Vexille

Vexille is in the same vein as cyberpunk thriller franchises Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell. There is excellent animation and world/mecha design on display, with great music by Paul Oakenfold. The story is intriguing and has moments of awe, but is overall generic and subpar. The premise of having the main protagonist from America and treating Japan like current-day hermit North Korea is very cool but not expanded upon creatively. Vexille settles for obligatory action setpieces and clichéd villains to fill the running time. All stuff straight out of the Rebels-Fight-Empire 101 textbook. A textbook that is in need of a new edition,I think we can all agree.

Vexille - 2077 Nihon Sakoku shares the same inspiration as Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed, following an almost straight forward cyberpunk plot line. The story is fairly good and had some potencial. All flows around the isolation of Japan during 10 years because the disagreements in a Treatment for the preservation of mankind during the Robotized era. In short the denial of creating androids. It is a simple plotline with good potencial for plot twists but unfortunatly it starts entering in a downward spiral to failure due to some bad decisions of the directors. Art and Sound are simply Amazing. Superb animation not only for themechas but for all the scenarios the story passes by. Sound is also superb, with great tracks by Paul Oakenfold and great tracks choosen by the Sound Director (wich is Paul Oakenfold). The Characters could be way better. They are just plain and simple with no really great mistery behind them. They are what you see. Enjoyment: Vexille Is a feast to your emotions. Great Animation with Great music quickly lead you to forget about the mediocre plot line and plain characters. You can simply shut your brain after the first 20-30 minutes of the anime and still you will enjoy it. Overall Vexille had the potencial to be a better movie but the story and the characters cripled that possibility. Still Vexille - 2077 Nihon Sakoku is a good movie that can be enjoyed not only by the CG and Cyberpunk fans but also by the normal watchers.

For the record, I didn't start off hating this movie. I'd actually been searching for it for a good year before they released it in June (July? Something with a J). I looked at it lovingly the whole way home once I'd bought it, and when I watched it for the first time, I felt...happy. That was about for the first 15 minutes. I've watched it 3 times since I bought it, and it never gets better. I don't know whether or not I'm biased towards Shirow or whether I just expect better from the producers, but something about this movie was a little off. First, letme just say that the graphics are awesome. The opening scenes with the snow floating in the wind--excellent. Graphics were not the problem I had with this movie. One of the main problems I had was the mech designs. I mean, you want them to seem as though they could work in real life, and these just didn't seem like they could. Maybe it's a small gripe, but when machines are the majority of your story, you should pay them a little more attention. The main character, Vexille (I honestly, seriously, hate this name. Who the hell names a girl Vexille?! Whatever....) seems like a copy of Duenan without the spunk and vitality. I believe that they just took the template for Appleseed and slapped some weird black/grey/blond hair on it (I swear to god her hair changes colors). She doesn't really have a back story, there's no sense that she even really loved her partner Zack (or that he loved her back), and by the end of the movie, I just felt indifferent towards her. This wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have to spend almost the entire running time for this movie with her, but you do, so it is. The story has a good twist about half way in, but it doesn't make up for the rest of the boring, drawn out, ultimately lame plot. It had a great concept, but a few things (Jags) just killed it for me. Given the fact that Appleseed: Ex Machina was released before this, I really don't see why you'd really need to watch this. I mean, if its your first time, go for it, because at least the visuals can get you through this mediocre piece.

The story telling in Vexille is entirely unimaginative. Yes, that should be where this review begins; very little to no thought at all went into making the story line. Nearly everything is predictable far before it happens and the things that aren't you won't care about because there isn't any character depth to hold it together. This is not helped by the flashy animation style which accomplishes its shiny veneer at the cost of removing emotions from the faces of the characters. Seriously, it's not fair, the characters don't have that depth to lose. The fact that anime emotions are exaggerated beyond actualhuman expression limits is not actually always a bad thing. The premise of the story on the other hand is somewhat original, but still entirely implausible. Sound was unimaginative too, didn't stand out in most scenes, and those scenes had a plus as a result. Which leaves the art itself which, as has been stated, is very shiny. But it's kind of a painting over the hole in the wall rather than fill it sort of effect. The flaws are still there and fully visible.