Appleseed Ex Machina

Infobox animanga/Header
name = Appleseed Ex Machina


caption = Teaser Poster for "Appleseed Ex Machina"
ja_name = アップルシード
ja_name_trans = Appurushîdo
genre = Adventure, Cyberpunk

Infobox animanga/Movie
title =
producer = John Woo
director = Shinji Aramaki
composers=Haruomi Hosono and Tetsuya Takahashi
studio = Micott & Bassara
Digital Frontier
licensor = Warner Home Video
Running Time = 104 Mins
released = flagicon|Japan 2007-10-20
flagicon|US 2008-03-11 [ [http://uk.anime.ign.com/articles/834/834615p1.html IGN: Exclusive Appleseed: Ex Machina Trailer ] ]
flagicon|EU 2008-05-30
runtime =

"Appleseed Ex Machina" is an anime film and is the sequel to the 2004 "Appleseed" film, similarly directed by Shinji Aramaki. It was released on 20 October 2007 in Japan and fully involved Hong Kong director and producer John Woo. The film made its American premiere at the Jules Verne Adventures Film Festival in Los Angeles on December 15, 2007 [ [http://www.otakutimes.com/2007/11/24/appleseed-ex-machina-to-premiere-in-los-angeles/ Otaku Times: Appleseed: Ex Machina to Premiere in Los Angeles] ] . The MPAA has "Appleseed Ex Machina" rated PG-13 for action/violence and brief strong language, [ [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1043842/ imdB: Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina (2007)] ] though the first film was rated R for some violence. It was released in North America by Warner Home Video on March 11, 2008, for DVD and Blu-Ray, and released for HD DVD on April 1, 2008. It was released in Europe on 30 May 2008 on DVD, with HMV releasing a 2-disc DVD special edition box set in Ireland and the UK, while Blu-Ray edition was released on 2 June, 2008. In July 2008, the film was released theatrically in Australia as part of an anime film festival screening known as REEL ANIME hosted by Madman Entertainment, however it was the Japanese version. The film was shown theatrically along with other films such as Vexille and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in various selected cinemas throughout the country. The film will be released on DVD in Australia in September 2008.

Plot

Year 2135. Following World War Three, which was a non-nuclear war that killed half the world's population, the city-nation of Olympus stands as a beacon of hope in a world of chaos and conflict. The utopian metropolis is governed by Gaia, a vast artificial intelligence, and administered by genetically engineered humanoids known as bioroid, whose designer DNA suppresses strong emotions. With bioroids being half of its population, peace and order are easily maintained.

Church scene and construction landmate battle

The movie opens with Deunan and Briareos being deployed as part as an E.S.W.A.T. operation to recover E.U. officials taken hostage by combat cyborgs. Deunan infiltrates the church and quickly subdues the cyborgs in a short firefight. She secures the hostages as other E.S.W.A.T. members arrive. She then follows some cyborgs into a worship hall when Briareos arrives. The cyborgs surround them, but the two kill them all easily. Briareos goes up to a fatally wounded cyborg and asks who sent him. When the cyborg's body counts down to detonate, he grabs Deunan jumping out of the chapel as it explodes. Briareos is unfortunately injured while saving Deunan and is taken to the hospital. The movie then goes to Deunan riding her motorcycle on her day off when she hears a police report of an enraged construction worker in a landmate. When she arrives, workers come running out and she stops one to ask what's happening: he tells her that the guy got fired and he went "psycho". After the landmate shows up, he and Deunan have a short skirmish; Deunan disables the landmate, freezing the limbs so the pilot cannot move. Just as E.S.W.A.T. arrives and Deunan is about to leave, she sees someone with a face similar to Briareos before he became a cyborg; Commander Lance introduces him as Tereus, a bioroid assigned to Deunan until Briareos is back. Later on, Deunan goes to Athena's adviser, Nike, and complains to her about getting a new partner. Nike tells Deunan that he is a new generation of combat bioroid, based on Briareos's human DNA, and takes her to see them being cloned at the bioroid facility.

