“Want to test my aim?”

Justin’s rating: When did Japan’s obsession with mech suits begin, I wonder?

Justin’s review: Back in the earlier era of Mutant Reviewers, we had a whole bunch of weirdly specific categories to help people find movies. One of these was “Girls with Guns,” which had more entries than you might suspect. There’s something kind of captivating about beauty running around with high-powered weapons.

Japanese anime honed and refined girls-with-guns to an almost absurd level in the ’80s and ’90s, becoming a counterpoint to the muscle-bound guy heroes that populated most western action flicks. I’m still catching up on some of these, such as today’s look at 1988’s Appleseed.

This short film — technically an OVA — takes place in a slightly utopian-dystopian city called Olympus where high tech both blessed and cursed its resients. It’s a place of humans, cyborgs, and something called bioroids, and not everybody is happy to live there. This brings out a significant terrorist element, which has to be dealt with by the ESWAT team. That’s one letter better than your average SWAT, mind you.

Our two ESWAT heroes for the hour are Deunan, a mullet-headed girl with guns and a mech suit with even bigger guns, and Briareos, a hulking cyborg that looks like a hi-tech bunny rabbit. They find themselves trying to thwart another human-and-cyborg combo who have a plan to steal a spider-tank that could shut down the whole city’s computer core.

It is incredibly vague why the bad guys are so upset about the current situation that they feel they must tear down the whole system. Sure, they spout some gibberish about weapons and tyranny and all that, but this is a whole lot of “tell don’t show,” and I don’t buy it.

It’s also badly explained that the aforementioned “bioroids” are basically fake, programmed people who look like everyone else but, um, aren’t. This seems to be an important plot point that is glossed over when another five minutes could’ve given this whole city tension a lot more context.

Appleseed was the first — of five! — movie and TV adaptations of the popular ’80s manga, and it was the only one that existed until 2004.

It’s a mixed bag, rushing through a story and a futuristic setting in a little over an hour. The plot’s pretty basic as a result, the soundtrack is the worst that elevator muzak had at that time, and I don’t think anyone’s going to go to bat for the english dubbing.

But if you can shut off your brain — way, way off — there’s a cyberpunk spectacle here that’s pretty enjoyable. Appleseed came from the same creator who did Ghost in the Shell (Shirow Masamune), and both titles were saturated in slick futuristic visuals, including cyborgs, mechs, huge guns, and slick vehicles. There’s also some blood and plenty of bullets, playing out like a video game level at times.

It’s really a film you see for the chunky tech anime vibes that the ’80s specialized in producing. I’ve read plenty of gripes that this doesn’t contain the deep philosophy of the manga, but since that’s always the most annoying part of any adaptation, I’m not exactly crying that it isn’t here. It’s short, simple, and shooty. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Intermission!

• Girls with pastel blue hair, such an anime thing
• Terrorists gotta be prepared
• Antennae to see around corners is smart
• Cops in the future use electric typewriters and 8-wheeled cars
• The future uses cassette tapes
• Giant spider mechs are absolutely practical and unstoppable and has cannons poking out every which way
• I spent too much time trying to figure out what size Briareos’ jumpsuit is
• Pink-and-purple boss has enormous shoulder pads
• The undercover cops pulling guns on each other and then walking away was kind of funny
• Shooting the ground a lot makes a smokescreen somehow