Spriggan

A secret government rogue agency sends out two of its best agents, called Spriggans, to thwart an evil organization's plot to acquire Noah's Ark and all the secrets contained therein. Sounds like the plot for a spy action adventure movie? Correct. * Hero. Cool, young, Japanese Spriggan Yu Ominae (who actually looks Japanese) with amazing physical martial arts skills and ability to take damage? CHECK * Sidekick. Cool, sexy French Spriggan Jean-Jacques Mondo who has insane skill with guns? CHECK * Three to four evil villians, all with special kick ass powers? CHECK* Plot that takes you all over the world for variety? CHECK * Spectacular action scenes with blowing up vehicles, hand to hand fights, hand to gun fights, gun to gun fights, artillery fights, flying vehicles, land vehicles, vehicles in desert, vehicles in jungle, vehicles in snow? CHECK * Extremely well choreographed action scenes with kick ass sound and animation? CHECK! * Plot that starts getting religiously and philosophical towards the last one third to try to make the movie seem more "deep" than just a regular action packed flick? CHECK! * Somehow the fate of the world rests in the hands of our hero spy, because the bad guys would really mess stuff up? CHECK! This is a great action flick if you like these sorts of movies. Because it is animated there is a lot more licence to make the action even better, in live action I bet insurance wouldn't have covered this! The characters are sort of one dimensional but there's so much eye candy and other stuff to see one can't help but be entertained. An action movie of this calibre is like taking all the best scenes of Black Lagoon and compressing it into 90 minutes of adrenaline. Great fun and you'd enjoy this if you like a combination of James Bond, Tomb Raider and Indiana Jones.

Cool premise. A lot happened in the first 30 minutes, but then it just stopped. The rest of the movie was boring and blue, really blue. I mean physically it was just blue. There was no color, except for blue. The kid was blue, the background was blue, the characters were blue, the lighting was blue, and the story was blue. Dear readers, the rest of this review is written to fit the 105 minimum word count. Feel free to skip this, like I would recommend skipping the last 2/3rds of the movie. As I have previously stated, its just blue. If you like blue 10/10, howeverI cannot recommend.

Let's start with the good. Spriggan is notable for its sakuga. The animation is very smooth and the choreography is decent. The art style is quite aesthetically pleasing too. It's easily up there with Ninja Scroll and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust as far as popcorn action flicks go. Now let's talk about the story. Well, the story is quite poor and cliched. It's like an Indiana Jones movie. An ancient artifact is found that is used to destroy the world by an evil villain. Protagonist goes to stop the villain. So, nothing really to talk about here. Most of the fight scenes are really, really stupid. Inthe first fight, the Fat Man has grabbed Yu by the neck, and is slowly crushing his neck. Yu doesn't do anything except grab at the Fat Man's hand, even though he has a knife. Then Jean calls out to Yu, and Yu suddenly becomes smart and remembers that he has a knife and cuts Fat Man's arm off? Why didn't he do that before? But the final fight scene is what really ruined the movie for me. The main villain has the power of telekinesis. He can knock people back from a distance. Every time Yu tries running up to him, he uses his power and knocks Yu back. Yu keeps doing this and he gets knocked back every time. Does Yu learn from this and try a different strategy? Nope! He just continues to run directly at the bad guy, and every single time he gets knocked back, he gets back up and tries the exact same thing again, running at the bad guy screaming at the top of his lungs. Until eventually he suddenly gets really angry and runs really fast, and this time he doesn't get knocked down, even though the bad guy is using even more power than before. Yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds. Having said all that, I liked the little touches here and there. Moments like when Yu was disassembling his pistol and cleaning it (what was he using? WD-40?), for example. The dialogue, although it was pretty stupid at times, was direct and snappy. All of this contributed to the anime having the "feel" of a classic 90s action movie. Yeah, it's nothing to write home about. But it's not unwatchable either. It's no worse than Ninja Scroll. If you just want to turn your brain off and watch some mindless action, at least this movie is direct and to the point and doesn't waste your time with useless filler.

An organization codenamed ARCAM has a mission to retrieve ancient artifacts and keep them secret. One of their teams discover the Ark of Noah spoken of in the Old Testament. Another organization wants it, and they're leaving a path of destruction in their pursuit of it. The Ark has the power to completely change the world. One of ARCAM's top agents in an elite group called Spriggan named Yu Ominae is pulled into the confrontation. Yu journey's to the heart of the conflict. -summary Spriggan is another anime title that condenses its story to fit into 90 mins., when in truth, it would have beena much better outing in an OVA or even a TV series format. Well, no sense on crying over slashed stories. Spriggan is an action first, deal with characters and story later type of deal. The action and production values are so well done I know plenty of people whom forgot about the story altogether. The production values are the main selling point. The artwork has many moments of beauty from snow laden mountain tops, to dark and dreary caves. There's a great amount of detail in the backgrounds, and although the character designs feel reminiscent of Akira, there are moments of creativity. The locations and set pieces are simply eye candy, and there's never a dull moment. The animation which does use a small amount of CG turns in some heavily appealing action segments; the viewer will be treated to bodies being ate up by gun fire, and very well choreographed action assisted by splendid camera work. The action fan will find quite a bit here to keep them occupied. I also like the mature feel of the anime, as it has this level of darkness to it which frees it completely from that "light up the mood" feel. In regards to the voice acting, it's been awhile since I saw the sub so I can't recall anything from it. However, the English dub had a competent cast, Chris Patton playing Yu was just as good as normally, while Kevin Corn as Colonel McDougall hammed it up with an annoying child-like high pitch voice, that hasn't gotten any less annoying over the years. Spriggan maintains a very consistent tone on the serious side, and it definitely needed to sustain that feel because it does handle some dark material. The story takes a stab at a different variation of the Great Flood, and some of the things will probably get under the skin of the religious; but in the end it all comes off as window-dressing, because the entire story for the most part plays second to the action. The plot follows Yu and another Spriggan operative by the name of Jean-Jacques Mondo, as they battle against heavily armed and powerful cyborg warriors. The plot is heavily action-saturated with small pieces of story here and there. It would probably be insulting to even say character development is brushed upon, since Mondo is only there to fulfill a role, and outside of how he fights you learn nothing about him. Yu's background is crammed in towards the end, but he becomes a pretty cool character early on, so he's easy to get into. The lead villain by the name of Colonel McDougall for the most part was that bad guy with serious delusions of grandeur. He wants the Ark to use its power and begin a second Great Flood. Spriggan really could have been better. If only the writers chose to flesh out the character and story, plus take full advantage of its heavy themes. Instead, they wanted to focus on high production values. The only reason I don't completely have a problem with this is because it did very well on what it set out for. I will mention that it has a couple of deus ex machina moments that had me wondering could they have thought of something better. I found Spriggan to be a mildly enjoyable action-fest. It doesn't suffer from tonal shifts, and it sticks to its guns. If you're searching for that little popcorn flick and you want to leave your brain at the door. Then this is that anime for you. If I had to liken it to other anime titles; it would probably be similar to Afro Samurai or Ninja Scroll. Highs: Production values, nice action segments Lows: All it appears to care about is looking pretty

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