Matt Kracht The plot: After Japan withdraws from the United Nations and expels all foreigners, the West becomes increasingly suspicious that Japan is conducting illegal research on robotics and transhumanism.Vexille is a generic cyberpunk story about of the evils of transhumanism, megacorporations, isolationism, and imperialism. The art is beautiful, but it seems wasted on such a derivative and clichéd plot. The story had some real potential, but they decided to dumb everything down, remove all subtlety, and turn the antagonist into a James Bond villain. This is the kind of movie that has themes that a 15 year old would find incredibly deep and philosophical, mixing in generic cyberpunk themes with Romanticism and technophobia. Very little of the movie was actually engaging. Both the characters and the action sequences were flat and mostly interchangeable.Maybe this movie had a point, when it railed against the lack of soul in technological advancement: the CGI art was beautiful but entirely soulless.

siderite There are different elements in this film that simply clash with each other. There is the 3D animation that brings some very cool effects, but then almost no facial expression. Watching the film is like waiting for an in game animation to end so you can continue playing. Then there are the ideas in the film, that are very bold, but they are not really backed by a political and technological realism. The elite team that starts the film comes with these cool robotic suits, but they serve almost no purpose in the story. And I could go on and on.The thing is that I liked the film, but it was like a jagged experience (pun intended) since there were great scenes, then really bad ones, then some great again, then some bad ones again. All ups and downs. When I think of this movie compared with others, what comes in my mind is Final Fantasy. The same weird immersion in a 3D world, but not really a strong emotional experience.Bottom line: better than most, could have been better. Nice sci-fi, all 3D CGI.

Liquidize105 I just finished viewing Vexille, then I read the review from TwitchFilm, and I gotta say I completely agree with the reviewer's assertion. While Appleseed has a number of interesting scenes, this is the stronger film overall. The animation is crisp and believable, the settings are beautifully realized, and the narrative is stronger by far and carries with it a poignant message of dissension to benign racism and ultra-nationalism.There's a recurring scene in the film in which a "community leader" sits vacantly and hangs his head. This basically captures in a snapshot my view of the adult Japanese person - the conservative fatalist who contemplates a pressing issue for a long time and in the end makes the wrong choice. I'm glad to be proved wrong in this case.7/10

george_sano Anime and I don't agree. I tend to be driven away from seeing any by the sheer number of idiotic fans that the genre seems to draw. Countless of teenage boys and girls with identity issues flock to anime movies and conventions like flies to dung salads. And often they find it necessary to dress up like their favourite Japanimation character and get on my nerves.My date suggested that we go to this. Many of the better things I could be doing came to mind, but being the wimpy unmanly pushover I am, I agreed.When the movie started, I was mildly impressed at a slightly unusual art style which only rarely pandered to the anime clichés that we all know and hold in great contempt. There is one particular chase scene in this movie which I found to be particularly enthralling and for the most part the movie did hold my attention.However, my main gripe is that the characters are very cookie cutter. They're about as deep and well thought out as your average fanfiction writer's self insertion character. The plot was great, the style was great, the characters were stinky.While it was only an average fair as a movie, it was better than I was expecting and worthwhile. Worthwhile as long as you can stand screaming idiots who believe they speak Japanese better than Emperor Hirohito.