The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress The musings of Alexandra Wolfe

I was slow to catch onto watching manga and anime, which is strange considering I’m a huge fan of comics and graphic novels, and watched, as a kid, a ton of Chinese and Japanese programs while growing up throughout SE Asia.

I’m sure (for the love of small children) my Mother had no idea about some of the content I watched that included people being eviscerated, almost cut in half, having their heads chopped off by angry samurai and the like. And this, all before breakfast and going to school of a morning. And that’s not to mention some of the more visceral stuff they used to show as their version of daytime soaps,when I got home from school of an afternoon. Now I think about it, it’s enough to make my hair go curly!

You would think after all that exposure to such violence, I’d be socially and, well, morally maladjusted. Apparently not. I seemed to have turned out all right (as far as I can tell.) And no, before you ask, strangely enough I never remember any bad language being used or sex being involved in any of these shows. There was certainly no heinous violence against women or children, who were, for the most part, usually the one’s being championed.

But this isn’t what I wanted to talk about today, as usual, I’m off on a tangent reminiscing about my weird and wonderful exotic childhood. When what I was going to talk about was the movie me and mine watched this weekend, that being APPLESEED: EX-MACHINA.

It’s the follow-up of the hugely successful and amazing in its own right, APPLESEED, which also blew my mind when I first saw it last year (though it came out way back, I think, in 2005.) Ex-Machina is also set in the Appleseed Universe, meaning, I hope, there are more to come after this one, as it just keeps getting better.

Simply put, the CGI, characterization, and story-telling were excellent. Equally to, if not better than, anything coming out of Hollyweird these days. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, more so even that the overly-long, rather noisy, big-bang Transformers schlock-fest.

If you love CGI animated movies or anime, then this is one of those ‘must-see’ movies you should put on your list.