major hurdle if the tag partner plays monsters of a different type. Or maybe two decks clash because they really count on getting their field spells out in play to function (say, A Legendary Ocean Water deck alongside a Zombie World deck). Don’t get me wrong; powerful decks that bear no relation to what your teammate wants to do could win the day. It’s just that the margin for error is far smaller, since the best duelist out of the four need to worry about two opponents (and decks) trying to counteract their board rather than the usual one.

So unsurprisingly, the very format of the tag duel can alter the way you build your deck – or the way you build your partner’s deck, which is only possible after you finish two relationship events with that character. You can edit your teammates’ deck to contain (or even just splash) the archetypal cards that you run; this was how I initially approached deckbuilding, when I was particularly wedded to playing the Gladiator Beasts. But in my more recent dive into Tag Force, I really made it a priority to build my deck around what my teammate runs while refining what said teammate was trying to do. It’s this shift that helped me appreciate the breadth of strategies and archetypes that were available by 2009. Leo runs a Morphtronics deck, Yusei relies on Synchro summoning on top of an assortment of warriors, Jack plays dragon-themed beatdown and so on. Even between stall-and-burn characters like Luna and Rally, the latter specializes with burn damage while the former achieves the same effect with cards that reverse enemy life point gains (that she deliberately provides) with combos like Gift Card into Bad Reaction to Simochi. I am not suggesting that these strategies are equally matched against one another. But I enjoyed that challenge of being, say, a Reptile Solidarity duelist with Misty in one game before shifting over to a swarming Blackwing build to work alongside Crow. This wider perspective really helps me appreciate what the Duel Monsters card game has to offer in the late 2000s. There is also a joy that comes from reading your teammates’ various deck recipes, thinking up ways to make them even better, and seeing those improvements play out in duels.

And that variety of cards, archetypes, and strategies is evident in Tag Force 4, which contributes to the game’s incredible replay value. It’s not just an expanding roster of characters who you can duel against or work with. It’s that each character packs multiple decks each, so encounters against them can be different even if your deck stayed the same. Hell, a few characters even have different versions of themselves that can be unlocked after fulfilling certain thresholds. For example, you can unlock Misty’s Dark Signer version after maxing out your relationship with her AND defeating Akiza a certain number of times. So if you are already enjoying the core experience of Tag Force 4, then you could expect to keep playing it for a good long while.

I also want to give some credit to the game’s presentation in both the visual and audio fronts. Like in other Tag Force games, duels are punctuated with animations of characters playing their cards and reacting to the pushes and pulls of the contest. They express surprise when their key cards get removed from the field, have various chants or quips whenever they Synchro Summon, engage in some banter when they’re ahead/behind and so on. Some ace monsters tied to the anime characters like Yusei’s Junk Warrior, Jack’s Red Dragon Archfield and Akiza’s Black Rose Dragon also have two cutscenes each: one for when they’re summoned onto the field, and another for when they attack. Admittedly, these animations do cause duels to take longer than otherwise (which is why there is the option to skip those scenes entirely). But honestly, I really appreciate how those sequences help immerse you in a duel. It’s honestly like watching an episode of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime that your MC is involved in, with the possible excitement of a back-and-forth interaction between player to player - or team to team in tag duels. About the only negative I can ascribe to the animations is that they lack the voice acting from the Japanese version, which is a major omission in my humble opinion. The soundtrack of Tag Force 4 also has a few catchy tunes, especially the dueling music. Some of them have that techno tone that really meshes with the futuristic setting of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, and the tunes playing in the rundown Satellite are suitably grimy and melancholy. And like in other Yu-Gi-Oh! games outside of Tag Force, they shift depending on which player/team has the upper hand.

In terms of favorite tracks – in no particular order - I’d pick Clear Vision, On Cloud Nine, Deathmatch, Spellbound, and Critical Moment.

Of course, I want to take the time to address the game’s flaws beyond the lack of unique dialogue between characters. The AI (from your partner and from your opponents) can make some truly bone-headed decisions, and you have virtually no control over your teammate’s actions. Sometimes it activates spells to dispose of singular monsters that just don’t pose that much of a threat in the long term. In other instances, it walks into some painful traps by needlessly committing all available monsters to offense. The soundtrack that comes from editing your deck abruptly shifts to another without any rhyme or reason; I don’t think the new track is bad, but players of Tag Force 4 do not understand why this is happening to this very day. It can also be a hassle to track down specific duelists, especially if said duelists are not characters in the 5Ds anime. And while there is a tutorial for players who aren’t too familiar with the card game mechanics, it’s hard for me to say if it is effective as a teaching tool.

But despite these issues, Tag Force 4 is still an essential and enjoyable part of my experience with the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. Tag duels are a fun and interesting variation to the card game, and there is just enough story and character writing to keep me invested. At the bare minimum, I hope to try out the older Tag Force 2 in the future and see how it differs from TF 4. But with how much time I’m sinking into the latter, it’s going to be a bit until that actually happens...

I’ve put in at least 100 hours into Fire Emblem Fates, even if I don’t consider myself an expert on the game (never played past the normal difficulty). I don’t think it is as memorable as Fire Emblem Awakening, but I really liked playing Fates regardless and I expect to play it for the foreseeable future. Its stories in either the Birthright or Conquest paths are a combination of derivative and nonsensical. But it did a better job of rebalancing the dual guard and attack mechanics from Awakening, because enemies could now have access to those skills and are thus harder to defeat. Once I finished my super-grinding on Birthright (get all the support conversations, all the offspring characters etc), I hope to finally play the third (Revelation) path and see the “golden ending” for myself. Maybe I could even push myself to play on hard difficulty?

This is the context that I took with me when I watched the Quick Look for Fire Emblem Fates. I was not there to be introduced to the game, since I played it a ton already, but just to see how the site covered it. I thought the 8-4 Play conversation does a good job of contrasting the Birthright and Conquest campaigns. But after watching Quick Look, especially the second half of it, I was thinking, “I’m pretty sure that’s not how one should go about playing the game”.

I want to make clear in posting this that I am not trying to crap on Dan Ryckert. I didn't expect him to be a Fire Emblem savant, and lord knows that I'm not that much better a Fire Emblem player than he is. I believe him when he says that playing FE: Birthright and explaining its mechanics at the same time is hard. I agree with his observation that Fire Emblem characters consist of standard anime archetypes - some better executed than others. He’s also playing the game on casual mode - no permadeath - so his moves are not as costly as they would have been on classic mode. Some of his moves were for the sake of demonstrating certain parts of the game, like attack animations and so on. In the end, Ryckert should get to play the game the way he wants to play.

This post is an attempt to clarify exactly what I meant when I said “that’s not how one should go about playing the game", and at least explain what I would done differently compared to what Ryckert did in the Quick Look. The hope is that anyone reading this post will have a better grasp of Fire Emblem Fates, its game mechanics and some of its overarching themes. I have provided time stamps and stills from the video for the sake of convenience and making it easier for anyone reading this to follow.

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17:30 - Here Ryckert uses Orochi to attack an archer with Ox Spirit. He is doing this to demonstrate the combat animation, but he could have played that better. Ox Spirit, like other scroll/tome weapons in FE Fates, has to ability to fight at both close and long range. If I was in the same position, I would have moved Orochi directly right next to the archer and attacked him there. Because archers overwhelmingly cannot respond to attack from melee range, Orochi would not have to risk losing 10 HP from the archer’s long-distance counterattack. The archer missed his attack, so no harm done, but still….

