Set in the desolate future, Sky Blue is a Romeo and Juliet story with believable characters.

This is seen through the eyes of Deunan Knute, a young woman who is an ace commando and one of the last soldiers to survive in the war-ravaged world. She is saved at the last moment from military robots programmed to kill all humans, and brought to Olympus, a paradise on Earth whose existence she never suspected. I would have to see Appleseed again to count how many times the word “utopia” is used in the first half-hour to describe it; yet Deunan has not been there for more than a day before Olympus-designed killer robots are sent to hunt her down, apparently for siding with the bioroid administrators. It seems that the military, consisting entirely of bigoted humans controlled by their destructive emotions, are planning a coup to overthrow the bioroids. Much really spectacular destruction ensues, not leaving much of Olympus still standing at the conclusion although the bioroids continue to cheerfully refer to it as such a utopia.

This is the second time that Appleseed has been animated. The first time was as an April 1988 70-minute direct-to-video movie, produced by the Gainax and A.I.C. studios. (It was first released in America on video by U.S. Renditions in August 1991. The current DVD release by Manga Entertainment came out in April 2001.)

Anime fans seldom mention this earlier Appleseed because the animation is of low quality, and the story seems like a standard TV police-versus-terrorists plot despite its futuristic setting. Yet in comparison, its story is much more plausible. In the 1988 version, the world has been devastated by the world war but civilization is not completely destroyed. The remnants of the old nations still exist, and dictators are greedy for Olympus’ wealth and technology; so Olympus is justified in having a small military for self-defense. In the new movie, Earth seems to be an uninhabitable wasteland outside of Olympus, so why does the city need a huge military with even bigger and deadlier killer robots? In the earlier movie, humans and bioroids are shown living together in harmony.

The “Free Human Liberation Alliance” terrorists are revealed to be a tiny radical fringe with no popular support. In the new movie practically no “true humans” are seen except those in the military, and there is no apparent justification for their vicious prejudice against bioroids. Unreasoning, violent prejudice does exist, but shared by the entire military and openly encouraged by its commanding officers? I also got annoyed after a few too many battle scenes stretched into saved-at-the-last-possible-moment rescues. This Appleseed seems adapted less from Shirow’s novel than from a videogame version of it.

Both Sky Blue and Appleseed have been getting favorable reviews filled with descriptions like “beautiful,” “dazzling” and “spectacular.” Yet there are few words of praise for the stories, for obvious reasons. They will be popular with anime fans, and fans of sci-fi movies; and Appleseed is a treat for fans of violent videogames. But neither of these will make anime look ready to appeal to general audiences.

Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment’s The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001). He wrote the entries on Japanese and Chinese animation for Animation Art, ed. by Jerry Beck (2004). A collection of his writings, Watching Anime, Reading Manga (2004) was recently published.