Appleseed: Volume 1

Before he wrote Ghost In The Shell Shirow Masamune created another cyberpunk manga called Appleseed. It began in 1985 and so far four volumes have been released. I haven't actually read Appleseed or any of Shirow's manga before so I don't know what to expect.

Appleseed's artwork is charming, its no where near as polished as Katsuhiro Otomo's but there is a great deal of detail and it has an almost cartoonish nature that I really like. The mechanical designs are superb and there are lots of them, in the first chapter alone there was a tank, a heavily armoured battle suit and of course there was Briareos, the main character Deunan's cyborg sidekick.

There's no escaping it, this is a very eighties manga, there are mullets everywhere! It is meant to be the future but most people have very classic look, its not a bad thing it just made me smile. In the sixties everyone thought we'd all be wearing silver jumpsuits after the turn of the millennium. It seems during the eighties people assumed we'd all be sporting dayglow sweat bands and sleeveless shirts.

This story is set after the end of a global war, a war that ended with no one true winner. Seemingly there are still lawless parts but there is now new hope in the form of Olympus, a glittering super advanced city. I love the setting of Appleseed, the idea of an oasis of civility in a world gone mad is pretty cool. The pacing is good, each chapter has a clear aim and there are no wasted panels although there was a sequence where our heroes were quarantined which is completely glossed over, which seemed odd to me.

For a first volume things shape up well, I do hope we get more characterisation as the story goes on but I'm definitely intrigued by the plot. The struggle between two types of people is an interesting idea and the whole book reminded me of Aldus Huxley's Brave New World where Deunan was the savage and that's certainly not a bad thing.