In the year 2131, the earth has been left barren by the ravages of war. Unaware that the war has ended, a woman named Deunan Knute is roaming the wasteland. A specialized soldier with police and S.W.A.T. experience, she has been cut from all communication with her superiors and her compatriots.
Despite all her training, Deunan is taken unaware when she is assaulted without warning by a heavily armed helicopter. She is losing consciousness almost before fully comprehending what s happening, but before completely going black, realizes that the tranquilizer that has hit her was fired by an old lover of hers named Briareos. He and a gorgeous woman named Hitomi are on a mission to find Deunan and take her with them to Olympus, a futuristic, utopian city. Though Deunan finds herself waking in Olympus to the sound of her ex-lover's voice, she is shocked to find that he looks very different from the man she knew.
After a terrible injury on the front lines in North Africa, Briareos' only chance for survival was a radical surgical process that involved replacement of all his broken parts. In essence, he is now a cyborg, with over 75% of his body being mechanical.
Deunan is also surprised to discover that Olympus is now the city at the head of a new world government. At the end of the war, no superpower emerged as the real winner, so the utopian city took on the primary leadership role in the political vacuum that remained. Olympus is so powerful that the remaining "unsupervised countries" depend on the city's very existence to survive.
On the following day, Deunan files her immigration papers, and Hitomi takes Deunan to the legislature, showing her the city's sights as they make their way. The residents of the city appear contented and at peace, and that feeling is reflected in Deunan's own mind until Hitomi informs her that more than half of the "model citizens" who live in Olympus are Bioroids. These precision clones were supposedly created for the good of humankind, and Hitomi herself happens to be one. Deunan can't help but find this news alarming, and she is secretly uncertain about the purported perfection of the city.
Once Deunan arrives at the legislature alongside her new Bioroid companion, she is introduced to the Council, which is composed of seven wise elders. They have a constant "conversation" with a supercomputer known as Gaia, and together form the "will" that controls Olympus. On an even more sinister level, the Bioroids actually have political control, and are surreptitiously putting forward a plan that may have deleterious effects on the human race.
Making matters even worse, Briareos barely even notices Deunan. The world around her may be peaceful and serene, but things have changed so much that she can't help but wish she was back in her wandering phase, oblivious to the strange things happening in Olympus. Instead, Deunan will have to face her own demons to help direct the course of the future of humankind.
Appleseed is based both on a manga and series that ran in Japan in the late '80s and early '90s. The animated feature film certainly has elements of both Ghost in the Machine and The Matrix, though the ideals and themes presented in those films found their origination in Appleseed itself. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
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