20:21 - Ryckert moves Azura, the fragile singer unit, into enemy range without even having her use her sing ability to grant an adjacent character an extra turn. Had the two nearby cavalier units attacked her, she probably would have been knocked out. Then again, perhaps the only reason why Azura didn’t become (temporary) mincemeat is because the enemy units were also successful in doing damage to Felicia (20:47). Kaze should’ve been KO'ed (21:22) given that the enemy cavalier had a 75% chance to hit him with a javelin, but the RNG Gods smiled down upon the Quick Look and spared him.

21:50 - I remembered watching this part and going “Excuse me?!” out loud in front of the computer screen. Like tome weapons, dagger/shuriken weapons, used by ninja units like Kaze, allow their users to attack from melee range or from distance. Kaze did not have to take 11 damage from the archer to kill him. He could have moved right next to the enemy and attacked without any fear of reprisal.

22:20 - Here is a good moment for me to go into a modified mechanic introduced in Fire Emblem Awakening: Dual Attacks and Dual Guards.In Awakening, adjacent units get to work with one another and increase their combat efficiency. Sometimes they attack the same unit when one unit attacks, and other times they cover for each other when an enemy attacks. Fire Emblem Fates nerfed this system to reduce the frequency of Dual Guards and decrease the potency of Dual Attacks, but players should still take advantage of them just for that little extra damage and protection.

It is surprising to me that Ryckert decided to move Orochi away from the rest of his characters to attack the cavalier alone. Had Orochi attacked with a character right beside her, she stands to gain a couple of benefits. Her attack's accuracy would go up, the enemy’s attack accuracy goes down a little bit, and the allied adjacent unit (in this case, the Sky/Pegasus Knight Hinoka) would have chipped with with a Dual Attack that would deal a little extra damage (my rough guess would be 1-3 points of damage in the scenario). An example of a Dual Attack comes in 20:47, when Felicia tries to fight off a cavalier with Ryckert (who turned into a dragon). The video does not show an instance of a Dual Guard.

Dual Attacks and Guards (or just having characters standing adjacent to one another and being attacked) also serve the function of improving the relationship between characters, meaning that they can move along their support conversations much faster otherwise (assuming they have a list of support conversations with each other to begin with). So if Ryckert wanted to marry his player character to Orochi, he could have achieved that objective faster by either placing them side by side or pair up the both of them to increase the combat stats of one of the two in combat (an example of the Pair Up mechanic comes in 22:44). And by extension, units with stronger bonds also fight a bit better too; the adjacent partner’s dual attack will be just a bit stronger, and the stat boost through pairing up also goes up noticeably.

23:58 - See above. Silas could have been one tile south of the enemy cavalier, not north and benefit from a Dual Attack from either Felicia, Azura or Kaden. Even if those Dual Attacks are not necessary, Silas would have built relationships faster with Azura and Felicia.

24:27 - Here is another missed opportunity. Ryckert moves Felicia just two spaces away from Hinata and yet skips her turn without letting her use staves (the Sun Festal) to recover his health. If she used the Sun Festal, Felicia would have also received a heal when healing Hinata because of her “Live to Serve” skill, which allows a healing character to recover as much HP as the recipient of the heal did. And it’s not like Felicia is that constrained by the number of times she can heal in the mission. Her Sun Festal has 15 charges, and her Heal staff has another 18 more. That said, Ryckert does redeem himself a bit when he orders Felicia to heal the near-KO’ed Kaze some turns later (29:50). Oh, and healing/singing also builds relationships. Ideally Ryckert would have Azura sing (like she did in 27:37) to other units every turn to gain EXP and build relationships with the other characters, but it’s not a necessity.

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Some other notes I jotted down for the Quick Look, just clearing some misconceptions:

6:13 - It’s a little unclear here, but Ryckert seems to be suggesting that the Nohrians are a bunch of “lame, rich, aristocratic bad guys”. I can understand Ryckert for making that statement, since he was not all that deep into either the Birthright or Conquest campaigns, but that sentiment runs exactly contrary to what the Fire Emblem Fates writers had in mind when depicting the Kingdom of Nohr.

The overwhelmingly majority of Hoshidan characters (from their royal family to their retainers) are of noble descent. Characters like Hana and Setsuna came from a long established line of families who served royalty for generations, and thus a good portion of them came from backgrounds of relative economic privilege. Some characters, especially the ninjas, were not as wealthy growing up, but their families also served royalty over the generations too; that means that the current crop of ninjas that the players get to command came into their roles because of their familial connections (and lots and lots of ninja training, obviously).

Whatever the quirks and faults the Nohrians had, their retainers (who form the overwhelming bulk of the Nohrian cast) could at least be proud of the fact that they had to work their way up the command structure to reach retainer status. The number of Nohrian retainers who came from nobility could be counted in one hand. Everyone else were of lower-class, middle-class origins who had to scrape out a living during their youth, let alone reach a high position within the Nohrian military structure.

Even the Nohrian royals show shades of this ethos. The Hoshidan Prince Ryoma (18:45) was a literally born a winner, excelling at virtually everything he wanted to pursue. His counterpart, the Nohrian Prince Xander (7:12), was a pretty frail physical specimen who had to relentlessly train to become the feared warrior the player sees in the game. Furthermore, the Hoshidan royal family is far more tight-knit, whereas the Nohrian royal court is rife with infighting and squabbling. Your player character’s Nohrian siblings had to endure the horror of seeing their extended family die from fighting and killing one another - although whether they survived with their psyches intact is not entirely clear; some fared better than others.

Hoshido as a whole stands for prosperity and plenty, and Fire Emblem Birthright reflects this symbolism (virtually infinite chances to grind, endless stream of resources from gold to food to weapon-modifying ores). Nohr is equivalent to resourcefulness informed by poverty and scarcity, which explains why Fire Emblem Conquest reflects that characteristic (limited gold, EXP, resources, far fewer chances to grind).

11:27 - Here we have some misunderstandings here, besides mistaking the dragon's gender (Lilith is female and not male). Lilith did not originally have a giant form before shrinking down to its current, itty-bitty iteration. If I had to guess, Ryckert is confusing it with the time when his own player character transformed into a dragon out of rage after his birth mother died in his arms.

Lilith does receive level-ups when the player feeds her food, and her attributes (like HP, strength, defense etc) increase depending on the food provided to her. Beans increase her strength faster, fish prioritises on her speed growth - that sort of thing.

She also does not become a regular combatant for the player to use. She only fights in castle battles as a stationary unit (you see the Invasion 1 option at 11:50? That’s a castle battle that is harder than the average random battle in Birthright). In those scenarios Fort Ryckert (the place that player Ryckert is showing off to Austin starting in 9:55) becomes the battleground, and the playable characters have to kill all the enemies whilst defending the throne tile at the top of the map; if an enemy seizes that spot, even if the invading army was losing badly at the point, the player automatically loses the game.

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*This Appleseed movie review is the last of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here*

Appleseed Alpha is an experiment of sorts.

It trades in the futuristic cityscape of Olympus for the war-torn streets of New York. Its main characters, as a result, are less optimistic and more antiheroic than their counterparts in previous Appleseed movies. It also looks vastly different with its photorealistic art direction.

Could this new formula result in a product that is as enjoyable as Appleseed Ex Machina? Or will it make Appleseed fans yearn for even the inferior 1988 and 2004 movies?

Appleseed Alpha begins with our iconic action girl and cyborg duo resting on a moving train in an abandoned subway system. There is no light in any of the stations, and the dust has gathered on both our heroes and the transportation. The wear and tear are most visible in Briareos. He is running low on power, so he has to disable many of his cybernetic functions to remain alive throughout the mission. This energy-saving measure prevents him from detecting a trio of hostile cyborgs who hijack the train for themselves. Thankfully, despite a weakened Bri, our heroes manage to dispatch those robots without much of a fight, but they lose a box of vaccines in the process.

