Appleseed
It’s 2131 AD and the future of the human race hangs in the balance. Female soldier Deunan Knute has survived a major war that has pushed the earth to the brink of destruction. Located in a bombed-out urban wasteland, Deunan is transported to the Utopian city of Olympus and reunited with her former lover Briareos whose body is now half man, half cyborg. In Olympus City, half the population is made up of Bioroids, a genetically engineered species with a limited life span who are designed without unstable human emotions in order to create a peaceful society and protect the remaining members of the human race.
Ninja Scroll – 10th Anniversary Edition
A peak achievement of Japanese anime, Ninja Scroll is a propulsive mix of samurai action-adventure and supernatural fantasy from writer-director Yoshiaki Kawajiri (Supernatural Best City). This is defiantly animation for grown-ups, complete with fountains of blood, plenty of naked flesh and (in both the subtitled and dubbed versions) some decidedly strong language. (Students of Japanese language could pick up some useful expressions.) The plot sounds like a 16th-century variation on The X-Files: an entire village has been wiped out by a mysterious plague and an antigovernment conspiracy of invulnerable demons seems to be responsible. A wandering ninja, Jubei, and his female counterpart, Kagero, team up to defeat the plotters. Jubei is a classic reluctant hero, agreeing to participate in the mission only after being fed a slow-acting poison; the antidote will be supplied after he cooperates. And Kagero, a looker whose embrace is lethal, is a femme fatale with a difference that seems distinctively Japanese: sexual contact itself is poisonous, especially for a warrior with a pure soul.
Yukikaze Collection
Unbeknownst to the general population, 33 years ago, an alien force, the JAM, opened an interdimensional gate in Antarctica to invade the Earth. In response to this threat, the unified forces of Earth formed a military unit to combat these aliens, successfully pushing them back to the planet codenamed: Fairy.
Even now, the war still rages on. Rei Fukai, a pilot of the elite FAF unit of the Special Air Force (SAF), flies the Yukikaze, an advanced fighter with a near sentient computer control system. However, the recent infiltration of human disguised-JAM agents has begun to blur the lines between friend and foe. As the SAF’s own fighters begin to turn against their own forces, the Final Battle for the skies of Fairy and control of ‘the Passageway’ to Earth will rest in the hands of Rei, and the only thing he can trust: the Yukikaze.