Anime Film — Appleseed : Ex Machina

Shirow's Ghost in the Shell is one of the few cases where the animation is superior to the manga (along with Utena, Princess Tutu, Evangelion and Mushishi). And his Appleseed was not only my first real manga, but far better than the original GitS -- so why has there never been a decent animated adaptation?

Appleseed : Ex Machina gets the equipment right, but it stops there. The use of machinima tempts to the dark side of video-game action, and away from the philosophical underpinnings so well brought out in the GitS anime. And then they have to make the plot shallow and add some romantic rivalry out of thing air too…

Possibly not helped by the fact that the bargain DVD I got only had American and German dub tracks, so it meant listening to bored voice actors drawling their lines (not something I noticed at the time of purchase -- what lame-ass production leaves the Japanese audio track off an anime DVD, after all?), but this is the third fail in a row for Appleseed movies/OVAs.

There's an anime series in the works for next year. Dare I still hope for a GitS moment?