Spriggan

Rating:
Summary: A perfect choice for action fans
Review: This is a lot like a summer popcorn movie, for the most part. The movie has a very heavy focus on it's visuals and action sequences, which are very excellently done. Of course, with people on staff like Katsuhiro Otomo and Hirotsugu Kawasaki you'll always have to expect this. In Akira, Otomo said that he liked to keep everything in motion. He never wanted to use any sort of still frames for any reason. For Spriggan, you get the same thing. The animation is almost constantly fluid and rarely, if never, gets stiff or jittery like most anime. There's some really nice scenes of CG, espacially with the scenes that take place inside the ark. It's steller and seamless at the same time (like the excellent CG in Princess Mononoke). The fight scenes are so wonderfully choreographed and storyboarded out, that Spriggan's action is a class in it's own. Take all of the fight scenes in Ninja Scroll, X, Ghost in the Shell, and Battle Angel and then put them into fast forward and you have Spriggan. Yes, they're all THAT GOOD!
As far as visuals and action sequences are concerned, this movie has it all.
The movie's audio is excellent. Considering this is a fairly recent anime, it's sound design is incredible. I espcially like how the echoes and distorted SFX were handled inside the ark sequences. The video transer is also very nice. Lots early scenes in the film are shown in very dark colors and the transfer handles them wonderfully. The backrounds are beautifully rendered and the character animation comes off very crisp and clear. The only problem with it is that once the scenes mostly take place inside the ark, there is a fair amount of grain on the characters. It isn't too distracting though. It also gives the film more of a cinematic feel.
Spriggan is something that really and truly excels at what it's trying to be, and that's an action flick with western based legends and religious ideas mixed into it. Sure the story runs a little thin at times and character development is kinda nil, but it's slight lack of depth makes it even more fun to watch. It does present some interesting ideas as well (like saying that Noah's Ark was a weather controlling device and a starter of life). It won't exactly put your brain on overdrive like Ghost in the Shell of Serial Experiments Lain, but it will make you think a little bit after the credits roll.
Lots of anime fans I know bash on this film because of it's lack of plot and character development. Why can't they all just sit down and enjoy a film that is just a simple piece of action and fun? Where have all their roots gone?
The film's soundtrack is also excellent with mixes of Turkish chants, atmospheric instrumentals, and electronic drum-beats. The most impressive track, though, is the movie's ending them which is an experimental techno song performed by Saju and sung in Mandarin (a rare find in anime). If you need a reason to buy the soundtrack, listen to this song. I swear it will move you to buy the soundtrack. It did for me.
Whether I watched this film in Japanese, English, or with commentary by the ADR directors, I got a different experience everytime.
Spriggan is a highly enjoyable film that will never gather dust on my shelf, and most likely not on yours.

Rating:
Summary: Funny, brainless, cool
Review: Let me first say this: There are many different kinds of films in the world of anime.
There's slow paced thought provoking dramas like Jin-roh, psycological mind-bending thrillers like Perfect Blue and visually impressive adrenalin rushes of action like Akira where the only moral seems to be "with great power comes great responsibility" and then the audience is treated to hours of explosions and psycic powers and imploding body parts and splat-gore-mutant-blood-screaming actionpacked fun to emphasize this point.
Spriggan is another one of these.
And as long as you realize that, before sitting down to watch it, you'll be okay with that beacause it does it really well. The action and the animation really IS impressive, and you will be entertained the whole way through as long as you don't expect the story to make sense, the characters to have more dimensions than the sheet of paper they were drawn on and the audience to walk away with any profound insight or valuable morale.

Spriggan is just not that kind of flick.
It is merely there to entertain. And it's not like it even pretends to attempt to go any deeper than that. So I'm cool with it.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good but rather disappionting
Review: Spriggan is a good movie if you like hardcore violence but besides that this is very average. first of all the plot is nothing special. anyone who waches alot of Anime movie will find nothing new or innovative about it. the music is VERY bad and it got on my nurves right from the start. but probably the most anoying aspect of the film was the villian, an ultra powerful kid who in my opinion, absolutely ruined the movie. if they replaced him with a cool villian,(that wasn't around 10 years old) this film would have been MUCH better. this movie does have cool action sequences and rather intense battle scenes, but overall i only recommend renting this.

