APPLESEED is an Eden for Gadget Enthusiasts and Action-Comics fans!

This Hub is copyright ©2011 Nicholas Malizia. It may not be used or reproduced without the Hub author's permission. All rights reserved.

WHY IT’S COOL:

1.) Robotic Suits and Battles

2.) Cute (but tough) Heroines

3.) Intelligent story relating to Current Events and philosophical debates

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About the Artwork in General

Appleseed refreshingly represents a time when manga didn’t feel so manufactured. It’s easy to see now, you peruse the artwork and it just looks like it didn’t take a lot of effort to put together, which as a consumer, is quite a turn-off. There are some small panels that look like they are drawn quickly for comedic relief, but the large body of the work shows intricate detail in the designs of the machines and city, the “love” that’s missing from most current manga- I won’t name names I’m just “illustrating” the appeal of these particular comics.

1. The Action Sequences (Robot Armor Suits!)

Action-Manga: Shonen. Masamune Shirow is famous for his artwork of cute (but tough) heroines and creative robotic designs. Briareos is just one example in the robot-rich world of Appleseed. Without giving too much away, Appleseed volume 1 has two great scenes of robot-suit/tank battles. Appropriately one at the beginning and one as an amazing climax. Shirow knows his stuff when it comes to any kind of technology research, he often leaves the reader sidenotes relating to what kind of device is being discussed. Some people may already be psyched to get this after hearing about the robot fights but if you want more detail please see points “1a” and so on…

2.) The other thing people scan the artwork of Shonen (male-marketed) manga for is naturally, cute drawings of women. The lead protagonist is Deunan Knute. In drawings and manner, she is portrayed as both a serious soldier and a silly lady. The former makes her riveting to watch in operations in both “Badside”- or the apocalyptic wasteland- or Olympus, the seemingly ideal metropolis. Most of the women in Appleseed, volume 1, share a similar character design with small variations (this changes in later volumes, but that’s not entirely relevant here.) Deunan is a blonde. Hitomi, the pair’s benevolent re-locater, is much more like a Japanese woman character in appearance. There is also a friend who Deunan makes in Olympus named Chiffon, who has tan skin and light hair. Athena and Nike, two characters based off of Greek mythology like the city, are quite different-looking than the previous character designs. They don’t really offer the same appeal as the first three mentioned.

3.) Storyline: (because some silly people actually care about plot-structure? I kid, I kid.) Masamune Shirow is also famous for intelligent, if sometimes difficult to decipher plots. See related links to understand what I mean by this. He likes to use “current event” topics, so even after the flying-suits and talking robots you have a tendency to think about whats going on in the intellectual world too, like environmental-sustainability, the digital divide (the gap between those with technology and those without) in another of his series. Olympus brings up the debate about “the perfect city” but as the story develops we discover nothing is really perfect, there’s a shadow to even the places of abundant light and prosperity.

This Hub is copyright ©2011 Nicholas Malizia. It may not be used or reproduced without the Hub author's permission. All rights reserved.

Credits:

Title: Appleseed, Volume 1: The Promethean Challenge

Dark Horse Manga

Author: Masamune Shirow

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