Two Horns, the cyborg crime lord running the remnants of New York City who employs Deunan and Briareos, naturally did not appreciate the fact that his two underlings lost the vaccines meant for him, so he tasked them with a more dangerous task: to defeat a small group of rogue drones east of the city perimeter. While on that mission, they run into and rescue the cyborg Olson and the human Iris. Grateful for their aid, Olson helps to restore the weakened Briareos to full power and invites our heroes to help him and Iris on their mission to disable a powerful superweapon before it falls into the wrong hands. That encounter begins Deunan's and Briareos' descent into a larger conspiracy involving a warmongering evil corporation and (what else) a mega mobile fortress befitting the Appleseed franchise. Gunfights and heroic sacrifices ensue.

The look of the movie reminds me of other photorealistic CGI works like Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, with incredible detail to match. Human characters do have the chance to enter the uncanny valley, but that effect is minimal because they are a minority within a cast mostly composed of cyborgs and robots. The designs on those cyborgs are generic, divided between the hyper-futuristic and the grit-weathered, but they are expressive. I especially liked the mouth movements from the cyborgs who do have mouths to use. While their lip flaps do not perfectly match up to the dialogue, I love the subtle ways the steel and pistons orient themselves to fit the mouth shapes as if they were human skin and bones. Then you have the beautiful vista shots of a desecrated Big Apple. Times Square looks like a ghost town, its energy and vibe all but sucked out given the lack of people there. The surrounding desert is similarly lifeless, with only scant traces of human existence in the form of ruins and destroyed cars. So credit is due to Appleseed Alpha for matching its predecessors' stellar production values despite sporting a completely different art style from them.

Our main characters initially parallel the state of the world they are living in: withered and broken. With only a handful of exceptions, they do not trust anyone beyond their immediate circle of allies. Briareos is the more pessimistic of our two heroes, as he focuses on living from moment to moment. Iris may have had pursued a noble goal of disabling a superweapon, but she is as paranoid as Bri. In fact, when Deunan and her cyborg lover first rescued her, she thought that they were spies working for the movie's villains! Deunan is more outgoing than her partner, but she also chickens out when faced with death and the grander responsibilities placed on her to help Iris carry out her mission. In total, our protagonists eventually learn to be less cynical, to live out their lives in search of a purpose larger than survival. Those sorts of character arcs are standard for post-apocalyptic narratives, but at least they are a little better than those found in the some other Appleseed movies.

The villains (well, one of them at least) also have their share of moments. Talos, a cyborg operative (or leader?) of the evil Triton megacorporation, is the real villain who has predictable plans for world domination. But the real spotlight stealer has got to be Two Horns. He has a penchant for joking around with friends and foes alike, but the niceties and jokes always come because he knows his power and influence as the Big Apple's top crime lord. He is hammy and over-the-top in an enjoyable way; Wendel Calvert, his voice actor, must have enjoyed himself during recording as he nailed the character down. I wished he was a little more threatening, but I guess his attack on Talos with his small cyborg army is a decent show of force. I also liked Matthews, the geeky mechanic who takes care of Two Horns' cyborg army. He is a punch clock villain who only sticks around because he has nowhere else to go. That he and Two Horns are gray morality characters is pretty standard for post-apocalyptic stories (again), but they are still (arguably) the most compelling "villains" that the Appleseed movies series ever created.

(Here I should mention that Wendel Calvert recently passed away on February 20, 2018. I only realized that fact while working on this review. He was only 48 years old. Not even hitting 50. Just mighty unfortunate.)

In conclusion, Appleseed Alpha is a decent addition to the animated portfolio of the Appleseed series. It is much better than the 1988 OVA and the 2004 entry and is either as good as Appleseed Ex or just slightly worse. It succeeds by keeping its formula straightforward and its narrative streamlined, but without rendering its characters sterile and lifeless. The likes of Deunan and Briareos grow up some after this one adventure, and some of the villains are equally interesting. Add them to an incredible graphical package, and the result is a movie worth watching at least once.

*This Appleseed movie review is the third of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here*

Appleseed Ex Machina still is a fun cyberpunk action movie that flies by seamlessly and effortlessly. It is better than its animated predecessors in every way, from a technical, graphical or writing perspective. The graphics are even slicker, the story more straightforward and evocative, and the characters fuller, more interesting, and worth caring for (if only a little bit).

Directed by Shinji Aramaki and produced by John Woo, Appleseed Ex Machina (hereafter referred to as Appleseed Ex) is the 2007 sequel to the 2004 Appleseed movie. It takes place two years after its immediate predecessor, and the sci-fi battle couple of Deunan Knute and Briareos enter another quest to save Olympus, the technologically and politically dominant city-state that they call home. They start with defeating a collection of cyborg terrorist groups, only to stumble onto a larger conspiracy that involves mind control, mad scientists and negligent mega-corporations. The duo also has to save Olympus while working with new ESWAT co-worker Tereus, who looks and behaves nearly the same as Briareos before the latter's cybernetic transformation. That fact alone is what makes our heroes’ romantic relationship stranger, complicated, and more interesting. I would love to say that the clone started a love triangle, but that would give the movie a bit too much credit.

The movie’s story is not as grandiose or ambitious as previous Appleseed movies, but that narrative modesty works to its advantage. It does not indulge in the grand discussion of techno-racial politics between humans, Bioroids (artificial humans who cannot feel or express extremely negative emotions) and cyborgs that spurred the plots of the other two movies. But I could not help but detect a strong thematic undercurrent of identity permeating in the work. The primary villain of Appleseed Ex believes that human individuality is the true cause of war and conflict, and thus wants humanity under one Hive Mind to stop people from fighting. Briareos and Tereus also need to figure out what makes them unique given that they share the same mannerisms and habits as the other. Even the final boss, a cyborg woman who attacks with a gaggle of tentacles, proves herself more an anti-villain than a monster. A human being is underneath all the cybernetics, and she does not want to carry out the mission that she was made for. In short, the movie has nothing unique to say about identity apart from the latter's inviolability. BUT I will give Appleseed Ex credit for doing it more artfully and subtly than its ham-fisted elders. I cared a little more about the heroes because I wanted them to be secure in the knowledge of their self-worth.

Improving upon Appleseed 2004's stellar presentation was going to be hard, but Appleseed Ex manages to do this by upgrading their character models and varying its locations. In a previous post, I noted how the cel-shaded humans did not gel with the rest of the movie's aesthetics. This issue does not occur in Appleseed Ex, and its character models are gorgeous. They look less plasticky than their 2004 counterparts. The shadows also gently rest on the characters' faces as they do on the other objects in the setting. The movie also has the space to show off its graphical artistry by looking into various rooms and places nestled underneath the Olympus skyline, each with their moods and vibes. We have a debriefing room, a dojo, a nearby cemetery, and the exterior of a government building replete with greenery and classical Greek columns. But the set- piece de la résistance is the floating Halcon fortress. It is a dark and terrifying locale that resembles a final boss level, replete with an endless swarm of drones as a defense mechanism. So kudos to the movie's artists and designers for making such a vivid cyberpunk world that pops on the big screen.

