It's been a long time since I've watched a Japanese animated movie. It's been an even longer time since I've watched a science-fiction Japanese animated movie.

But I heard about Hulu.com here in the US, and it's quite an amazing website. It takes what hundreds of websites in the past have done illegally and turned it into something legal - make full-length TV episodes and movies available for free online. It's all ad supported, in the same way the networks' first-party websites do it.

At any rate, I stumbled across this movie called Vexille: 2077 Isolation of Japan, and the description sounded like your typical over-the-top Japanese science fiction anime. But I saw that it was only available on Hulu for six more days (I suppose Hulu has varying licensing terms with each of the publishers). So I thought I'd give it a watch.

And I was rather impressed at the science-fiction component of it. The science-fiction plot twist that it develops and then carries through with is perhaps one of the most sinister applications science and engineering I've seen in a movie that is set in a near-future time frame.

More sinister than the Matrix for sure. Maybe not as scary as Ghost in the Shell, but in a lot of ways, more sinister than what Ghost in the Shell presented.

In a nut shell, the setup for the plot is that in the near future Japan becomes (I guess they are already in the present day?) the leader in robotic technology and is the sole supplier of all of the world's robotic needs from civil applications to military applications. Nanotechnology is progressing to the point where cybernetic/android development is beginning to take off, but UN places a strict international ban on this research and development.

The Japanese government at this point in time is largely staked by Daiwa Heavy Industries, which is the main producer of all robotic equipment and a major researcher of the new nano/bio/cybernetic technologies. They have the Japanese government push back against the UN, but are unsuccessful. Not wanting to give up their ways, the Japanese completely isolates themselves from the rest of the world constructing a physical and electromagnetic barrier around the entire island.

For 10 years no one enters or leaves Japan, and no one outside knows what is happening inside.

That's where the story starts. The US decides to send a task force to infiltrate the Japanese barrier.

And the story follows what one of the special forces team member discovers when she finally infiltrates the barrier.

And what she finds is to me, conceptually more scary than what Neo discovered when he broke out of the Matrix.

An interesting watch for the science-fiction buff who is interested in what the potential effects of highly controversial technology could bring.