Appleseed Alpha CG Anime Film Gets Spin-Off Manga

Iou Kuroda (Nasu, Sexy Voice and Robo) will begin a spin-off manga of director Shinji Aramaki's CG-animated Appleseed Alpha film in this year's September issue of Kodansha's Morning Two, which will ship on July 22. The series title will be stylized as Appleseed α.

The film is itself is a prequel of Masamune Shirow's Appleseed manga. The original manga follows Deunan Knute and her bioroid partner Brialeos in the futuristic city of Utopia, where human terrorists are battling government's ESWAT forces. Dark Horse Comics publishes the manga in North America. The manga inspired Kazuyoshi Katayama's original anime video project, Aramaki's two previous CG films, Takayuki Hamana's Appleseed XIII CG anime series and a cancelled Appleseed: Genesis CG television anime series.

The film will ship on Blu-ray Disc and DVD on July 22, after a digital release on July 15, and will be "a reboot that will depict the early days of Deunan and Briareos in search of the legendary city of Olympus."