Compared to any of its animated predecessors, the movie also does a better job of fleshing out its main characters and its supporting cast. Despite existing in a plot that runs about as long as Appleseed 2004, they do plenty of things that give us a glimpse into their everyday lives. We see Briareos engage in some guy talk (pictured below) with one of his co-workers at the ESWAT shooting range, eventually exchanging banter regarding their love lives and significant others. Then we see the department attend a funeral for that co-worker when he died while in the line of duty. The movie also has a birthday party scene where the heroes and their coworkers make merry and enjoy themselves in each other's company. Some might argue that these quasi-slice of life scenes distract the audience from the movie's story or its themes. But because I thought the cast from Appleseed 2004 desperately needed more characterization, I welcome those lighthearted moments when Deunan, Briareos, and others aren't behaving like generic action heroes.

The problem I have with the characters is that they did not inherit the common sense of their inferior 2004 counterparts. They aren't as rock-stupid as the 1988 cast, but I had so many questions regarding their decisions made throughout the story. ESWAT, the paramilitary organization that employs our protagonists, should have anticipated that Deunan will resist working with someone who blatantly reminds her of her lover. ESWAT also should have also recognized that someone else in its division was perfectly capable of monitoring Tereus' performance. The villains want to zombify humanity into a Hive Mind to avoid war, but their scheme contradicts that objective by having their zombified subjects kill off whoever is not under their control. But the "Most Idiotic Decision Made in the Movie" Award has to go to Prime Minister Athena and the Olympus government. When they learn that the villains' mind control signals will turn its recipients into unthinking looters and plunderers, and that said signals will come via the Connexus (think smartphones installed inside AirPods), they go about confiscating the devices in the most half-assed manner. By their own admission, they only managed to grab one out of every ten Connexus, thus dooming everyone else to subjugation and possibly death. To paraphrase the Appleseed TV Tropes page, Olympus would have saved many more lives if it explicitly told its citizens about how the Connexus could turn them into zombie rioters for the bad guys and force the city police to shoot them on sight. The characters' collective idiocy doesn't ruin the movie for me, thankfully, but it is a sign of lazy storytelling and a lack of foresight on the writers' parts.

And with that, let me get to our heroes. I'll begin with Tereus because I have the most mixed feelings about his character. Besides inheriting Briareos’ looks and combat ability, he is a Bioroid too. That is, his limited range of emotions prevent him from feeling or expressing any negative emotions (anger especially). But by the end of the movie, Tereus outgrew his genetic programming by discovering his own identity and humanity. He lies to ESWAT to throw them off Briareos’ trail (“Thanks to you two [Briareos and Deunan], I just told my first lie”, he jokes), thus allowing our heroes to track down the villains and put an end to their mind control scheme. He also accepts the fact that he will not be with Deunan in any romantic capacity, and that he needs to find his own social life that only involves her platonically.

The problem I have with Tereus is that the writers did not handle his self-discovery arc well. They know what the start and end of his character development, but have a hard time showing how he reaches Point B from Point A. I did not sense any aha moments from him, no indication that he is increasingly aware of himself. Furthermore, Tereus spends virtually all his time with Deunan, Briareos, or both. I would have preferred to have the clone on his own for certain scenes. To throw a hypothetical scene that I made up, he could have done spectacular feats befitting an action hero and have people thank him, only to result in an inner dialogue about the legitimacy of that praise given that he inherited his skills (not earned them). Here is where a possible self-identity conversation can take place. It pains me to say it, but the movie wasted Tereus. I could not help but think of him as a non-romantic manic pixie dream guy. That is, he only exists to make the lives of our leading characters slightly more interesting. At least this trope is put to some use, as we'll see below.

I once thought Deunan was just a one-note action girl, but her iteration in Appleseed Ex grew on me. She first shows her tomboyish side when she looks uncomfortable wearing a high-fashion dress and trips over herself while on high heels. She also likes to drink when unhappy, and she considers the battlefield, the pub, and sports bar to be her natural habitats. What saves her from becoming a static character is her budding relationship with Tereus. As stated earlier, she initially objects to working with the clone who resembles her lover, for fear that she will damage her love life with Briareos. But after coldly telling Tereus to buzz off at the birthday party, she later apologizes to him and agrees to work with him in good faith. Then, when fretting over Briareos' mental health, she allows her new partner to become a literal shoulder for her to cry on.

I think she had her change of heart because she begins to understand just how lost and empty Tereus' life is. She realizes that, given the nature of his creation, he lives for nothing but war and fighting. That, unlike the other artificial humans in the Appleseed universe, his sense of identity unhealthily consists of becoming as formidable a combatant as Briareos, to the point that he does not know who or what he is otherwise. So every once in a while she gives Tereus a worrying look from a distance, like when she watches Briareos lay the smackdown on him in the dojo. I thought that look communicates her concern for his struggle to find himself, but also the hope that he can do so. Deep down she knows that Tereus is his own man and that, contrary to whatever ESWAT thinks, he does not have to be Briareos' equal to justify his existence. I find it no surprise that she is the one who tells him in the final battle that he is one of a kind and thus worth saving, that the idea of Olympus replacing him with more copies of Briareos can go straight to hell. In the end, Deunan proved that she has a softer and more compassionate side that I didn't think to be possible. And I am glad to be proven wrong by her.

Briareos does not have the same character development as Deunan, but he is an improvement from his 2004 and 1988 counterparts. Instead of his expected stoic and calm demeanor, he displays much more anger than in his previous incarnations, especially towards Tereus. He denigrates his new co-worker in no uncertain terms, seeing him only as a 'copy' and an experiment without an identity to call its own. But Briareos unknowingly reveals his real insecurities when under mind control by the bad guys. When he confronts Tereus at that point, he begins lashing out and angrily asks why someone looks exactly like him, and why Tereus has what he lost. I know the cyborg was saying that when under the bad guys' control, but I thought that outburst came from a real place. That brief exchange tells me that our cyborg protagonist is nostalgic for his previous life as a human and that he values his uniqueness and individuality. Perhaps he fears that Deunan will dump him and hook up with his human copy. He might even dread the day when Tereus does supplant him as the best soldier in ESWAT.

In the end, Briareos does reconcile with his clone co-worker during the final battle. But I do not think he is over the fact that he will remain a cyborg for the rest of his life. His only real remedy for this reality is focusing on his relationship with Deunan. His promise to protect her, even at world's end, is cheesy but heartfelt. So while he does not change over the course of the story, I appreciated the movie for having Briareos grapple with his cybernetic nature in a more emotionally resonant manner. His character reminds me of the first iteration of Iron Man in 1963, as someone forever trapped in an iron costume for survival's sake, and I was made to care for his safety and wellbeing.

To sum up, I love Appleseed Ex Machina. When I first watched it nearly a decade ago, I left convinced that it was the best thing the series had to offer outside of the manga. I can easily recommend the movie to anyone curious about the Appleseed universe.

Next week, I will be looking at the last Appleseed-related movie (for now) released in 2014, Appleseed Alpha. Could it meet the relatively high standards set by Appleseed Ex?

*This Appleseed movie review is the second of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here*

My first memories of this Appleseed movie are hazy at best. I remembered that I was roughly ten and that I first watched it in Cantonese. It had robots, explosions, and a cool action girl as its lead. The box that contained the DVD was shiny, if I recall. And although the movie came and went without making an impression on me, I was intrigued enough to (casually) follow the series in my adolescence. I tracked down its sequel movies and occasionally checked up on its Wikipedia page to see what was next for Masamune Shirow's creation.

Now I have returned to the work that first introduced me to Deunan, Briareos, their world and their friends. Could the 2004 Appleseed movie (hereafter abbreviated in this post as Appleseed 2004) better than I thought it was as a ten-year-old?

