Appleseed Ex Machina

Appleseed Ex Machina

Appleseed Ex Machina IMDb

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 20th 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 15th, 2007.

Plot summary

Following the 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 bioroids, whose designer DNA suppresses strong emotions. With Bioroids being half of its population, peace and order are easily maintained.

Deunan Knute, a young female warrior, and Briareos, a veteran cyborg-soldier, are both partners and lovers. As members of E.S.W.A.T., the elite special forces serving Olympus, they are deployed whenever trouble strikes. The two fighters find their partnership tested in a new way by the arrival of a new member to their ranks — an experimental bioroid named Tereus.

Created by Gaia using DNA from Briareos, Tereus uncannily resembles Briareos before the wartime injuries that led to his becoming a cyborg. Not only does this trouble Deunan, but Briareos's DNA gives Tereus more than top-notch fighting skills; this battle-ready bioroid is like Briareos in another way — he also has strong romantic feelings for Deunan.

VF-1 Valkyrie

Macross Mecha Manual

In the fictional series Macross and its English adaptation Robotech, the first mass-produced variable fighter (Macross) or Veritech fighter (Robotech) is called the VF-1 Valkyrie.



The VF-1 was initially designed by the legendary Japanese mecha designer Shoji Kawamori (with contributions by his Studio Nue partner Kazutaka Miyatake) in 1980-1982 to be the centerpiece mecha design of the anime series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1982-1983).



In Robotech, the VF-1 is most commonly referred to as the "Veritech Fighter", which is short for Variable Engineering and Robotic Integration TECHnology, but its official popular name "Valkyrie" is used in a few infrequent references.

Howl's Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle Official

Hauru no ugoku shiro IMDb

Howl's Moving Castle is an Academy Award-nominated Japanese animated fantasy film, based on Diana Wynne Jones' novel of the same name, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. Mamoru Hosoda, director of two seasons and one movie from the Digimon series, was originally selected to direct but abruptly left the project, leaving the then retired Miyazaki to take up the director's role.

The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 5, 2004 and was released in Japanese theaters on November 20, 2004. It went on to gross $231,710,455 worldwide, making it one of the most financially successful Japanese films in history. The film was subsequently dubbed into English by Pixar's Peter Docter and distributed in North America by Walt Disney Pictures. It received a limited release in the United States and Canada beginning June 10, 2005 and was released nationwide in Australia on September 22 and in the UK the following September.

Awards

* Osella Awards for Technical Achievement; 61st Venice Film Festival
* Best Japanese Movie Overall; 2004 Mainichi Film Awards
* Excellence Prize, Animation; 2004 Japan Media Arts Festival
* Animation of the Year; 2005 Tokyo International Anime Fair
* Best Director (Hayao Miyazaki); 2005 Tokyo Anime Awards
* Best Voice Actor/Actress (Chieko Baisho); 2005 Tokyo Anime Awards
* Best Music (Joe Hisaishi); 2005 Tokyo Anime Awards
* Audience Award; 2005 Maui Film Festival
* 1st Runner Up, Golden Space Needle Award; 2005 Seattle International Film Festival
* Nomination, Best Animated Feature; 78th Academy Awards

Karas

Karas: The Prophecy IMDb

Karas is a six-part OVA (Original video animation) that takes place in a futuristic setting. It is produced by Tatsunoko Productions. The first DVD of episodes 1–3, "Karas: The Prophecy", was released April 24th 2006 in the UK, and April 25th in the US. The second DVD which contains episodes 4–6, "Karas: The Revelation", was released October 23 2007 in commemoration of Tatsunoko Productions' 40th anniversary.

Karas was originally a one-shot comic book released in English through Dark Horse Comics on November 3, 2004. It was written by Phil Amara who created Sky Ape, with art by Nuria Peris and Sergio Sandoval. This makes it to be one of the few American comics to be made into an actual Japanese anime, like Witchblade.

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Princess Mononoke Official

Princess Mononoke IMDb (8,3 out of 10)

Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime) is a Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki that was first released in Japan on July 12.

Princess Mononoke also became the highest grossing movie in Japan until Titanic took over the spot several months later. Overall, Mononoke is the third most popular anime movie in Japan, next to 2001's Spirited Away and 2004's Howl's Moving Castle, both also by Miyazaki.

It is a jidaigeki (period drama) set in late Muromachi period of Japan, and centers on the struggle between the supernatural guardians of a forest and the humans who need its resources, as seen by the outsider Ashitaka. "Mononoke" is not a name, but a general term in Japanese for a spirit/god/monster of the natural world.

A prince is infected with an incurable disease by a possessed boar/god. He is to die unless he can find a cure to rid the curse from his body. It seems that his only hope is to travel to the far east. When he arrives to get help from the deer god, he finds himself in the middle of a battle between the animal inhabitants of the forest and an iron mining town that is exploiting and killing the forest. Leading the forest animals in the battle is a human raised by wolves, Princess Mononoke.

Casshern (2004)

Casshern US Official

Casshern IMDb

Casshern is a 2004 Japanese tokusatsu superhero film written and directed by Kazuaki Kiriya. It stars Yusuke Iseya as Tetsuya Azuma/Casshern, Kumiko Aso as Luna Kozuki, Toshiaki Karasawa as Burai, Mayumi Sada as Saguree, and Jun Kaname as Barashin.

The film is based on a 1973 anime television series, Shinzō Ningen Kyashān (translated as "Neo-Human Casshern" and known as just Casshan in the United States) from animation studio Tatsunoko Productions. Along with contemporary films Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Immortel: Ad Vitam, and Sin City, it was among the first feature-length live action films to be shot on a digital backlot, with the actors performing in front of a greenscreen and all but the simplest stage elements added digitally after the fact.

Akira

Akira IMDb (7,8 out of 10)

Akira Official (Japanese)

Akira is a 1988 Japanese animated film co-written and directed by Katsuhiro Otomo based on his manga of the same name. The movie led the way for the growing popularity of anime in the West, with Akira considered a forerunner of the second wave of anime fandom that began in the early 1990s. One of the reasons for the movie's success was the highly advanced quality of its animation. At the time, most anime was notorious for cutting production corners with limited motion, such as having only the characters' mouths move while their faces remained static. Akira broke from this trend with meticulously detailed scenes, exactingly lip-synched dialogue — a first for an anime production (voices were recorded before the animation was completed, rather than the opposite) — and super-fluid motion as realized in the film's more than 160,000 animation cels. It is regarded by critics as one of the greatest animated films ever made.