I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.

The Property

Masamune Shirow's Appleseed is a science-fiction manga that marries contemporary political anxieties, transhumanism especially as it relates to cybernetics and genetically-modified clones, and a whole bunch of cool robots shooting each other and maybe (just maybe) sometimes also doing a martial arts. In that vein, it's close to but distinct enough from Masamune's more famous work, Ghost in the Shell. Appleseed is set in the perfect (but is it really??) utopian future city of Olympus, one of several new states to be created after World War III burned away almost all of the old global powers in nuclear fire. Following two members of "ESWAT" (not that ESWAT, though I'm sure that game's developers have some questions to answer), the stories of Appleseed depict the post-war turmoil affecting Olympus and the outer world from their eyes as blue-collar government employees grateful for the opportunity to live and work in one of the few places on the planet that doesn't royally suck balls. Or if it does suck, it at least does so in a way where folks can still take a shower and eat noodles and maybe play video games occasionally.

In truth, though I liked that original movie the first time I saw it, I was a little reluctant to cover Appleseed for Game OVA because there was something of a long tail on it. That is to say, some time after the initial release of the manga and the first anime OVA in the 1980s it suddenly entered the zeitgeist again, finding a second wind with even more anime and video game adaptations in the mid-00s (around the time Ghost in the Shell was seeing a resurgence, in fact, and I doubt the two aren't connected). Actually figuring out a way to play Japan-exclusive games from 2000 and beyond is already a bit of a challenge, let alone doing so without a fan translation, so anything post-20th century is going to have to involve a second-hand recounting.

For the record, Appleseed consists of the following, in chronological release order:

• The original manga, which ran between 1985 and 1989 for a total of four tankobon volumes.
• A feature-length OVA released in 1988 that follows an original story separate from the manga continuity.
• A 1994 SFC game, Appleseed: Prometheus no Shintaku ("Oracle of Prometheus"), that doesn't really tie into anything.
• A full-length CG anime feature film released in 2004.
• An early 2007 video game for PS2, Appleseed EX, based on the above 2004 movie. Also a couple of online games, Appleseed the Online and Appleseed Tactics, both of which went defunct months after they released in 2005 and 2009 respectively.
• A film sequel to the 2004 Appleseed, Appleseed Ex Machina, released in late 2007.
• A thirteen-episode internet series, Appleseed XIII, which started airing in 2011 and was later compiled into two movies (and also had a manga adaptation).
• A 2014 movie, Appleseed Alpha, which drops the previous movie continuity for the sake of reimagining the origin story.

I dimly recall renting the 2004 Appleseed back when it was new on DVD and not being particularly impressed with its CGI animation, which was still a little rough as a medium at that time. Not quite the Scorpion King bad but, well, that's not a high bar to pass. For the sake of what we're doing here, we'll just stick to that first OVA anime and the SFC game that followed. I am curious about that 2014 reboot though... maybe I'll do a coda.

The Cast

• Deunan Knute: A young woman and a "natural" human, as in those that lack any cybernetic enhancements or genetic tampering. Hotheaded, but a very capable ESWAT officer in her custom exoskeleton suit.
• Briareos Hecatonchires: Deunan's partner. A physically-imposing cyborg, he has an artificial head (but a real brain) that looks vaguely like a multi-lens camera with rabbit ears. His cybernetics give him increased physical strength and enhanced perception, making him a valuable ally on ESWAT missions. Also just an incredible anime name. He needs to be that large just to carry his checkbook around.
• Hitomi: Hitomi is a bioroid—a race of artificial human clones with supressed emotions, acting as both servants and administrators for natural humans as a means of keeping us histrionic jerks in check. She was responsible for introducing and acclimating Deunan and Briareos to their new home, Olympus, as part of her job as an ESWAT recruiter. She became a friend of the pair in the process.
• Athena Areios: This redhead is also a bioroid and is usually the chief administrator for Olympus city in most Appleseed canon (in the OVA she's instead the inspector general). Due to being one of the older model bioroids, she has a much greater emotional range though is still a calm and shrewd leader.

