Vexille

Vexille is a Japanese animated science fiction film set in a future where Japan has cut itself off from the rest of the world. After the United Nations moves to restrict robotics and biotechnology, Japan withdraws and seals its islands behind a barrier that keeps outsiders out and its own people in. Ten years later, an American special forces unit called S.W.O.R.D., with Vexille among its members, is sent into the closed country to find out what has been happening there in isolation, and whether banned technology is being developed.

The film was directed by Fumihiko Sori, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Haruka Handa, and it was released in 2007. It is the earliest of the features he directed listed here, arriving before ICHI in 2008 and well before his later Fullmetal Alchemist films and Hakkenden. The voice cast includes Meisa Kuroki as Vexille, Shosuke Tanihara, Yasuko Matsuyuki, Akio Otsuka, Romi Park and Takahiro Sakurai. It was produced by Toshiaki Nakazawa, Ichirô Takase and Yumiko Yoshihara, with Shochiku, Oxybot, Studio Aoi and TBS among the production companies.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.7 from around 8,000 votes, and on TMDB it also stands at 6.7, from a much smaller base of 182 votes. The two scores match, and the larger IMDb sample suggests a modest but settled level of approval rather than a sharply divided response.