Gainax no Video III: Appleseed (1988)

This is a part of a series on the home video releases of Studio Gainax. For more info, click here.

Last updated October 3rd, 2022

While later entries would be produced at many different studios, such as Digital Frontier, Sola Digital Arts, and Production I.G, the original 1988 OVA was produced over at Gainax.

The first of Masamune Shirow’s works to make it to the west, the Appleseed manga was released in North America in 1990 from Eclipse Books and Studio Proteus. Not long after, U.S. Renditions would license the OVA for a late 1991 release on VHS.

In 1994, British company Manga Entertainment would purchase U.S. Rendition’s sister company L.A. Hero, and establish Manga Entertainment (US). As part of this, many former USR/LA Hero titles, Appleseed included, were transferred to Manga, who gave them new releases. Manga would re-release Appleseed with a dub in 1995, and would re-release the subtitled tape in 1997. To the best of my knowledge, the transfer and quality is identical between the USR and Manga releases. Many people seek out the USR release over the Manga subbed release, as it dropped the plastic clamshell case, and switched to a cardboard sleeve.

A few years later, Manga would release Appleseed as one of their first DVDs. It doesn’t look awful, but it’s clearly a disc made in 2001 using a transfer that was likely a decade old at the time. The 5.1 audio is a nice improvement, however.

Like many Manga Entertainment releases at this time, Appleseed would be distributed in Canada by Sony Music Video. Outside of a different UPC, SKU, and company logo, this release is identical to the US version.

In 2007, Manga Entertainment re-released a number of anime under the “Essence of Anime” line. All this meant was a shiny slipcover and a new UPC. The contents, disc, and even the case itself were all identical to the 2001 release. Interestingly, the back of the slipcover mentions a commentary track, which is not on the disc. The UK release had included it, and Manga had seemingly copy and pasted without actually checking if their US disc had the extra. Oops!

At an unknown point, Manga did something weird: they bagan to include a copy of Ghost in the Shell on PSP UMD in the box. This isn’t mentioned anywhere on the packaging, and the only way to tell from the outside is a new UPC and SKU. Presumably, this was to clear stock of the retail UMD release, but no mention anywhere is odd.

Manga’s rights would eventually expire, and Appleseed would fall out of print until it was rescued in 2019 by Discotek Media. While still being based on the same transfer as the now-ancient Manga release, the Discotek DVD does look marginally better, simply due to 18 years of improvements in DVD authoring techniques.

In 2021, while gathering materials for their Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 Kickstarter, AnimEigo would accidentally uncover a massive stash of film reels that had been thought to be lost at film development studio Tokyo Laboratory. “The A-ko Vault”, as it would be coined, happened to contain the film reels for Appleseed, so just three years after their DVD, Discotek was back with a Blu-ray featuring a brand-new HD transfer. This is the release to get, as it blows every previous one out of the water picture quality wise. Some special features just help sweeten the package, making this the definitive release.

CONCLUSION

Go for the 2022 Discotek Blu-ray, no question.