5/10

Rating:
Summary: Spriggan. Akira? Spriggan. S-P-R-I-G-G-A-N. Akira? A-K-I-R..
Review: I have just finished watching one of the most uninspired movies I have ever seen.

Firstly, it's good points. The soundtrack had, although not completely memorable, decent tracks that did a supurb job of enhancing the scenes. I found a couple very pleasing to the ear. The animation was clean and rather nice at most points, particularly in the action sequences. Motions were fluid and very realistic, colors were good, and detail was adequate.

Now. With that aside, this was your typical action movie with a weak plot. Sadly, it makes every attempt not to succumb to the mindless entertainment genre, while ultimately failing.

The beginning showed promise, as the first couple of events were intriguing. However, as it progresses, it unfolds into a limp, cliche-ridden story. Additionally, the characters suffer no characterization, and Yu, the main character, has minimal. Therefore it is impossible to experience any amount of connection with them. Jean-Jaques Mondo's "role" in the story felt like nothing more than filler - besides being a friend to Yu, he is given no other explanation. He simply exists. And the antagonist was definitely 'ripped out' of Akira, as a previous reviewer noted. He as well as no apparent motive for his actions, and that is all the more damaging.

Spriggan attempted to execute a plot that needed an at least adequate amount of depth for it to stay afloat and be worthwhile. It does not succeed, and by the time the credits roll, it leaves you with nothing.

Rent it if you are curious, but please, spend your money on an anime of quality. There are so many out there.

Rating:
Summary: Spriggan is anime done correctly
Review: Such slander has been spewed at one of the best action anime films in recent times. The animation is superb, the japanese dialogue is fantastic, and YES the plot does rule. For people to say the plot is weak, it's pretty asinine. To sum it up... Spriggan offers us plenty of action, and similar character designs from Akira with a simpler, yet highly intriguing storyline. I would agree that McDougal is total Akira, and it's also no surprise that Otomo supervised this film. Don't let that fool you though, this is far from ripping Akira off. Spriggan is also known as "Striker" in manga format, and it's been around for years. People compare this to Raiders of the lost ark as well, and the only similar points are that different organizations are after a religious artifact. Spriggan makes raiders look like childs play. Universal Solider is also compared, I won't even bother to comment because U.S. doesn't hold a candle to this. Look, if you want an anime with great action, and an interesting plot you can follow, Spriggan shouldn't be left out of your collection.

Rating:
Summary: Forget what i said earlier
Review: wow, i guess i forgot how awesome this really was. when i previously wrote a review for Spriggan i had forgotten what i loved about it and i only remembered what i didn't like. seriously, this is very underrated. the action is so intense you will find yourself sweating throughout the film. one thing that really keeps you so in to Spriggan is that the main charachter, Yu often is in near death experiances and sometimes you think he is just about to die, but then somehow he finds a way to defeat the enemy. this isn't one of those films in which the main character just blows down any threat without any difficulty.

if you are wandering why alot of people don't like this, it's mainly because most people(including myself a short time ago) were expecting another Akira since this movie was made by the same people. well, all i can say is that when i watched this again i tried just enjoying the movie rather than expecting a mind-blowing plot. i began to relize that the soundtrack was actually quit decent and both the animation and the action scenes were absolutely spectacular.

overall, this is a great anime and a must have for all action fans.

9/10

Rating:
Summary: Terrific!
Review: Very well done animation and action sequences. The animation alone makes this a must see.

Rating:
Summary: The biggest disappointment ever
Review: Some one told me that "Spriggan" was what "Ghost in the Shell" should have been. I had read the original manga (released in the United States as "Striker") and had high hopes to see it in animated form. Unfortunately, what I got was one of the worst animated films I had ever seen, and one of the biggest film disappointments in my life.