The birthday party

Deunan meets up with her bioroid friend Hitomi after leaving the facility. Hitomi then takes Deunan to the cyborg hospital to see Briareos, and along the way, Deunan notices people wearing devices that cast a holographic ring around their eyes. Hitomi tells her that they are called Connexus and that everybody has them, then Hitomi takes out a pair and Deunan tries them on. Hitomi tells her to open a message: it's a message inviting Deunan to her birthday party. Later on at Hitomi's birthday, Deunan arrives slightly depressed, but she raises her spirits when she sees Briareos at the party; they have a short conversation until it is interrupted with the arrival of Tereus. Deunan and Tereus then sit down and have a conversation in which he asks Deunan to accept him as her partner until she gets Briareos back. The scene then goes to Aeacus and Briareos talking and discussing what it's like to be cyborgs. Briareos asks what Aeacus is wearing on his ear, and Aeacus tells him its a Connexus.

International Conference

The movie then goes to an International Conference that will be discussing putting all the nations' satellites under Olympus' control. There is massive security outside that is banning cyborgs from the premises, and requires all motorists entering the conference to pass through police checkpoints. But soon, a bus blasts through a checkpoint and is destroyed, but there are incidents like that at every checkpoint, and civilians are engaging the police. Soon, E.S.W.A.T. is deployed, but Aeacus, feeling sick, stays on board the ship. The police, not realizing the rioters are human, engage them. Deunan arrives in a landmate and disables a construction landmate attacking the police. When she opens the hatch, she finds out that the rioters are humans, not cyborgs, but she does find a burnt out Connexus and takes it for keeping. The scene then goes to Aeacus, mindlessly walking up to the flight officer and shooting him; Briareos, now fully engaged in his landmate suit, sees the ship explode and Aeacus fly off in a landmate towards the building in which the conference is being held. Briareos tries to calm Aeacus down, but keeps noticing a skull coming at and saying "we are one". Inside the conference, the delegates become worried, but are asked to return to the meeting. Unable to calm Aeacus down, Briareos shoots Aeacus, who then, in his final moments, seems to return to normal as he falls out of the sky. It then cuts to Aeacus' funeral, in which Briareos questions his decision to shoot Aeacus.

The virus within

Briareos then goes to his cyborg doctor, Dr. Richard Kestner and asks if he's going insane; Kestner assures him that everything is fine and sends him off. It then goes to Athena discussing the attack and with a Poseidon corporation executive, Yoshino. As she leaves, her assistant Argus mentioned HALCON but Yoshino dismisses, believing they are not involved. At E.S.W.A.T. headquarters, Briareos and Tereus fight, ending with Briareos beating Tereus and telling him to not let anything happen to Deunan. Later, at a debriefing, they discover that robotic pigeons were sending out a signal. Deunan, Briareos, and Tereus go out to have a drink; when a holographic show of an olive tree captivates the people in the mall, an out of control vehicle crashes into Briareos. He becomes unstable, runs over to a terminal and connects his vision scopes to a sensor, sending a virus that attacks Olympus' satellite control; Briareos then blacks out. Tereus is being patched up in a hospital after being thrown against a wall from Briareos' rage fit; in another part of the hospital, Briareos is held in a isolation cell, with Hitomi keeping him company. He asks her to look up reasons for the cyborg virus; Hitomi takes her laptop and researches until she finds Project HALCON, a project that researched into helping brain damaged veterans during the war with advanced AI. When the project leader was killed, Kestner took over. Briareos believes that he is the source of the problem, and breaks out of the cell using his sonic generators. Hitomi reluctantly drives him out of the hospital towards Kestner's apartment. Tereus pursues him, thinking that he was having a rage fit. When the police catch up with Hitomi and Briareos, he jumps on a semi-truck getting in a tunnel, taking him to Kestner's house. The police stop Hitomi's car and Tereus asks Hitomi where he went, she says she doesn't know and Tereus goes off to find him.

At Kestner's apartment

Kestner arrives at his apartment to find Briareos waiting for him. Kestner tells him that with the uniting of the satellites and the Connexus, Kestner believes that he and the others will create a slaved human and cyborg race that will not fight and will obey their leaders perfectly, through natural selection; those who are unworthy will be taken care of. He also explains that while Briareos was being repaired he infected him with nanomachines, that activate when Briareos' adrenaline passes a certain level causing him him to enter an uncontrolled rage. Just before the police arrive, Kestner pulls out a gun and commits suicide to prevent the cops from knowing. Briareos goes into a rage fit and jumps out a window. From there, he makes his way to a rooftop where Tereus expects him to come. Tereus is about to take him in when Deunan arrives in a Landmate with a cyborg virus antidote just as Briareos goes into a rage. Deunan gets the antidote in him, but it's not permanent. Unfortunately, an unknown signal takes control of the satellites, turning the olive tree into a strange purple symbol and anyone wearing a Connexus gets controlled by it and storms Tartarus (Olympus capital) in the hundreds of thousands. Immediately, this happens around the world and Olympus loses contact with the other countries. E.S.W.A.T. works in conjunction with the police to suppress the riots but there are too many to stop and are overwhelmed.

