Have you ever seen one of those movies, that you know, could've been so good, but fails to live up to the potential it has? Well, Appleseed is just that. It could've been good, but it just ends up being a flat and forgettable 60-minute anime OAV.

The story is basically about police versus terrorists in a supposedly perfect city called Olympus. A computer runs this city and there is almost no crime, murder, hunger etc. Of course, some people just aren't happy with a perfect city and rules will always be broken. Some terrorists decide to cause some trouble and that's where are out heroes come in. Lady cop Deunan and her cyborg partner Briarios.

Oh, where do I begin? I'm still so sad that this movie could've been brilliant. I was disappointed that this movie really only hinted at the morals and psychological things that go along with a perfect city, posing questions, like what is the point of living in a perfect city? Is freedom or well being more important? Etc. It really only hints at these deep questions but really does not exploit any of them. There is a short reflective deep moment, but then it's right back to the shallow boom boom blast blast and violent city destruction. Well, I don't mind explosions and the like, I was disappointed that that was pretty much the whole movie. And the action isn't even that good anyway. There are a few somewhat bloody shootouts but nothing too exciting. One other thing that was dissapointing was the climax. It was just, well, lame and rather corny.

I was also disappointed with characterization. There is very little of it. I've heard that the manga by Masamune Shiro, has richer characters than those presented in the movie. The characters were very forgettable and I had to look up the names of the characters on an appleseed website because I just couldn't remember any of them.

The art was alright. It's old anime so it's not great, but it's not bad either. The character designs are lame, in my opinion. They are the same as the manga, but the cyborg is just goofy and Deunan is too boyish looking. The music was pretty forgettable too. The Japanese voices fit fine though.

The problem with this movie, is that I forgot about it two hours after I watched that. That either tells you that this movie was forgettable or I have Alzheimer’s again. And I really don't think I have Alzheimer’s. I don't know. This movie could've been so good and I really liked the Greek references, but it just turned out to be a shallow violence fest with the same plotline that we've seen in so many movies. A simple police vs. terrorist storyline doesn't cut it for me. I was severely disappointed. I must say that the movie did intrigue me enough to check out the manga though. It's supposed to be much better than this.