The Anime

The 1988 Appleseed anime OVA, simply called Appleseed, was directed and written by Kazuyoshi Katayama and produced by Gainax. It follows a story completely divorced from the manga but more or less keeping to its spirit, I guess because a whole arc would've been tough to fit into a 70 minute time frame.

Gainax first left an impression on us gaikokujin with Hideaki Anno's trippy mecha series Neon Genesis Evangelion but the studio got its start with the bleak but optimistic sci-fi drama Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise, a movie about a burgeoning space program hoping to unite a war-torn world before the self-destruction robbed them of their last chance to cross a major milestone for any sapient species. They followed that up with what was something of a spiritual predecessor to Evangelion, the Jules Verne-inspired Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. (Both Nadia and Evangelion are tentative candidates for Game OVA, incidentally, but I'm not sure I have the courage to play a bunch of adventure games in Japanese.) Gainax has since been behind hyperactive crowd-pleasers like Gurren Lagann, FLCL, and Panty & Stocking with Garter Belt. Gainax has also dabbled in video game development, being responsible for many of the creative decisions behind Alisia Dragoon for Mega Drive as well as creating the dubious child-rearing simulators that comprise the Princess Maker franchise.

Kazuyoshi Katayama has a handful of credits, perhaps most relevant for landing this job was being the assistant director on Studio Ghibli's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. He later went on to direct The Big O (it's a mecha anime, in case you thought it was something else) and did storyboarding for Samurai Champloo and, probably not so coincidentally enough, the 2007 Appleseed: Ex Machina movie.

Appleseed (1988 OVA)

The first few minutes quickly set up the villains as well as the overall tone for the movie and the themes it's choosing to explore. The very first scene introduces us to the ESWAT (though the movie just calls them SWAT) member Charon Mautholos and his wife Fleia: the latter is an artist that feels trapped by the endless artificiality of Olympus in spite of its "perfect" living environment, and commits suicide. A disillusioned and traumatized Charon now conspires with a heavily-augmented cyborg terrorist, A.J. Sebastian, to destroy the central supercomputer running Olympus, Gaia, "freeing" the humans trapped within the city. We're introduced to Sebastian in the next scene, as his gang takes hostages but are quickly eliminated by Deunan and Briareos's SWAT team. Sebastian manages to escape by allowing himself to be arrested before the raid, freeing himself from the restraints, and killing the few SWAT members left to guard him (including one called Chris Evans, so pour one out for Captain America).

Following the filing of their policework, Deunan and Briareos leave work to attend a celebratory homecoming party for their mutual friend Hitomi, who has been busy scouring the "Badside" outside of Olympus for potential SWAT candidates and giving them new lives and homes in the process. Hitomi, despite being a bioroid, is bubbly and emotional and quickly gets drunk at the party. She tries flirting with Charon—I guess no-one told her about the "dead wife" thing—and is pulled away as Charon checks his watch. After all, it is around this time that Sebastian and his new goons are raiding Tartarus, the home of bioroid production, to move onto the next stage of their plan. Charon drives towards the raid as explosions start going off, using the chaos as a smokescreen to protect Sebastian from being found by distracting the other cops. Though presenting his actions as a "Human Liberation" terrorist ploy to protest the bioroids and their control over humanity as its new caretakers, the true goal of Charon and Sebastian was to obtain some classified data that tells them that Hitomi is somehow the key to shutting down Gaia.

We then get some scenes of life in the city. The government is testing out a new multi-legged beetle tank that's like a hundred feet tall (the S.S. Foreshadow, I think it's called), Deunan and Briareos go to visit Chris Evans's grave (I figured they'd cremate him, since he's the human torch and all) and stop by Charon as he visits his own wife's grave on the anniversary of her attempt to fly from a penthouse apartment window. Charon reiterates her belief that living in a city where there's no hardship and you want for nothing is creatively stifling—personally, I think most artists would prefer getting to eat on a regular basis—and that the vast majority of the populace are bioroids that were specifically bred to be comfortable living in Olympus, adding to its slightly eerie pod people vibe. Charon then goes to pick up his new police exoskeleton: it's been modified to have less armor but higher speed, which will be integral later for evading police mechas with a minimal loss of life. Deunan and Briareos then visit Athena, the inspector general of Olympus, to be officially placed on the trail of Sebastian, a task the two were all ready to do in their off-time, and we get a little montage of them running around in plainclothes (Briareos looks particularly inconspicuous) as they hunt for clues. The villain in question switches out his prosthetics for military-grade gear, making him look vaguely like a locust, and he and Charon go their separate ways as they put the last stage of their plan into action.

