Appleseed: Hypernotes Paperback – July 11, 2007

At first, I thought it would be 5th book of the manga, but it was unfinished work with notes and interview with Shirow himself which was interesting.

When I get those 2 books per post ("hypernotes" and "illustration and data"), it was the same magic moment than when I was discovering and buying appleseed for the first time in the ninetees : Appleseed is a masterpiece, anthologic SF - Cyberpunk comic book. Masamune Shirow is a visionary genius. You found the same ingredients than in the books Appleseed 1>5, I'm just sad the stories are shorter than in the books 1 to 4, because you never want to stop reading this level of quality : draws, scenario, action, detail level, mecha design, character design, immersion, politic, anticipation..."illustration and data" contain sketches, notes, chronologic story detail, and a complete story that appear in the book 5 yet. But "illustration and data" also contain quality colored and b/w illustrations that were missing by the time I was buying Appleseed, and "artbooks" were edited by I missed to buy them at this moment and never found them again. Maybe they are."hypernotes" contain a longer story that NOT appear in the books 1>5, sketches and "notes".Bothes are a little smalle than the books 1>5 but inside is the same quality.If you are a fan of Masamune Shirow, Appleseed, japanese robotic, cyberpunk.... this is a musthave !For the french reader : I bought them in English because I didn't found them in french.

If you are a super duper die hard Appleseed fan and must absolutely have every scrap of art and story, ever written, drawn or thought about ever, which is in any way related to Appleseed then you must have this. If on the other hand you aren't then this may not be for you. The contents include an off shoot story line involving Knute and Briareos in some espionage and shooting as per normal. There are sketches of mecha, another short story parodying Ghost in the Shell and some more sketches of guns. An interview with Shirow-san follows and it finishes with some more drawings of guns. So, as I said if you absolutely must, then do. Otherwise, maybe not so much.

The rest of the Appleseed saga plays out in this book (as of 2010). Shirow, long ago moved onto Ghost in the Shell, and who knows if he will ever return to the Appleseed series. His latest work is just poster and full color image art, as he has either become disinterested or lost his drive at weaving interesting stories. (Maybe he just puts all the hentai stuff out now for money...) So if you were a big fan of Deunan over Motoko, I highly recommend picking this up to complete your collection. On top of that a lot of great sketches, explanations and concept sketches of things in the Appleseed world. Definitely not worth the 14.95 price tag, but I picked this up new from Hero Comics for a measley 5.50 which made this an excellent buy.

I am a big fan of Shirow and Appleseed, so this book was a must have. I was very pleasantly surprised though with the amount and quality of the sketches and production notes section at the back. Great stuff. I'd have given it five stars, but some of the content seems like fluff or filler. Not too bad though, some random interview and other stuff. Like I said, it's a must have for a fan, but not critical to your collection.

Nice read and interesting things I did not know about the Appleseed world

Although the title of the manga is "Hypernotes" the majority of this book is an eighty page story that Shirow calls "The End of Appleseed Book Five (Unfinished), Beta Version". That caught me completely by surprise and looks quite finished by my eyes. So just to let all you Appleseed fans out there, here is what the unreleased volume five of Appleseed will look like!

Loved all the extra goodies added in. The authors notes even in the margins etc r always fun and informative, Not dry techi stuff.

To be honest, just like with ID, this couldn't be recommended more for fans of Appleseed and/or Shirow but it pretty much worthless for anyone else. This won't really get you into Appleseed and isn't really where you should start if you're looking to do so. However, this is definitely ID's poor relation. There's no colour artwork in here and while there is technical drawings and concept art after the featured manga chapter, most of it is actually to do with other Shirow projects. Oddly, this was apparently released before ID which seems odd since this feels like the stuff that was left over from ID, with some other Shirow titbits thrown in to pad the book out.Both ID (stands for Illustration and Data) and Hypernotes are basically information harvested from the Japanese Appleseed Databook and split into two volumes. I don't know for sure if all of the Databooks contents are presented in the two English volumes, but I get the feeling they aren't. While they're both indispensable for Appleseed fans, each volume really does feel like people cut and paste elements from Databook into two separate books with no real rhyme or reason. Another issue is that both books lead you to believe that they're going to be full of data about the Appleseed world, where in fact they're more like feature length additional chapters of the manga with lots of bonus material. ID's bonus material is deeper, more interesting and, above all, more Appleseed-related than Hypernotes.That said, ID and Hypernotes are to Appleseed what the Appendices are to Lord of the Rings. I'll drop this down a mark from ID because, as has been said, it's essentially the same deal as ID (each featuring a different manga chapter not found in the other four volumes) but only with worse stuff after the manga finishes and with no colour artwork.

Entre databook et manga, Hypernotes est un ouvrage bicéphale. d'une part il contient le début du 5e tome d'appleseed, jamais fini par Shirow, et qui annonce ce qu'aurait pu être la suite des aventure de Briaeros et Dunan. d'autre part il comporte une masse conséquente d'information sur l'univers d'appleseed: timeline, organisations, armes, mechas. et c'est un peu la le problème: toute cette partie était présente dans le  Apple seed : tome 5  publiée en son temps par Glénat. Du point de vue qualité, c'est un petit format (ce qui a ses avantages, mais aussi ses défauts, et les yeux fatiguent parfois un peu), l'impression et de qualité, et la reliure solide.En d'autre termes, cet ouvrage est à conseillé soit si vous n'avez pas l'édition française (quasi-épuisé), soit si vous voulez vraiment les 80 pages existante du chapitre 5. Et si vous êtes comme moi un collection acharné de Shirow...foncez ! Apple seed : tome 5