Spriggan (2001)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Spriggan is one of the worst types of anime movies one can watch. The characters are undeveloped, the plot is ridiculous and the plausibility impossible.The main character, Yu, for example, recovers multiple times after being a hair breadths away from death. Likewise, his partner Jean survives every major catastrophe from being run over by a giant snowmobile, falling off a cliff, being torn to shreds by dinosaurs and even being shot by accident by Yu.The plot of Noah's ark as a climate control and human creating device has absolutely no relevance to the movie. That ark's purpose is to merely serve as an object in which two competing forces - the Pentagon and AROAM, the unit Yu serves - are fighting for.Many times the duologue goes into ridiculous, incomprehensible speech such as third dimensions, and whatnot.Other random crap: 1) Only one woman in the entire movie - Maragaret, who plays no significant role - only serves to pull a professor from death by the antagonist, a wire wielding genetically modified toddler 2) Random enemies who were once Yu's partners but whom he seems to enjoy killing mercilessly 3) Jumping from scene to scene with no smooth transition or logical connection at all, such as traveling from Istanbul to Mt. Arrarat In Conclusion: This warped, disconnected plot and unaffable characters make this movie a sure miss. Don't watch it. You'll pity yourself afterwards.

Spriggan is an animé action film of extreme proportion. With production supervised by Katsuhiro Ôtomo (director of Akira), this is not surprising. Our main character is Yu Ominae, a 17 year old special operative, code named Spriggan. The story is one of warring covert government factions as they race to take possession of "Noah's Ark", an ancient artifact with immense power.All this seems simple enough. Yu is the stereotypical action hero; he catches swords with his bare hands, dispatches "bad guys" without flinching, sustains near mortal injuries and still manages to hurl abuse at his oppressors, and yet, still swerves to avoid hitting innocent pedestrians. Our bad guys include a big guy with body armour and replacement cybernetics with a very, very large gun, a small guy who is fast and also cybernetically enhanced, and a mysterious, small boy.Spriggan is based on a comic that ran in Shonen Magazine in Japan between 1989 and 1996. As such it has a following in Japan, but in the west (where it was known by the title "Striker") it has very few fans, as distribution of Japanese manga and animé is only now beginning to pick up.As far as production values are concerned, Spriggan is a showcase of modern cinematic animé. Huge rotoscoped panoramas form gorgeous backdrops for scenes such as a car chase through the streets of Turkey and you feel a true sense of immersion in flurries of mountaintop snow. What little CG there is, is integrated fluidly and adds to the film, unlike in many other productions where it may distract the viewer. The score is brilliant and the 5.1 surround mix caught me off guard. A couple of times I caught myself turning to see if there was someone behind me.I am generally a fan of subtitled animé, so I watched it in this form first. It is interesting to note that in most animé the character animation is done before the voices are added. However, in this production (as it was a cinema release), the voices for the Japanese tracks were recorded first and then the animation was made around those tracks, much in the same way Disney movies are made. Now this may bode poorly for the English dub, as the mouths instead of flapping open and closed are actually forming the shapes of words, yet great care and attention has been put into the English dub. In places the English track is a lot more plausible than the Japanese... it makes more sense that folks at the Pentagon sound like Americans. Had I my way I would change languages tracks part way through so that the English stuff is in English and the scenes set in Japan were in Japanese (more like in Blood: The Last Vampire) but that is just me being finicky. (If you get a chance to see the DVD you may want to check out the ADR team's commentary.)I feel that Spriggan is a film that has used mythology from other cultures and Christianity (in much the same way as Neon Genesis: Evangelion) to make the plot seem more interesting and arcane to a Japanese audience. The word Spriggan describes a faerie from Cornish mythology, with an ugly visage, large head and small body, and a penchant for stealing babies and replacing them. This draws some symbolic similarities to the main character as he is a character of power in a small body who was "adopted" by his organisation at a young age. I don't know how readily Americans will receive this film, as it portrays the American government in a bad light and says blatantly that the Christian Bible is wrong.Spriggan has a running time of 90 minutes. The first 60 of those play pretty much as a stereotypical action/adventure flick, but at about 60 minutes it starts getting weird. All of a sudden the plot moves from high action to metaphysical stuff and that may leave the viewer behind or feeling a little disjointed. During this section are some pretty cool visuals but to my mind the plot falls flat on its face. It seems that the film has fallen into the old animé trap of freaky villains and blood-spattered heroes yelling at each other for a bit, having their final confrontation, barely tying up the loose ends of the plot and then the bad guy threatens that there will be a sequel.In overview, I'd say that this is a technical film enthusiast's dream, not for kids, a good film for action buffs and a poor one for people who like good drama. So, to quote Douglas Adams: "Ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking".

Spriggan is arguably one of the best Anime to come our way. Based upon the manga of the same name, Spriggan tells the tale of Ominae Yu, an elite commando/superagent/operative for a powerful corporation known as ARCAM, whose mission is to protect and defend various ancient ruins scattered around the world. The codename Spriggan is to denote men and women with special abilities and skills in the employ of ARCAM whose combat abilities far surpass that of a normal human being. Ominae Yu is Japan's No.1 Spriggan but he is not the only one in the world. Namely his best friend Jean-Jacques Mondo who is France's top Spriggan.Personally, I've read the entire manga series and watched the anime way before it was released in the States. I basically loved the story and concept behind Spriggan and enjoyed every minute of the anime. Although some fans may argue that the anime didn't do justice to the manga by omitting certain unique features and characters which is somewhat central to the original story. But we must remember, this is a movie. It could not possibly squeeze in hundreds of pages of details into a 90 minute show. I admit I was somewhat disappointed by the changes. However, my fears were quieted when I saw how they brought alive the entire plot by introducing better script, better dialogue and better cinematography. Not to mention advanced animation techniques supported by cutting edge CG. However, the production staff chose the manga's second volume which tells about the discovery of Noah's Ark as the main plotline's premise rather than first volume. I guess Noah's Ark is a far more interesting story to tell and I have to agree on that.With a strong plot and cool-looking fight scenes that is fluidly animated to create a level of realism rarely seen in other big-budget anime movies, Spriggan still has some quirks that I need to mention. Except for Ominae Yu, Fattman and Colonel MacDougall, the rest of the cast's background were not clearly fleshed out. We were just told they were either the villains or the good guys and that's it. Other than that, this anime movie is definitely worth a watch many times over. Spriggan is truly a classic.

WOW! This Anime was FANDOOBLEEDOOTASTIC! I'd say it was a mix of Ninja Scroll because of the stereotypical Anime' villains. The wirey guy that laughs at the sight bloodshed and of course comes with a weapon that best describes his personality..."wirey". And the big guy that's unstoppable, with a totally new outtake on the gattlin gun. And there's also a GOOD bit of AKIRA stuff goin on in this flick. You have the "corrupt" politician theme as seen in AKIRA, and also who can forget the psychic power action in AKIRA? Well it's here too, the animation is TOP NOTCH, especially where the action takes place there were moments I held my breath cuz of what was happening. This movie is highly recommended! If you love your action then check it out. Also, the soundtrack makes the movie that much more moving. So, all in all if you're into ACTION and ESP then this movie is for you. AKIRA!!!!!!!!!