Masamune Shirow

(Review, Jan 2nd 2023)

While cartoonish in some parts (I especially like all the comments around the panels :)) this is a serious thriller. Deunan and Briareos start the story as usual-tuesday raid on the arms smuggling ship. But what happens here is that ship is just an initial step in much more serious investigation - Olympus hosts international negotiations and it seems that somebody is very much dedicated to make sure they fail in billows of smoke and thunderous explosions.

From embassy attack by the unknown cyborg to highly sophisticated terrorist group infiltration this book is very, very dynamic and movie-like.

Until it ends mid-flight...... and this was a bummer. I dont know why it was never finished......

Rest of the book are discussions with the author and presentations of various mecha and society in the Appleseed universe.

If there was a conclusion story wise it would be straight five stars. As it is, I give it 4.

Highly recommended to fans of mecha and action-adventure SF.… (altro)

This book provides the background of the Appleseed universe. We are shown timeline leading to the WW3, destruction and recovery of the world after it. We are given information on Olympus and national states and all the political/military intrigue in this world that unfortunately does not look that much different from our own anymore.

Following this we have beautiful plates of art - concept art, used and unused in the final volumes - and additional chapter, "Called Game" where we follow Deunan and Briareos chase down assassin involved in the intrigue between orgajized crime and Poseidon corporation.

Art as always is great, standalone plates and sketches are truly wonderful.

While there are comic relief scenes, especially between our dynamic duo, story is very serious thriller that reminds me in some ways to Golgo books - there is some serious thought and research involved and it shows. But again, this was also case with the GIST by the same author so it does not come as a big surprise.

Highly recommended to all fans of cyberpunk and action SF.… (altro)

Deunan and Briareos are nomads in the dystopian landscape of post WW3 Earth. While trying to survive in abandoned city contaminated by serious chemical weaponry their paths will cross with Hitomi, mysterious agent from Olympus, de facto new Earth government and unknown mercenary group.

This continues even as they move to Olympus. Their arrival seems to trigger internal conflict between various city fractions and situation is not made more tolerable when Briareos finds out the city secret, that majority of population are bioroids, artificial humanoid life forms. Soon they will find themselves in crosshairs of police forces, city paramilitary (respectively run by competing city political forces) and strange force aiming to destroy city's command Gaia, force made up of people brought to city from the desolate areas ( aka rest of planet Earth). Action scenes are excellent, both with Deunan and Briareos taking opposition one on one or combat using battle suits called landmates.

Excellent thriller, and as in every aspiring thriller, not everything is explained in the first book. I can see this is something few readers are mzrking as a bad thing. For me, this is serialization as in case of tv show. You cannot expect that everything will be made clear in the episode 1 of planned several episodes. I am looking forward to follow up books.

Highly recommended to fans of SF, cyberpunk and action thrillers.… (altro)

First things first - if you were puzzled with story lines of Matrix, Inception, Dark City and Brazil movies this one will leave you more than puzzled and saying whaaat? page after page.

I like SF, have been reading it for decades now (hehehehe, man time flies by :)) but this comic is so filled various SF concepts and techno-lingo (and I come from IT background) - basically you get bombarded with so much terminology you'll loose the story thread in no time.

That's one thing I did not like - story line is so convoluted and hidden under the layers and layers of sentences like 'barriers are down.... deploy cetbots and combat suit K... My mines are duplicating.... Deploy decot at position H using code name K....' etc etc that only after reading more thoroughly through the novel way you'll figure out that story line is not so complex at all (I've seen more complex GitS TV episodes) - complexity seems to be artificial in nature.

What was the intent of the author - to experiment with the comic as a medium or something else, is completely beyond me, but I have a feeling that this would have been much better executed in movie media - in comics you only end up with excellent graphic, bedazzling effects, lots of hi-tech mumbo-jumbo [at least for most people, event seasoned SF lovers] but at one point you won't know what is going on in the first place story-wise (which should be a main point for each and every novel/graphic novel/comic).

But nevertheless it is an interesting concept. Considering the time when this issue was released it is very modern and not-so far-fetched (I can only say congrats to author for creating such a believable universe). If you enjoyed the GitS 1 and 1.5 you'll love this one but don't expect to figure everything out in the first,second or third reading :)… (altro)