DVD Review: Saving the world with an iPhone

"Eden of the East" is a mind-blowing anime about a lone kid who can save an entire nation by making a cell phone call.

Sure, it's not the most realistic series, but it's an impressive show that relies more on smart, subtle dialogue rather than overblown bravado. The story and action is almost entirely based on Internet technology, but the dialogue is incredibly clever.

It starts with a random encounter, where a naked Japanese guy is left stranded in Washington D.C. with only a cell phone and a pistol. After an awkward meeting with the police, the guy somehow convinces a young Japanese girl to give him a coat and a hat.


From this point onward, the guy has to piece together his identity, based on all the little clues he can scrounge up. His cell phone is his only guide, directing him to an abandoned apartment with random travelers' passports, some clothes and plenty of guns. He takes on the name of Akira Takizawa.

In the middle of running away from American police officers, he runs into the Japanese tourist girl, Saki Morimi. She left her passport in his jacket pocket, so she came to ask for it back. He somehow strikes up an extraordinary relationship with the girl as they take a plane trip back to Japan.

The rest of the series is a crafty mystery storyline, where the main character must slowly regain his memory. His special cell phone allows him to get anything he wants from an 10 billion yen account. All he has to do is call the anonymous phone operator named Juiz. Other special cell phone users are also seeking to kill him using the same ambitious powers.

The magic of this show is not based around the action. This series has almost no fights or gun battles. Much of the fascinating intensity comes from the passionate verbal exchanges between fellow nerds and cyber hackers. They use their high-end technology to help this boy discover his identity.

Although this show is the biggest advertisement for people to use iPhone-styled devices, the phones manage to keep the characters more preoccupied with talking to other people. They manage to squeeze in some pretty profound dialogue involving revenge and forgiveness.

By the end of the show, everyone will want to root for this intelligent kid, who can use a simple cell phone to take down weapons of mass destruction. He manages to look incredibly classy, even to the very end.

Images courtesy of photobucket.com

DVD Classics: Ghost in the Shell boots up for a 2nd Gig

"Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig" is long overdue for a re-release, but thankfully Bandai has set up an Anime Classics release of the entire box set in September.

GitS: SAC 2nd Gig is the excellent second season of the GitS: SAC, with a compelling political plot on terrorism and the oppression of refugees.

Although GitS: SAC has always been known for complicated dialogue and complex idological conversation, 2nd Gig makes for a far more dramatic season. The new enemy faction in this season, the Individual Eleven, attacks the Japanese embassy in the first episode of 2nd Gig and holds the emissaries there hostage. Although Section 9 returns to save the day, the Prime Minister reinstates them in a haphazard fashion, ordering them to save the hostages in only 15 minutes.

This is a much more violent and intense season, focusing more on the plight of Japanese refugees, impoverished in the aftermath of two more World Wars. The devastation of these military attacks has left some cities of Kyushu nearly devastated.

Out of these attacks, an independent militarist group of terrorists, named the Individual Eleven, have manipulated information networks within the government. They have managed to use Section 9 as a tool for their own purposes, even going so far as to transport illegal weaponry, such as nuclear fuel rods. They've already attempted to assassinate the new Prime Minister. At this rate, terrorism in Japan can only get worse.

Although GitS 2nd Gig almost gets a little too wrapped up in conspiracies and meandering plotlines, the second season is far better than the first. Certainly, we're not used to seeing Section 9 fail in their missions. As saddening and infuriating as it gets, anime fans will deeply sympathize more with this group as they try desperately to do the right thing, while the Individual Eleven finds more and more ways to cover their tracks. Despite what other people might think, there's nothing more beautiful than watching Section 9 fight military battles in an already devastated landscape, with sunken buildings and crumbling freeways. The music is incredibly chaotic, with fantastically dissonant string sections, all arranged by the female superstar composer Yoko Kanno.