Plot

The movie begins in a war zone, where soldier Deunan Knute is fighting for survival. She and her comrades battle a small platoon of cyborgs, with most of the casualties falling on her side. Before the robots can claim total victory, a third army intervenes and defeats the cyborgs. It also captures Deunan and transports her to Olympus, a technologically advanced city that governs whatever remains of the war-torn world.

After awakening in an Olympus medical facility, Deunan reunites with Briareos, her former lover who turned into a cyborg after suffering fatal injuries a year ago. Hitomi, a government official, also helps Deunan catch up to recent events. Deunan learns that Olympus brought her in to be a soldier that will keep the peace between humans and Bioroids, artificial humans who run the city's government. To fulfill this role, she trains with her new ESWAT police colleagues and their advanced weaponry. But then, on her first day on the job, a group of human terrorists infiltrated and destroyed Olympus' Bioroid care center. With that facility in ruins, all Bioroids (like Hitomi) will soon age rapidly and die off.

To ensure the Bioroids' survival, Prime Minister Athena instructs ESWAT to find Appleseed, a computer program that activates the Bioroids' reproductive capabilities and extends their lifespans. Deunan, Braireos and some other soldiers fly to a secret lab to begin their mission. There they discover that the programme came from Deunan's mother and that it was inside the handgun of Deunan's late father. But before they can return home, the all-human (and anti-Bioroid) Olympus Regular Army arrives and intercepts them. Briareos almost dies in the battle, but Deunan manages to flee to Olympus and activate the Appleseed programme.

But the story is not yet over. Deunan discovers that Olympus' Elders wanted Appleseed for their own nefarious plans to destroy humanity. They activate the city's mobile towers and direct them to the Tartarus building. If the complex falls, its destroyed D-Tank will spread a virus that will render all humans infertile. So with a recovered Briareos, Deunan made her way to the seventh tower while the rest of ESWAT laid covering fire for them. On the tower, she typed out a password that deactivates all the towers right before they destroy D-Tank.

After the battle, Deunan reunites with Briareos and Hitomi. Large parts of Olympus now lay in ruin, but Deunan pledges to fight for future generations of humans, Bioroids, and cyborgs who will rebuild the city and create from it a more peaceful and just society.

Analysis

Appleseed 2004 is a passable sci-fi action flick.

Even after 14 years, the movie's graphics are incredible. Everything looks shiny and new. I especially enjoyed the sweeping shots of the Olympus skyline punctuated by the Tartarus and Daedalus complexes and their solar panel arches. The roads, adorned with a panoply of hi-tech vehicles, are squeaky clean and reflective of light. And like the Landmates from the 1988 movie, the piloted mechs have a sheen balanced with a striking color scheme of white and blue. So when Hitomi claims that Olympus is a utopia, one is hard-pressed to disagree with her. The only real gripe I have concerns the human character models. They are cel-shaded and thus clash up against the rest of the movie's aesthetics. When they are in a nighttime scene or a dark room, I cannot shake the feeling that the shadows on the humans are either too dark or too light relative to the rest of the setting. I could also do without some of the slo-mo since the actions that were slowed down for dramatic effect were not that awesome. But despite these particular flaws, I still found Appleseed 2004's presentation to be artistic and pleasing to the eye.

The worst part of the movie is its story. I get the moral that Appleseed 2004 is trying to teach to its audience: hating Bioroids (the stand-in for people who are not like you) is not good, yet hating humanity is also not good. The problem is that these two groups are hardly in conflict at all. Yes, we do have an openly bigoted group in the Olympus Regular Army, but the other humans in the movie are coexisting with their Bioroid neighbors without incident. ESWAT itself seems to be a hodgepodge group that gets along swimmingly. Furthermore, when the human terrorists destroyed the Bioroid care center, no one else took up arms to overthrow their artificial masters. The movie could have pushed its themes better by focusing on the genuine hurdle that humans cannot serve in the Olympus government given their (supposed) judgment-clouding emotions. One can imagine resentment amongst humans who have the skills to be administrators. But given that the Olympus Regular Army wants to rectify this problem through a violent coup, the audience has no choice but to side against it. The larger question of who can access power, or how one can find the people who can wield power responsibly, buries itself under the hail of bullets, shrapnel, and broken Landmates.

The characters are just OK. While they are leagues ahead of their 1988 iterations, on the strength of their non-stupidity, they still don't have any discernable character arcs. Deunan and Briareos are at their best when they shut up and do action hero things: firing their weapons while on the move, running away from gunfire, darting around giant mobile fortresses while in their Landmates and so on. Briareos' moment of awesome comes from winning a fight against a trio of fembot assassins (video above). Deunan also has her moment in an ESWAT training exercise where she singlehandedly defeats 16 soldiers without a firearm to start. To be fair, the characters do occasionally show off other sides of their personalities, but those moments are minimal and out of focus.

Deunan has a lot of things going for her character, but she mostly stays the same throughout the movie. She does show signs of difficulty in adjusting to her life in Olympus, and that struggle does make sense. After all, the habits she formed while surviving in a war zone now need to be unlearned or modified in an affluent and hi-tech city. Hell, just living in a house with running water, lights and comfy furniture alone will take some getting used to. Deunan best shows this alienation from the amenities we take for granted by laying on a bed for the first time in eons, only to later park herself on the bedroom floor and sleeping soundly there. She also shows some sign of distance towards her new colleagues at ESWAT when going out with them at a bar, which is understandable given that she just started working there. But these quirks do not affect her much. The rest of ESWAT treat her like one of the guys, and sleeping on the ground did not affect her ability to be the badass she already was at the start of the movie.

Although movie posters and DVD box arts depict Briareos as one of the movie's protagonists, he plays a less central role in the story. He's the strong, silent, and stoic type, a complete departure from his hammier 1988 counterpart. If he has a character arc, it has to do with resetting his relationship with Deunan. He initially acts coldly towards her for no apparent reason, but that comes from his divided loyalties between her and the Elders who were responsible for his life-saving cyborg transformation. He knew of Appleseed from the start, and he deliberately allowed the terrorists to destroy the Bioroid care center to force ESWAT to look for the program. He later proves his love for Deunan by protecting her against the Olympus Regular Army, almost at the cost of his own life. Then once the Elders turned out to be genocidal, Briareos' inner conflict easily resolves itself, and his relationship with Deunan approaches its romantic status quo. Sad to say, I did my best to ignore whatever character development Briareos had in the movie. I just found it to be too convoluted. I think his initial distance from his lover should have had a more simple explanation, like adjusting to his life as a cyborg.

Hitomi doesn't do much in the story, but I found her interesting to some extent. Her primary purpose in the movie is to help Deunan, and the audience, get up to speed by providing exposition about Olympus and the politics surrounding it. And as a Biodroid she believes that her programmed and limited range of emotions is what helps her city remain stable. But I also think she goes beyond her programming in her own small way. Just before the halfway point, the Elders remind her to do her routine lifespan extension at Tartarus. Then later at the bar, Hitomi confides in Deunan that she was interested in feeling love, an emotion beyond her reach. My wacky theory is that she was secretly attempting to loosen Gaia's restrictions on her emotional range by intentionally delaying her checkups. Only then could she know the meaning of love, and experience her humanity away from surveillance. Now, I wish that she did a bit more to earn that humanity (instead of having it provided to her through Appleseed). But I guess she proved herself useful by recovering from her near-death experience and telling Deunan how to stop the incoming mobile fortresses.

Conclusion

So in the end, the 2004 Appleseed movie has exceptional visuals, middling characters, and an unwieldy story. It is much better than the 1988 OVA, and I also think it is better than the 24% score given to it by Rotten Tomatoes. If I had to put a number on it, my proposed score would be something between 40 and 50 percent. I would recommend watching the movie once, and not taking the movie's overarching themes all that seriously. Make sure you also recite the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Mantra throughout, audibly or otherwise.

