From the creator of “Akira” comes another anime feature that’s epic in just about every way you look at it.
The story is epic. Noah’s Ark has been discovered and is being heavily guarded by a group of scientists called ARCAM. Shortly after their discovery, ARCAM find themselves under attack by a rogue wing of the Pentagon. They want the Ark for themselves as whoever controls it, wields its power to create mass destruction. Mass destruction? What happened to the dotty old man with a ship full of monkeys and bears and crap? Oh well, apparently this is the real Noah’s Ark and it has the power to destroy Earth, only to rebuild it anew. Fortunately for ARCAM, and the inhabitants of Earth, they have the Spriggan on their side. The Spriggan are specially trained troops placed all over the world for the purpose of guarding historical artifacts – kinda sci-fi Indiana Joneses if you will. When 17 year old Spriggan Yu Ominae discovers that his buddy Spriggans are being killed over this amazing find, he travels to Turkey to the location of Noah’s Ark to defend it from the forces of evil as well as gain revenge for his fallen comrades.
The animation is epic. Spriggan has a very distinct look to it, especially for anime. It actually looks like a mix between anime and a Ralph Bakshi feature if you can imagine that. The character design is also something reminiscent of say Ralph Bakshi’s films.
The sound design is epic. The score for this film is absolutely magnificent, totally epic and it just draws you right in.
The first half of “Spriggan” is damn near perfect and you won’t be able to take your attention away from it. After that, things slow down a bit, characters you were starting to like in the first half are either killed off or shoved into the background while other characters that aren’t as interesting come to the forefront. Oh well. This is still one fine piece of anime.
