Appleseed

Appleseed (2004) is Shinji Aramaki's science-fiction anime, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It's 2131, a non-nuclear Third World War has gutted the planet, and special-forces soldier Deunan Knute is pulled out of the wasteland into Olympus — a city sold as humanity's last utopia.

Half of Olympus is populated by bioroids: engineered clones bred without the capacity for rage or rebellion. A cybernetic brain called Gaia and a council of elders keep everything calm. Deunan barely settles in before she spots the cracks — a plot brewing under the perfect surface that could decide who, human or bioroid, inherits what's left of the world. At her side is Briareos, her old lover, now a cyborg after losing his body in North Africa.

Adapted from Masamune Shirow's manga, the work of the mind behind Ghost in the Shell, the film turned heads with its look: hand-drawn faces grafted onto fully 3D bodies and sets. The action runs flat-out, and its questions about order and its price never get tidy answers. Stream Appleseed (2004) online on iFILM.