While I’m firmly in the camp of folks that believes that Appleseed has never gotten a truly fair shake with a real anime adaptation that it deserves, I still enjoy the productions that have come out. I really enjoy what Masamune Shirow created and his style of design that’s brought to the projects. Sentai has the rights to one of the films and with the home video release still in print, they’ve now resurfaced a trailer that they haven’t had on their channel for some time for the 2004 incarnation that got the CG wave underway in a big way in the prior decade.
The film was directed by Shinji Aramaki based on the screenplay by Haruka Handa and Tsutomu Kamishiro. The Japanese cast includes Ai Kobayashi as Deunan Knute, Jūrōta Kosugi as Brialeos Hecatombcales, Mami Koyama as Athena, Miho Yamada as Nike, Takehito Koyasu as Hades, Toshiyuki Morikawa as Yoshitsune Miyamoto, Yuki Matsuoka as Hitomi, and dYuzuru Fujimoto as Uranus.
The English dub was directed by Steven Foster for the Sentai version with a cast that includes David Matranga as Briareos, Luci Christian as Deunan Knute, Allison Sumrall as Athena Areios, Andrew Love as Hades, Chris Patton as Yoshitsune, Hilary Haag as Hitomi, Jason Douglas as Uranus, and Shelley Calene-Black as Nike.
Check out our review of the Blu-ray.
Plot Concept: Plucked from the last battlefields of the final war, mercenary Deunan Knute finds herself pressed into duty with the ESWAT, defenders of the Utopian city of Olympus. But serpents lurk beneath the peaceful surface of this apparent Garden of Eden, and new seeds of destruction have already been planted! Now it’s up to Deunan and her former lover, the now-cyborg Briareos, to unravel a deadly web of plots that threaten to bring down Olympus from within!