My review for Appleseed Ex Machina, the sequel to Appleseed 2004, will be up next week on June 18.

*This Appleseed movie is one of four that I will be doing for the month. For a small primer on the comic series, check out my Appleseed Month announcement here*

The movie ends with Deunan Knute setting down flowers for her fallen co-worker from the police force. She takes in and contemplates her colleague's last words before making the silent walk home. The camera pans upwards to Olympus' glistening skyline. And a melancholic saxophone plays in the background as she wonders whether protecting the city she calls home is as noble a task as she once believed.

As for me, I pondered on the buildup and plot points that made an otherwise splendid denouement so baffling and nonsensical.

This 1988 Appleseed movie is about humans rebelling against the 'utopia' they live in. It takes place in the urban jungles of Olympus, the proverbial shining city on a hill built from the ashes of a catastrophic world war. Living there provides perks like employment, housing, and healthcare, but not everyone likes this arrangement. That is because four out of five Olympus residents are Biodroids, artificial humans who run the city's government. Therefore, a faction of non-synthetic humans decided to take up arms in an attempt to overthrow their synthetic counterparts. One such rebel is A.J Sebastian, a bigot who insists that the Biodroids should be doing more menial tasks than governing. If he had his way, they would be flipping burgers, doing house chores, or even worse.

Working with A.J is Calon, the dead police officer who I mentioned in the first paragraph. He does not share his ally's intense contempt for the Biodroids, but he is also unsatisfied with his lot in life. He has everything provided for him to live comfortably, and so struggles to find any meaning for himself. To make matters worse, his wife committed suicide at the start of the movie. The Olympus medical services were no better, as it forcefully extracted Calon's memories of his late spouse as a means to figure out why she did what she did. He soon adopts her terminology when fighting against our heroes, claiming that the city is a gilded cage that saps humanity of its innate freedom.

I have attempted to paint Calon in the best light possible because his argument for toppling Olympus is absurd. Someone should remind him that living in Olympus beats out scrounging around in a desolate war zone any time. Deunan Knute (one of our two protagonists) should also tell him that the city revived her lover Briareos by turning him into a cyborg. Finally, someone should at least argue that the city as is offers its own variation of freedom. That is, by freeing its residents from starvation, disease and unemployment, they are free to pursue self-actualisation, to become their best selves. Obviously that line of argument is problematic, but I do not know what is worse - Calon's flawed motivations or the lack of rebuttal towards them. He should have been an uncomplicated character, a grieving widow struggling to fit into his new environs. At least his negative experience with the city's mental health institute gives him some good reason to be resentful. But one wonders why he is taking his rage out towards the entire city instead of those individuals working in that institute.

Our heroes are kind of boring and are not much smarter than the villains. Deunan is the fair cop who doubles as a hothead. That is all I can say about her because she does not contribute much to the plot's trajectory. And despite being a cyborg, Briareos also adds little to the package. For someone who needs to adjust to living in a new metal shell, he goes about his life as if that transformation never happened. There is even a shot of him consuming a soft drink in a fast food restaurant; one wonders if he can also eat food. Meanwhile the moments when Briareos shows off his new cyborg capabilities come very few and far between. Together, they only realize that Calon is working for the bad guys near the end of the story, despite earlier knowing that he hated Olympus.

Auxiliary characters also have their moments of stupidity. Athena, the Bioroid leader of Olympus, showed such great judgment when she tasked our dynamic duo to hunt down and kill A.J Sebastian. But she worsened the situation by hindering Deunan and Briareos while they were in the middle of preventing a kidnapping. And when asked why she meddled, she brings up that time that they unknowingly allowed A.J to escape during a hostage rescue at the beginning of the movie. She even accuses them of working with the human terrorists. Which raises this question: If she suspected our heroes for foul play, then why did she assign Deunan and Briareos to undercover work in the first place?

But the ultimate moron of this movie has to be Hitomi, the Biodroid who rescues humans from the wastelands and integrates them into Olympus society. She makes a good first impression through her work and her bubbly, if airheaded, personality. But then she loses all credibility when Calon kidnaps her and (shockingly) persuades her to do his bidding. What caused Hitomi's change of heart, you might ask? The rogue cop asked her to help him as a human being and not as a Biodroid. I mean, what blithering nonsense! That explanation does nothing to address her fondness for Olympus and her desire to protect it. And as if we needed even more proof of Hitomi's stupidity, Deunan and Briareos manage to save her from Calon, only for her to do what her captor wanted and unwittingly shut down the city's computer system and allow A.J Sebastian to invade Olympus on a giant walker. The Biodroid had all the time in the world to walk away from a wounded Calon and end the day on a high note for our heroes. Instead, she just had to increase the amount of time I had to spend with this movie. Athena should either fire Hitomi or reassign her to toilet-cleaning duties in the Tartarus complex.

With my main gripes about the characters out of the way, I now need to comment on the less terrible (though still problematic) aspects of the OVA: the presentation. I'll try not to critique the graphics too harshly since the movie is roughly three decades old, but the animators did cut some corners. The most baffling decision they made was with the walker that A.J Sebastian used. You see, it didn't stomp around the city and rain down mechanical fire and fury to any innocent bystanders. Instead, it just floats around Olympus and discharges a grand total of one shot from its large cannon towards the Biodroids' main base. If I had to guess, the only casualties from this conflict only are Calon, A.J. (one-shot by some no-name cop despite transforming into a friggin cyborg), and an apartment block that might be empty. You would think that the most powerful weaponry in the Olympus arsenal could do just a bit more damage, right?

At least the English dub by Manga Entertainment is somewhat passable. Julia Brahms plays up the hamminess as Hitomi, which is a good idea given the character's personality. I could not pin down what William Roberts is trying to do by giving Briareos a Brooklyn accent. But given that the cyborg is not that serious-minded, I gave it a pass. Finally, Larissa Murray plays Deunan Knute as the only sane woman on the team (albeit with a slight temper). It is serviceable, though nothing special. The only problem I have with it is its bungling of the name Briareos. Instead of pronouncing it as Bree-air/ar-ree-oh-sss, the voice actors ignored the first R sound and instead called the cyborg Bully or Buliaros. I guess no one in the studio read up on Greek mythology. One other thing to mention is that the dub has its share of profanity. I am uncertain if the swear words were from the original Japanese script (my guess is no), but I did not mind their presence.

To make a long story short, I don't like this particular Appleseed movie. The characters are uninteresting and sometimes do stupid things. The limited animation also renders the action scenes unexciting. Finally, the writers did not take time to check if what they were writing made any bit of sense. I get that Gainax wants to make a product that probes as deeply into the themes of politics and technology as the original manga source material. In the end, however, it came off as pretentious and confusing when it attempted to dive into the messages it was trying to send. Here is hoping that the 2004 Appleseed movie can do just a bit better than its 1988 counterpart. I mean, the bar could not be set any lower for it.

