erebus53

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".

The art in this production is becoming all too familiar to those of us who have seen the works of "the Godfather of Animé" Osamu Tezuka. The tell-tale wierd hair and art style that is reminiscent of Tin-Tin and Archie really shows that the art that this animé was based on was drawn a long time ago... in this case 1947-49.

Now, when I watch a cell-shaded animation I prefer it to look like it has been painted. In this day and age it has, of course, fallen to computers to make the production of animated shows a profitable venture. However, just because we have computers as the tools I don't necessarily think that we should be making our backgrounds shiny and 3D rendered.

This is all I saw here. The combination of pretty 3D rendered backgrounds with cell-shaded characters grates against my sensibilities. This detracts from the overall production and distracts me from the plot. I feel that it looks hotchpotched and amateurish. I feel that some directors are relying too heavily on computers and not enough on good animation.

Some people seem to think that computer graphics are "the way of the future" in animé. I feel that productions such as Shrek and other CG masterpieces are as far from the "animé" form as other regular films, and animé doesn't need to go there.

Metropolis had a really nice plot, though it is amusing to note that it is very different from its original form in the manga. It is as different in film as any movie adaptation from a novel... possibly more so.

I may watch it again... but it might be a while before I bother.

Shadowskill is a series of two parts; an OAV and the epilogue. It tells the story of a Gau, an orphaned boy who is adopted as younger brother of a beautiful young martial arts master. Yet again, this isn't a cartoon for the kiddies, as it is a martial-arts drama containing graphic violence.

The opening of the story comes across as a hotchpotch of parts as it explains the formation of the group of main characters. This probably comes across as disjointed because of the story's origins as a Bumper Comic, originally published in short installments. Confusingly, the main characters fight a series of monsters with loosely explained premises. This is all well and good if you just want to see some action, but not easy to take seriously.

The second half of the OAV is the only part of the OAV plot that I find really interesting. It deals with a fight between two dear friends who have been turned against each other. I feel that this addresses the issue of obligation and honour more clearly than the earlier part of the story, but yet again I feel like the background is somewhat glossed over. Perhaps it was felt that a superficial storyline would less interfere with the pace of the action. I don't know if it pays off, but a bunch off blustering people throwing around glowy fireballs isn't my idea of action any way.

Some of the art is appealing but for the most part the plot lets it down. I think that Shadowskill suffers from tenuous character development and melodramatic nonsense, though I am not really a big fan of martial-arts drama stories. The animation of the fight scenes is not too bad, though it seems to be needlessly bloody. I don't feel that waves of blood add much to the plot line, or the realism of the fighting.

Westerners may find some of the devices of the story confusing. In a way that is becoming increasingly familiar to animé fans (primarily due to the advent of Shoujo animé like Card Captor Sakura) magic is cast from cards, or more technically "Ofuda". This is a Shinto concept. Unfortunately this will probably seem weird to most people especially as the cards have to be subtitled because their names are in Japanese kanji. In the Madman release of this production this subtitling is done with glowing green subtitles, which looks kind of cheesy.

It is amusing to note that though the OAV and the epilogue share the same name, they are produced completely differently. From one to the other new characters have been introduced, and the personality of already established characters has changed. One of the main supporting characters is recognisable only by her attire and the mole that she has on her cheek; in the first production having short blue hair and in the second having long brown hair.

The epilogue has more comedy and more attractive art. The production quality comes across as higher, from the story telling to the pacing and the soundtrack. The animation is well done, though, as is fairly common with this sort of animé, the action comes across as far-fetched and fantastic. It is not uncommon to see parts of the scenery exploding with the ferocious blows of our protagonists, and a training battle in the middle of a rockslide has to be seen to be believed.

I can see this being popular primarily with guys aged 15 to 20, or younger, if they can get it past their parents. The plot isn't very deep and there is some "fan service" (though not much). Personally I'd give it about a 5/10; I could watch it again, but I will probably have better things to do.