Said plan involves Charon kidnapping Hitomi in the middle of the night, using her DNA which includes a special failsafe that will turn Gaia off, and then having Sebastian hijack the multi-legged tank and take it out of the city while Gaia is offline. The plan mostly goes off without a hitch, though Deunan and Briareos aren't tricked by the gas grenade Charon uses to knock them out (they live with Hitomi, by the way) and chase after him after he grabs Hitomi. Meanwhile, the rest of ESWAT (we've switched back) are now alerted that Hitomi is being targeted and are also in pursuit. Deunan and Briareos are also arrested at this point: Athena knows there's a mole in ESWAT since Sebastian keeps escaping custody, and she's figured it's the two cops that keep showing up everywhere he's just been. Knowing Hitomi's life is on the line (as a bioroid, she's considered ultimately expendable), Briareos goes for a Hail Mary after receiving a call about the Tartarus hit from his informant... except Sebastian had already squished that dude's head in a prior scene; however, the earlier calls did corroborate that there's a cop involved. ESWAT's plan is to destroy all but one of the special kiosks that can be used to transmit Hitomi's DNA to Gaia, and then stake that last one out until the villains arrive. Charon attempts to sneak Hitomi past the police barricade blocking the last kiosk, but when driving past Hitomi is knocked around inside the vehicle and Briareos's rabbit ears is able to pick up the little cry she makes: he realizes Charon is the dirty cop and has Deunan follow after him. Figuring something's up, or maybe because she was bored of guarding a kiosk all day, Athena has her subordinates open fire on Charon's truck and completely annihilates the thing; fortunately, Charon has somehow slipped into his speedy custom exoskeleton and escapes with Hitomi in tow. He gets as far as the entrance of the kiosk, despite Deunan and Briareos catching up to his supposedly enhanced speed mech, but is exploded by a SWAT chopper as he bids Hitomi enter and save the human race from, uh, let me check, "a life free of strife, destitution, and being so thirsty you're forced to drink from a glowing pool even knowing that it'll cause your eyebrows to fall off". Oh, but the pristine cityscape is kinda boring to look at so out the window I go I guess.

Gaia shuts down, allowing Sebastian to take over the multi-legged tank's manual controls: he only needs to get it away from Olympus long enough that signals from Gaia can no longer reach it, and then the world will be his easily-shucked oyster. He tests out the tank by having it shoot directly at the building housing Gaia; like it'd be that easy to take down the city's supercomputer, but points for trying. Actually, the goal was to do enough damage to activate its self-defense measures, ensuring nothing can get near it with all its security systems on high alert thus buying Sebastian enough time to slowly float out of the city with his new toy. Figuring they have a better shot getting Gaia back online than they do fighting that tank, Deunan and Briareos head to the Gaia building and join Athena in making their way through to the core to switch everything back on. Briareos takes a few hits from the security systems, forcing him to stay behind and cover Deunan and Athena as they make their way to Gaia's core. Deunan then has to make a shot with her bad hand at a hundred feet or so to destroy the one circuit that will force Gaia back awake, and manages to do so in the nick of time: the tank is disabled, and Sebastian takes one to the dome when trying to escape. Crisis averted, but Deunan can't help but feel a little dissatisfied with how everything went down with Charon.