Best of all, there's far more momentum in this second season. The first season had more of a fake egotistical coolness in all of Section 9's operations, especially in the stand-alone episodes. However, this season is filled with some of the most creative plotlines and twists. Episode two literally takes place in the mind of a military veteran, who confuses the audience with his own bizarre fantasies of killing his employers. Episode seven and eight are mind-bending episodes of Section 9's attempt to capture Kazundo Gouda, the shrewd head of the Cabinet Intelligence Service who always manages to stay one step ahead of them by dispersing misleading information to cover up his tracks.

Anyone who ever doubted that "Stand Alone Complex" would end up too complicated for its own good will be proved wrong with "GitS SAC: 2nd Gig." This is another must-have series, available in September.

Image courtesy of espvisuals.blogspot.com

DVD Review - Ex-Machina Excitement

Unless they've been living under a rock, nearly every anime fan has heard of the "Appleseed" movies. Based on the "Appleseed" manga by Masamune Shirow, the movies are pretty exciting shows of gunfights and cyberpunk mythology, even if they aren't that original.

"Appleseed: Ex-Machina", the third movie in the franchise, is probably the best of the Appleseed films so far. Produced by gunfight movie specialist John Woo, "Appleseed: Ex-Machina" features even flashier gunfights and a complex plot involving brainwashing.

For people unaquainted with the Appleseed franchise, the series focuses on a pair of tough E.S.W.A.T. soldiers, Deunan and Briareos (buraireiosu). While they are the best soldiers in the team, they are also a romantic wife/husband team until Briareos loses his body in an explosion. Fortunately, Briareos' body is restored in robot form. Together, they are the unstoppable duo, protecting the city-nation of Olympus from terrorists.

In "Appleseed: Ex-Machina", however, Briareos almost dies trying to save Deunan from a bomb inside one of the terrorist cyborgs. Although Deunan is grateful that Briareos only took minor damage, she isn't pleased when E.S.W.A.T. assigns her with a genetic human clone of Briareos, named Tereus. Of course, romantic tension ensues when Briareos returns to the E.S.W.A.T. team to meet his human clone. Deunan likes both of them of course, but Briareos came to her first.

With that aside, there is actually a big action plot involving a scientist named Dr. Kestner. Kestner took over a Project HALCON, a scientific project to help brain-damaged veterans with an advanced artificial intelligence system. But then the project turned the veterans insane and the project leader, Dr. Zander, was killed by veterans. Kestner vowed to get his revenge through implants into popular devices called connexus. Now the devices are transmitters which turn humans and robots insane.

Okay, the storyline is a little simplistic. Ultimately, Briareos, Deunan and Tereus decide to take on HALCON, because if they destroy the HALCON base containing the virus, they can save Olympus from being destroyed. HALCON is actually huge floating cube over the ocean. Inside the cube are tons of virus robots. Of course, the three spend their time killing robots with long machine-gun fights, acrobatics and rocket flying. And admittedly, the last fight with the core of the HALCON really isn't that spectacular.

However, the gunfights are incredible. I've honestly never seen so much flipping and jumping in a gunfight movie. In the second fight alone, Deunan spends her time flipping on steel girders and jumping all over the place just to shut off the robot with the switch on its neck. And in the HALCON gunfight, Deunan kamikazes her flying robot into another robot, ejecting before the explosion.

Okay, maybe the gunfights are ridiculously unrealistic. However, they are impressive to watch. And I also liked the twist in John Woo's use of the doves. As every John Woo fan knows, every Woo film has to have flying doves. The "Appleseed" movie puts a twist in the dove formula, though--the doves have cyborg exoskeletons containing the viruses to make robots go insane.

Okay, maybe the doves were silly. However, the movie was flashy and exciting enough to receive my approval. Despite a simplistic plot and typical John Woo silliness, this is a great-looking film with amazing computer-generated animation. "Appleseed: Ex-Machina" isn't a film to write home about, but it is fun to watch, nonetheless.

Oh, and the interview with John Woo is a good special feature as well.

Image courtesy of clockworkmachina.com