Halcon Facility

The three then journey into the ocean and intercept a Poseidon ship to ask about HALCON. Yoshino tells them that HALCON Labs were obsessed with mind-control and their operations had to be stopped, especially when the project leader, Elizabeth Xander, was killed. But by covering it up, it resulted in what Kestner did. They traced HALCON's transmission coming from an abandoned research facility. Supplied with new Landmates, Deunan, Briareos, Tereus, and a Poseidon task force fly off in ships towards to HALCON Zero Gravity One. The facility looks like a giant cube with smaller cubes sticking out from it. They go into the main hatch and are met by drones, especially two big humanoid ones that kill off most of the task force. Most are killed except for Argus who continues to assist them. They fight their way to the core, where Briareos is taken by the virus. As it tries to kill Deunan, Tereus steps in front of the machine's pincers which impale him; Deunan fights her way to the cyborg controlling it all; Dr. Kestner fused the virus with Dr. Xander's body, reviving her as a cyborg. Deunan uses Briareos' last virus serum and stabs it into the cyborg's neck; Dr. Xander momentarily reverts back to her human self and asks Deunan to shoot her to prevent the virus from winning. As the virus takes control again, Deunan shoots her through the head, destroying HALCON. The virus lets go of Briareos, as well as anyone wearing a Connexus, and the three run as the facility falls apart. They get to a ledge and Tereus asks them to leave him, but they deny it just as Argus shows up with the ship, and they escape the collapsing facility. Deunan and Briareos share an intimate hug together with Deunan promising to protect Briareos; Tereus is confident that he will find his own woman; Argus jokes that they could just make one. Their transports then speed off to Olympus.

Back in Olympus, the rioters were released and collapsed en masse. They later woke up, not remembering a thing that had happened. With Athena watching from her office window noting that "Human's have a tendency to self-destruct but their spirit always manage to hold them from the brink, that's why they should be saved"

Differences between the Japanese and English releases

*Briareos, in the Japanese version, says: "How do you like the new model?" In the English version, he says: "I'd be wearing it if it weren't pink."
*The opening sequence in the English version is more descriptive.
*More profanity was added into the English version.

Cast

The English cast were voice actors from ADV Films.

Motion capture actors

Costume design

In this film, two of Deunan's costumes were designed by Italian fashion designer Miuccia Prada. [http://anime.ign.com/articles/835/835793p1.html IGN: Ten Reasons Appleseed is Amazing ] ] [http://chloeings.blogspot.com/2007/08/prada-designs-costumes-for-cartoon.html Chloe: Prada designs costumes for a cartoon ] ] Prada was apparently already a fan of the first Appleseed movie, and she jumped at the chance to work on the second installment. At a press conference for the film, she said:

Marketing

Warner Home Video created a trailer remix contest [ [http://www.appleseedtrailerremix.com/ Appleseed Ex Machina :: Trailer Remix ] ] in December 2007 to promote the release of the film. The contest's aim was to have fans remix the Appleseed Ex Machina trailer into new short videos, using clips from the film and songs from the soundtrack. Fans could put these assets together into new short videos within an editing program on the contest site. Visitors to the site then voted on their favorite video, with the creator of the winning video winning a trip to WonderCon 2008. The contest ended February 7th 2008.

Merchandising

Following the release of the film, Hot Toys released 1/6th scale poseable action figures of Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonchires. [ [http://www.hottoys.com.hk/product.php?cat=57 Hot Toys - Products ] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.madman.com.au/appleseedexmachina/ Official Australian DVD release (English) "Appleseed Ex Machina" (2007) movie website]
* [http://www.warnervideo.com/appleseed/ Official North American DVD release (English) "Appleseed Ex Machina" (2007) movie website]
* [http://www.exmachina.jp/ Official (Japanese) "Appleseed Ex Machina" (2007) movie website]
* [http://www.appleseedtrailerremix.com/ Official DVD release contest homepage]
* [http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/010192.html Official webpage announcement] on [http://www.twitchfilm.net/ Twitch]
*Ann anime|id=5104|title=Ex Machina
*imdb title|1043842|Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina (2007)