Dear anyone who happens to read this,

After spending the last few months reintegrating GiantBomb.com back into my life, I am happy to announce that I will be having an Appleseed Month in June. That is, I will be reviewing four animated movies from the Japanese manga series in the following order:

June 4 - Appleseed OVA (1988) (*update* it's done! Come check it out here)

June 11 - Appleseed (2004) (*update* it's done! Come check it out here)

June 18 - Appleseed ex Machina (2007), (*update* it's done! Come check it out here) and

June 25 - Appleseed Alpha (2014) (*update* it's done! Check it out here)

I will be watching the English dub of all four movies, except for the 1988 Original Video Animation (edit [30-5-18): even the Original Video Animation)

For those unfamiliar with the series, Appleseed was a 1985 manga written by Masamune Shirow, the same person responsible for the acclaimed Ghost in the Shell franchise. It tells the tale of a world ravaged by war, with the human population dwindling to a fraction of what it once was. Nation-states failed and collapsed, leaving most of the conflict's survivors to settle in Olympus, a large and futuristic city that doubles as the most powerful polity in its time. However, all is not fair in this oasis of glass and steel, for the humans are not alone there. Along with some cyborgs, they have to share the urban space with a group of artificial humans called bioroids. These bioroids constitute over half of the Olympus population and most of the city's government, and their defining feature is a variety of physiological checks that render them more emotionally subdued than their non-artificial counterparts. Not everyone is cool with this equilibrium for a variety of reasons, and thus conflict amongst the city's factions is all but inevitable. Outside corporations also join in on the action from time to time.

Keeping the peace amongst Olympus' denizens are Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonchires, two members of the ESWAT organization that serves as the city's police force and standing army. Deunan is the action girl with extensive combat training and weapons knowledge. Outside of duty, she is a tomboy who performs poorly in 'womanly' things like cooking or dressing up; if not stopping bad guys on the job, drinking at a bar in civilian garb is more to her speed. Briareos is a human-turned-cyborg and a one-man wrecking crew. He has super strength, high durability, and technologically enhanced shooting skills that give Chris Kyle an erection. He is also Deunan's mentor, co-worker, and lover, meaning their relationship is all over the place and usually fraught with tension. But when everything clicks between the two, they prove that their reputation as ESWAT's best is well justified.

OK, so Briareos gets injured at the end of the hostage rescue, but the point still stands.

Appleseed probably does not have the same cultural caché as Ghost in the Shell, but it also rises above the level of chopped liver. Winning the 1986 Seium Award for Best Manga is no small feat; and the fact that the series received a variety of anime adaptations (and some video games) after its original run speaks to its modest yet noticeable resonance in Japanese media. But the movies that I will review must stand on their own; none of them had Shirow at the creative helm, and the world that he created was in the hands of other writers and animators. Now, I cannot tell if Gainax, Shinji Aramaki, and John Woo can take the creative liberties that evoke the manga from whence the movies came. After all, I did not read the books. But could they produce entertaining cyberpunk flicks with flashes of philosophical brilliance? That is what the Appleseed Month will find out.

My review of the manga's first Original Video Animation will come out on the 4th of June.

Thank you for the attention.

The formula for the Ultraman series has been pretty consistent for close to half a century. You have a bunch of giant daikaiju monsters running around the city, and a team of quazi-science-military personnel constructed to fight said daikaiju. Thanks to plot convenience one of the members of said team can transform into a giant alien warrior who is a part of the Ultraman race. The Ultraman of the series would fight off different monsters of the week for as long as the show is on, and it’s on to the next Ultraman series.

Now here comes the curveball: what if I told you that the titular Ultraman character gets marginalized? That this awesome force of might gets 5 minutes of screen time (tops!) and fights in one-sided battles that are worth skipping? It’s similar to having a Terminator movie without the Terminator [Salvation doesn’t count in my book; it’s more like a cameo in that instance]. How weird would such a twist be for longtime fans of the Ultraman series?

Well, Ultra series fans need not use their imagination, because one of their own has flipped the sacred, half-century-old franchise formula on its head. Meet Ultra Seven X, a 2007 re-imagining of one of the series’ most popular iterations in the late 1960s, Ultra Seven. An amnesiac secret agent, whose job is to track down and kill aliens, is given the power to transform into the titular Ultra Seven to fight monsters; in the span of an episode (20-something minutes) this agent, Jin, takes up at least 20 minutes solving mysteries and sleuthing around. Ultra Seven shows up and does his thing in under 5. Shocking as this arrangement sounds, Ultra Seven X is still a rock solid show that does more right than wrong.

The one big takeaway I get from watching this 12-episode series is how it handles its themes and tones. The Ultra series that I’ve watched usually has a moral or two to give to its audience at the end of each episode. Unfortunately those efforts are usually geared towards an incredibly young audience, so at times the lessons felt a bit pretentious and preachy. But Ultra Seven X separates itself from its brethren because its themes are much more subtle. It allows the audience to deduce for themselves what each episode wants to convey.

Throughout the show, I got the sense that the city Jin lives in is a future dystopia in more ways than one. Not only are there aliens running around, the work and expectations heaped upon people can get overwhelming. Individuality is a sin. There is no safety net for anyone down on financial luck, leaving people susceptible to alien attack. The Big-Brother government is apathetic to these problems, not to mention patronizing when it thinks it knows how to make people happy or how people should live their lives. With no end to the suffering in sight, people want to get out, even if it means traveling away with aliens!

Most other Ultra shows would have a happy ending and message to each episode. “Sure, this problem exists,” says a character or two, “but with hope, determination and whatnot we can solve this problem”. Save for one episode, Ultra Seven X skips these shenanigans, understanding that the problems it addresses have no easy solution. Almost every Ultra Seven victory is bittersweet. In one episode, the monster of the week is destroyed, but that means the homeless people it took fall back to square one, living in poverty. Mind you, Ultra Seven X should not be confused with Children of Men or 1984, but compared to other Ultra series it has a maturity in its handling of themes and social commentary that I definitely appreciated.

One other way the show subtly provides its lessons/morals is through its presentation, as Ultra Seven X is a good show graphically. The red alien fighter himself looks updated and sleek, a decision that allowed the hero fit into more modern times and tastes. The lighting is also handled expertly, going hand in hand with the difficulty of living in the city. It’s eerily dark almost all the time in the streets and in the bars. Even bright days have flushed out colors, as if there really is no “color” in the setting in more ways than one. As most dystopias go, the depiction Ultra Seven X’s is well above average.

The vast majority of Ultra Seven X has the format of a Scooby Doo show. Jin and friends are given an investigation to head from their enigmatic superior, the gang snoops around, finds the perpetrator then resolves the conflict one way or another. Perhaps it's too simple to boil down the many stories in this show as such, but as someone who's new to the detective genre I found the mysteries to actually be well constructed. I found it hard to predict what would happen next until the part when the show spills the beans for me with effective results.

One episode involves a "Red Coat Killer" who is after drug syndicate members. A witness of this killer said that this alien was in fact his girlfriend, and because she got shot by the syndicate she became the rampaging killer donning the red outfit. But Jin and friends realize that this testimony was only a fabrication; the witness was in fact the rampaging alien, and when he got shot he inadvertently killed his human girlfriend. The camera slowly phases away to show actual reality: The alien man was wearing a red coat and high heels to complete his charade. It was an intense episode to say the least, and it is an indicator of how well written individual episodes are in this Ultra Seven X.

Because the audience will be spending a vast majority of the show with Jin and his crew solving alien mysteries, it is a good thing that the characters are likeable if at times flat. Jin is the weak link as a generic do-gooder, although his amnesia allows for an interesting backstory. Agent K, Jin’s partner, is slightly more complex, with a smiling, jokey exterior that masks cold-blooded determination and bad-assitude. Agent S as an action girl, and kicks all sorts of butt. She butts heads with K on several occasions, providing the belligerent sexual tension and genuinely funny moments throughout the show. The cast is not awesome overall, but at least its quality does not drag down the show.

