Appleseed

Appleseed (アップルシード, 1988) — watch online on iFILM, a Japanese anime OVA directed by Kazuyoshi Katayama, based on Masamune Shirow's manga. Runtime: 66 minutes.

The year is 2131. After global wars reduce civilization to rubble, survivors build Olympus — a planned city where most of the administrative class are biodroids: engineered beings without the emotional volatility that broke the old world. Officer Deunan Knute and her cyborg partner Briareos serve in ESWAT, the city's tactical unit. The system holds, until a colleague defects to the opposition and Deunan has to decide whether the order that saved her is worth defending.

Shirow would later write Ghost in the Shell, and the underlying question is the same: what does a perfect society cost the people living inside it. This 1988 OVA put that world on screen first. Watch Appleseed (1988) on iFILM.