The Promethean
Balance: 216 pages, Dark Horse Manga, ISBN-13: 978-1593076948
Appleseed by Masamune Shirow is my collective
review of the four volumes that make up this work: The Promethean Challenge;
Prometheus Unbound; The Scales of
Prometheus; and The Promethean Balance, which are the
versions publish by Dark Horse Manga of the Appleseed
comics first published in 1985 (winning the Seiun Award for Best Manga in
1986) by Eclipse Comics between 1988 and 1992, which are the editions my
brother Tom bought and which I was first exposed to. For the Reagan Era, this
was some pretty powerful stuff: alternative comics were, if I recall, just
making an impact, but even they didn’t explore the themes that Shirow did, nor
did their art reach his levels (yet). But that was then, and the question
before us now is does the Appleseed
series still pack the same punch in a world where many great manga are no
further away than the nearest library? The synopses follow thus:
Appleseed 1: The Promethean Challenge: We find Duenan
Knute, a soldier-of-fortune, and Briareos, her mercenary partner (and a cyborg,
to boot), eking out a hardscrabble survival in the post-apocalyptic wasteland
of World War III, the “Badside”. Things start looking up, however, when this
peculiar duo are discovered by forces belonging to Olympus, an urban utopia and
centerpiece for the reconstruction of civilization, and recruited the into
ESWAT (Extra-Special Weapons and Advanced Tactics) unit – but why is such a
force even necessary in this oasis? As in most perfect picture places, perfection
is an illusion, and Olympus’ peaceful facade hides a dark secret: a violent
struggle between human and cyborg that could once again plunge the world into
war and genocide.
Appleseed 2: Prometheus Unbound: How can you
have a perfect society without perfect people? But people are born imperfect;
thus, if you want perfection, it must be made…and so Olympus, the post-war
phoenix risen from the ashes of the third World War, sets out to make people
perfect by attempting to regulate the minds and bodies of the human race – and
if it can’t do that, then to replace them with cyborg substitutes. Duenan Knute
and Briareos thus find themselves in the unlikely position of having to hold together
this house of cards in a city-state still new to them by merely destroying the
old foundation and praying that everything stands while new underpinnings are
forged.
Appleseed 3: The Scales of Prometheus: Perfection is
an illusion, even in Olympus, the post-apocalyptic beacon of hope in a world
laid waste in the third World War. In the far-away ruins of New York City, Artemis,
a renegade flesh-eating bioroid (enhanced artificial human), is on the loose with
data critical to the future of Olympus – and she’s not happy. Olympus
dispatches Duenan Knute and Briareos of their elite ESWAT unit to retrieve her
and the vital information, but when she awakens during transit the powerful
combat bioroid brings down the transport ship and escapes into the teaming
city. Duenan and Briareos must bring the feral Artemis back, but are they a
match for the powerful – and insane – creature?
Appleseed 4: The Promethean Balance: ESWAT agents
Duenan Knute and Briareos have fought to keep the peace and prevent Olympus,
the blazing beacon of humanity amidst a post-global-war wasteland, from sliding
back into the chaos of the Badside they escaped from. So when Olympus
intelligence learns of a giant Landmate powersuit being built in secrecy – on
the threshold of a top-secret international conference of the highest importance
to be held in Olympus, to boot – ESWAT is mobilized to crack the mystery and
disrupt a terrorist operation that could turn the fragile peace into World War
IV.
Right,
got it? Good. Off we go…at the risk of damning with faint praise, this manga
could have aged so much more badly than it actually has. In this future post-apocalyptic
everything-has-gone-to-shit-except-for-Olympus-HOORAY! world that Shirow has created, he
is extremely vague about the details of World War III and the rest of planet
Earth, excepting for some intriguing possibilities with the maps he has drawn
(“Imperial Americana” in the former United States? “The Munma Holy Republic” in
what was Iran? I’m dying to know what in the hell is going on). This is
because, except for some “it was horrible and most of the survivors are
desperate to avoid a repeat”, those details do not matter. The reader is free
to fill in a back story that seems plausible to them (I’m pretty sure the USSR
shows up in later volumes, but not this one; remember, it was written in 1986).
Japanese
animation, both manga (drawn) and anime (animated), often featured giant
robots for most of its history, a trope that may have inspired Shirow but,
since he wants his world to have at least a patina of plausibility, his
humanoid robot analogs are either cyborgs wrapped in seven feet of metal and
plastic, or powered and armored exoskeletons, which he calls “landmates”. Size
is not always an asset; people get stuck in narrow alleys and stairs crumple
under the weight of the landmates (and, of course, there are always the
mounting maintenance bills, a practical fact of life not often touched upon in
other manga). Also, Shirow seems to appreciate (as so many authors have not)
that while it is nice to have awesome mechanical parts (visible, as it is the
fashion to display them), prostheses cannot heal as can the original organic
parts. As stated before, maintenance costs money, with even routine diagnostics
costing big bucks, an overhead which keeps cyborgs like Briareos tied to the
city with chains of gold and silver.
Even
in the late 1980s, action women were not thick on the ground, and so Duenan Knute
really stood out; in this series we don’t learn very much about her (except
that she is very good at staying alive and at killing opponents) and mercy does
not seem to figure in her vocabulary. Her partner Briareos is even more
mysterious: whatever fleshy bits remain are well hidden in a metal body only
roughly humanoid; he’s larger, stronger and, thanks to certain cyborg upgrades,
equipped with more sensory apparatus than baseline humans, which makes his
instinctive disquiet about the equally engineered bioroids rather interesting
(interestingly, he is also the more introspective one of the pair).
I
remember really liking the art back in the day, although there are times when
Shirow’s take on anatomy, faces in particular, can be…um…creative. While the
machines are extremely detailed and seem plausible, Shirow’s grasp of human
anatomy is somewhat less convincing; he’s much better at loving depictions of
inanimate objects like firearms and machinery. But his machines are awesome
(and who doesn’t like a nice tank, amiright?), and while there is some
gratuitous fan service, it’s nowhere near as bad as it had become by the time
Shirow got to Ghost in the Shell. The
attitude towards violence is casual, and even when the armed forces are
ostensibly police officers, the arresting of suspects doesn’t seem to
happen…ever. People are casually gunned down while begging for mercy. One of
the people who offhandedly shoots a potential prisoner is Duenan herself. I
would like to say that’s because she was traumatized by her experiences in the
war, or because Briareos had been badly injured and she was angry. Actually, it
may be because she has also been a cop and in this world, the cops are heavily
armed, casually brutal warrior cops. At least, unlike another cop, she doesn’t
laugh while pulling the trigger. Still, I get the sense that Shirow isn’t quite
as gleeful about the violence as his characters are. He makes it clear that by
killing so many of the apparent terrorists, the cops have lost vital
information.
So,
what to make of all of this? As stated above, Appleseed has, I believe, aged very well, all things considered.
For simplicity’s sake one may categorize it as either an oddly violent
philosophical parable or a surprisingly talky shoot-em-up. Various characters
discuss the challenges facing the world: how to balance human desires with
global needs, whether it is right to change human nature, and so on…then,
having generally failed to convince each other of anything, the guns come out. I
guess that’s a system with lots of historical precedent and it seems very
inefficient, but it’s also quite entertaining. Appleseed is still a great manga
for anyone who wants to get into the medium, and of course it’s a classic for
those already immersed.
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