What does hamper the show is that Ultra Seven feels so out of place plot-wise because he does so little. The fights he gets into are so short, 5 minutes tops. The brevity of fights isn’t the worst thing in the world; what kills the action is that it is almost always incredibly one-sided to Ultra Seven’s favor. There’s even one episode where all Ultra Seven does is wave goodbye to an alien ship! Compare the action sequences for the humans. It is fast paced with a balance of martial arts and gunslinging. The combatants were even, so there is the tension that something can go wrong. I sometimes wonder aloud why this Ultra Seven has to be in the show in the first place.

The people behind the show is also dropped the ball when it came to the music. Granted, there were some positive spots. There is a rocking guitar for some fight scenes, and the show usually makes a good choice of when to put music in the scene and when to keep things quiet. But there are some glaring omissions. The lack of an opening disturbs me the most, because a great opening theme can leave an indelible impression to the audience and be what connects people back to the show for years to come. The ending theme is mixed for me. “Another Day Comes” by Pay Money to My Pain is a good song, but like Ultra Seven himself the tune feels out of place.

Ultra series are almost intended for children, because there is the need to sell toys/ models of Ultramen and daikaiju monsters. Ultra Seven X seems to fit more to the teenage crowd or above, perhaps aiming for longtime fans of the Ultra series that are now in adulthood. The decision to cater to a new age group is not without its hiccups, because the show seems to forget what made the Ultra series special: Giant brawls between Ultraman ___ and monsters. But its attempt to spin a darker, more complex tale is spot on both narratively and graphically, and the show should be given credit for such an effort.

For about 4 and a half hours of your time to see the whole show (12 episodes, ~23 minutes each) on YouTube, you can certainly do much worse than Ultra Seven X.

Meet Takuya, Koji, Zoe, Tommy and JP. They are five teenagers with attitude who will become the unwitting saviors of our world against the forces of evil!

If I blank out the names above, you might have guessed that I was talking Power Rangers or Super Sentai. But in fact, I could also be referring to characters from Digimon Frontier, a 2002-03 anime that has flipped the script as Digimon shows go. While Digimons did the bulk of the fighting in past incarnations of the franchise, Frontier puts the kids themselves in the warzone; the humans themselves transform into Digimon to save the Digital World from the many villains they encounter.

It’s a drastically different take, all right. But just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s good. Digimon Frontier has some major missteps when it came to its character cast and plot pacing, though it also has some pluses that make the show at least watchable.

The most important plus for this show has to be its music. You are guaranteed to have at least one good tune to listen to per episode that can generate excitement and punctuate awesome moments. The theme songs are a start. Both the original theme song and the dub’s alternate are impressive and fit right into the show. The former is 'Fire', written by longtime Digimon songwriter Koji Wada, has a rocking guitar and the message to follow your heart and break your personal limits/boundaries. The dub’s theme song (A World For Us All), written by Chris Horvath, is no dud either. With its tribal-esque elements it stresses camaraderie and togetherness, a key theme of the show given that the main characters are strangers to start out and need to work together.

Another feature that makes the show cooler is its Spirit Evolution [aka morphing] sequence. You got bar codes everywhere and a great color balance of black, light blue and some other color with catchy evolution music blaring in the background. The Japanese version uses Wada’s “With the Will”, which really amps up the excitement of the sequence. “The Last Element” for the Japanese version is also an energetic piece for the special evolutions. The dub music isn’t as enjoyable as Wada’s piece, but it’s again a combination of techno beats and tribal mysticism. The latter harkens back to the nature-esque origins of the Digimon spirits, the former complementing the bar-code, machine-like putting together of our heroes during the evolution process.

But as much as the music is well above average, the people behind Digimon Frontier have made some serious miscalculations in some key parts of the show. It is awesome to see everyday kids transform into almighty Digimon guardians, but engaging personalities, backstories etc. are also vital to give the characters more emotional depth and contribute to the quality of the show. Frontier’s cast is sadly unimpressive. There is not much to any character in terms of personality and complexity, as they each embody one worn-out trope.

You got Takuya, the fearless, hotheaded, leap-before-you-look leader who is teamed up with Koji. The latter is, unsurprisingly, a calculating, unemotional lone wolf. It’s not like we saw this combination a gazillion times, or saw better iterations of that kind of duo. And yet, these two are actually the more prominent characters out of the five kids. Tommy, Zoe and JP on the other hand fall into the “useless, why the hell are you even here” category, as midway through the series their powers get taken by Takuya and Koji to evolve into bigger and badder Digimon, rendering the threesome to be sideline cheerleaders.

Zoe fits that “useless” role to a tee. Sadly the writers made her into an incompetent fighter and the source for fan service; as the team’s smurfette she has only one major victory all season, and that win was against the smurfette of the villains’ five-man band! Every other time she was outclassed by the baddies very quickly. Her Digimon forms are revealing, attempting to flash as much skin as possible to the teenage male demographic. There is also this dandy little clip which pretty much sums up the writers’ views of the team’s only female protagonist. There’s also not much else to note about Zoe, except that she grew up in Italy, could utter Italian phrases and is awkward communicatively. That’s about it.

All I can say about JP is that he wants to get into Zoe’s pants, eats a lot of chocolate and can’t make friends because, well, he tries to bribe people via magic tricks and chocolate. Beyond showing this flash of insight he doesn't really change per se [other than being a little more agreeable], or manage to overcome his flaws. Tommy does have some merit; as the youngest member of the group he has to grow up, stand up for himself, and be less trusting of complete strangers. He does not have the most original character arc, but at the end of the show you do see some lasting change in the guy. Sadly the writers have benched him from the action anyways.

And you think it’s just our heroes that have these issues. The villains are even less interesting if you can imagine that. The first four villains only have one gimmick, and that’s their accents. One sounds like an ogre/troll, another a Brooklyn cab driver. The team’s smurfette has a Southern Belle drawl and the leader of this “team” speaks Old English [Thou, Ye, Hath, you get the drill]. All the villains except Duskmon [who happened to be a kid trapped by the bad guys] just want to conquer for the sake of conquering. There is zero depth to any of them.

The other major misstep in Digimon Frontier has to be how the plot is paced. Though the series is 50 episodes long, it could have been pared down to maybe 30 or 40 had it not been for filler. Granted, filler early on is actually a good thing; coming in the audience don’t know anything about their heroes, and those episodes allow it to know more about them. Episode 7 has Takuya and Koji show off their contrasting personalities over how they should treat Tommy [lightly or harshly, given Tommy’s age]. Episode 8 allows Zoe to explain why she is stand-offish to JP. Overall these instances are good uses of filler episodes, even though the characters aren’t highly developed to begin with.

Unfortunately there is more instances of filler used poorly. Episode 18 is a Wacky-Racer parody, as the fivesome race on Train Digimon for no reason. Episode 19 has the characters cooking a bunch of burgers with a Digimon family. Exactly what do they contribute to the overall plot? But the ultimate crime of the show has to be its “Royal Knights Saga”. It lasts from Episodes 37 to 47, and in all these episodes the two Royal Knights defeat Koji’s and Takuya’s ultimate evolution forms every time. It’s the same crap over and over again and it gets painfully boring. What we got here is a show that has overstayed its welcome due to poor use of filler.

The show does end on a high note, with a tone of finality that is rarely seen in most shows nowadays. But any advantages this show has are compromised by a cast with barely anything redeeming or memorable about it and a story with uneven pacing. It’s not a completely terrible show, because there are good music pieces, flashy evolution scenes and some cool action, and I’d definitely recommend the series to anyone curious. Just make sure to temper your expectations if you do want to join Takuya and company in this adventure.

I wrote a very short review of the video game based off of Rise of the Guardians, an animated movie for kids, on my blog.

Is this game just another segment of the cash cow? Or is it better than anyone can possibly imagine?