So that's the OVA. Honestly, kind of slower than I remember it being but then it's going for more of a cop thriller approach than a semi-mindless action movie like many of its peers at the time. Charon's an interesting character because it's clear we're meant to sympathize with him: he's the first character we meet (well, his wife is, but she doesn't stick around long) and the audience is encouraged to consider his stance by following the tragic events in his life that eventually brought him into a terrorist's orbit. That said, we don't really get enough of an idea of what everyday life is like in Olympus to form our own opinion on whether all this security and luxury is worth sacrificing what makes life difficult but rewarding; it's a very different take to something like Star Trek where its humans have redirected the energy once put towards survival and accruing wealth into pursuing personal dreams and furthering human progress, though in both cases this utopia only came about after most of the world was melted and we were forced to reconcile with our self-destructive bullshit. While we don't really get that glimpse into life in Olympus there's plenty of great shots of the city and the technologies they enjoy, since this movie loves the quiet establishing pans, so it's definitely a good vibe piece if you're into spotless sci-fi cities with lots of mechs and cyborgs running around.

And, yeah, the transhumanism stuff is occasionally brought up: no-one really bats an eye at the heavily modified Briareos and his fellow cyborgs (there's at least one other cop in the same division with a robot head) but the emphasis on bioroids as these expendable beings given they can all be cloned endlessly, combined with the fact that most of the population are bioroids, does raise some interesting questions. Like, it's clear whoever invented them had this vision of the bioroids peacefully leading the rest of humanity by example in idealized cities like Olympus; it's just a matter of getting more of the human diaspora, most of whom are still struggling out in the irradiated wastes, to find their way in and become habituated. I'm sure this is expanded on in far more detail in the manga: it feels like the OVA's really here to let fans of Shirow's work get absorbed in the world of Appleseed that much more vividly through the medium of anime. Ultimately, this was just one adventure of many that Deunan and Briareos find themselves embroiled in while keeping the peace in this optimistic "city of the future" they wish to believe in.

Speaking of believing in things, let's see if this SFC video game can make a strong case for anime tie-ins.

The Game(s)

Appleseed: Prometheus no Shintaku was developed by Kan's for publishers Visit and released on the Super Famicom in 1994. If you've never heard of either of those companies, I wouldn't blame you. Let's just say their extended credits don't inspire a whole lot of confidence. Kan's developed a number of games in the mid-90s in that period where the industry shifted from 16-bit to the mostly CD-based 32-bit era and many of those were anime tie-ins, so I wouldn't be surprised to see their name come up again in this feature. Visit is a name I recall from my days working on the wiki pages for SFC games: they're behind a very cheap psychological quiz game series called The Shinri Game that saw several SFC entries and extended well into the PS1 era. No clue how they got their hands on the Appleseed license but it had been some seven years since that movie (and six since the manga ended) so maybe it wasn't exactly in high-demand by then. Either way, we're definitely poking the kusoge bear here (kumasoge?) so let's tread carefully:

Does it do right by the anime? Weeeeeell, I certainly think they could've done a lot more with the license. The Bubblegum Crash game did more to convey the drudgery of policework but lacked a decent action gameplay core, so the ideal game for both licenses would be something in the middle. Appleseed: Prometheus no Shintaku clearly had the smallest budget and an untested team (this was Kan's first video game) so given those conditions it could've been worse, but it might still be the least impressive game I've covered on here so far.

Appleseed EX, the PS2 game from 2007, at least has a more promising pedigree than its SFC onii-san: it was developed by DreamFactory and published by Sega. DreamFactory was the developer that worked with Squaresoft on their fighter/brawler games, specifically Tobal No. 1 and 2, Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring, and The Bouncer: the company's founder had been involved with Virtua Fighter and Tekken since their earliest entries. Appleseed EX has brawler elements but overall looks to be more like a MGS top-down action game, albeit probably with less stealth (a reminder that Briareos is like seven feet tall). Something amusing in the way that punching enemies does an incredibly small amount of damage but a gun takes them down in a couple shots. I suppose that's realistic enough.

The below gameplay video should give you a clearer idea of the game:

That's going to do it for our Appleseed coverage. A lot of neat worldbuilding and Briareos will forever be my main man, but perhaps it could've been served better by its adaptations. However, that doesn't have to remain the case if ScarJo is still young enough to play Deunan convincingly in a live-action movie (add whatever sarcasm tags are necessary here). For the finale of Game OVA Season 2, we're going to stick with sci-fi action but we'll have our first 8-bit video games, so look forward to finding out how much worse Famicom anime games were compared to SFC.