Cyberpunk Review » Vexille - Upcoming Anime from Appleseed’s Creators

Vexille Screencap

First reported on 24Framespersecond, Fumihiko Sori (Producer of Appleseed) directing a new cyberpunk anime called, Vexille for Shochiku Films. The description is as follows:

From the creators of APPLESEED, comes a Full CG animation Sci-Fi Action film. 2077 - 10 years has passed since Japan had decided to leave the United Nations to go into isolation. They have completely blocked the islands with an ultra magnetic field which prevents anyone to see what is going inside, nor for people to travel in/out of the country. This was a result to opposing to a treaty which UN has passed, preventing the development of all bio and robot technology which has evolved drastically and has become a threat to the human beings. When Japan finally begins to move, the US government sends in a special force team SWORD, lead by a female commander Vexille, to investigate what is really happening inside the closed country.

While this sounds interesting, I’m hoping to see projects that depict a more complex “robots and AI are taking over the world!” scenario - possibly ones which stress more individuality among a various groupings of AIs and sentient robots. One can imagine scenarios where competing interests are keeping some on humanity’s side, others fervently opposed, and more still somewhere in the middle.

This post has been filed under Upcoming Movies by SFAM.

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Comments

Sadly very little information on this title. How “up-and-coming” is it? Should I be expecting it within the next few months, or within a year, or five years?

The information superhighway is surprisingly sparse of information. Though plenty of road-side whorehouses :P.

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Hi Hugo, 24framespersecond claims that this is due to be released in August of this year. I’m guessing that this is just a Japanese release date though.

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The spam in this place is killing me….

Look forward to this film though.

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I Randomrob, I couldn’t agree more. Previously Akismet was catching about 1000 messages of spam a day - it still is. Unfortunately now like 20 of them are getting through. Previously there were none. I gotta upgrade something to fix this….hopefully that will address it.

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“One can imagine scenarios where competing interests are keeping some on humanity’s side, others fervently opposed”

That’s why I like ‘Transformers’ so much!

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action’s great they advanced animation up a notch. Those jags remind me of Dune’s sandworms.

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Yeah saw a copy of this a few weeks ago. Animation is on par with Appleseed, story is about as deep though. Worth a viewing for sure.

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Just watched this last night… IMHO Vexille is everything that Appleseed Ex Machina should have been and more. Everything about this is top notch; the storyline, while involved, is easy to follow and very engaging. You care about characters when they die, even the ones with limited screen time. The anime style, while reminiscent of Appleseed, is absolutely flawless. For a standard (read: non HD) disc, the image is fantastic, though I watched it on a PS3 so the upconverting may have helped. The surround sound mix is totally immersive and really delivers on bringing you deep into the story. The action sequences, though somewhat derivative, are brilliantly staged and executed. It’d been a while since an anime feature had my adrenaline pumping, so you can imagine my pleasure of experiencing sweaty palms during the pivotal “supply tunnel run” sequence. All of this is served spectacularly well by the music, which is a combination of Oakenfold’s signature technotrance and selected songs by other artists, and is never off putting or out of place. The Japanese audio track is solid as to be expected, and to my surprise the English dub is actually very well done. Bonus points for that.

Moving, exciting, thought provoking. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

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Any update on the movie? I am really really on the move of collecting new anime movies. Thanks.