"Spriggan" has so many problems I don't know where to start. First, there is the most obvious one being that this movie fills up every anime cliche in the book, especially the classic "hero knows the villain from a past life"...but this movie takes it into overdrive: Yue knows EVERY VILLAIN from a past life! That's right, even when it doesn't make sense. How does he go from being a former soldier to the product of a super-child project, and all different organizations. In the original manga Yue didn't know any of the villains from a past life, why they add this in the movie is beyond me. It adds nothing but campiness and plotholes.

The other problem is the added violence. The manga had a good dosage of action balanced with storyline, but the movie takes out the storyline for the sake of more blood and guts. The bombing of the highschool, the chase in Instanbul (which strangely resembles a similar scene in "Midnight Express"), the repeated scenes of the same attack on the base (did any one think of continuation?)...it wasn't in the original manga, and here its all just for a high body count, doing nothing to the story.

Watch this movie to see one of the worse action scenes ever animated. In one of the repeated attack scenes, the bad guys move in a straight line simply shooting to their right where a group of guys milling around in an open field in big white outfits for no discernable reason just kind of die. Wow, it must have taken the animators like...five minutes to plan and create that scene.

Finally, my final problem is what they did to Louis, the French Spriggan. In the original manga he was a mix of a berserker, a werewolf, and the Hulk, where if he saw his own blood he would become a huge, werewolf like monster and start to kill all those around him, not stopping until there was nothing left to kill.

What does he do in the movie? He...jumps...really...high...

So if you haven't told already, I really hated this movie, and it left me extremely bitter. Watch this if you like mindless violence and an even dumber storyline (if this thing even had one). I encourage you, however, to avoid this and read the manga; it may have a different name and the stories are re-ordered, but it still manages to have more quality than this.

Rating:
Summary: A Pure Guilty Pleasure
Review: When I ran across details of the SPRIGGAN anime movie,
I recognized from the description and cels
that it was a video version of a manga by Hiroshi
Takashige and Ryoji Minagawa that had been published
in English as STRIKER. While STRIKER had been little
more than a violent and not very original action
story, though characterized by good artwork, the
SPRIGGAN video was produced by Katsuhiro Otomo, of
AKIRA fame, which added some interest to it.

The video actually follows the story line of the
manga closely. After the discovery of ancient and
potentially dangerous artifacts of a lost (and
possibly not entirely human) civilization, an
organization named ARCAM is formed to uncover and
control these artifacts. As there are a lot of
bad guys who want to get their hands on these items,
ARCAM is heavily armed, with their most formidable
assets being the "Spriggans" (the "Strikers" of the
English manga version), who are super-powered
combat-trained teenagers -- sort of like Max / Jessica
Alba in DARK ANGEL.

In a cavern in the top of Mount Ararat in Turkey,
ARCAM stumbles on to their greatest find to date:
Noah's Ark, which turns out to be an artifact of
almost unimaginable power. A Pentagon group moves
to take control of Noah's Ark from ARCAM, and the
only things that stand in their way are two ARCAM
Spriggans, Yu Ominae and his partner Jean.

The whole story concept owes something to INDIANA
JONES, if implemented in a more techno style reminiscent
of THE MATRIX. Despite following the manga story line
closely, Katsuhiro Otomo has managed to make the story
his own, trimming off some of the hokier features of
the manga -- while adding in a new DARK ANGEL-like subplot
to show the origins of Yu Ominae that actually
enhances the story considerably.

In addition, SPRIGGAN adopts Otomo's gritty, realistic (in the
visual sense at least), and dark artwork style. The story also
has some elements reminiscent of Otomo's AKIRA and (at the
finale) the old B-movie sci-fi classic, QUATERMASS & THE PIT.

The first conclusion about SPRIGGAN is that it is very
violent and entirely preposterous. To
which the production crew would reply: "We know!"
The whole thing was designed as a pure action
flic, and not only makes no compromises with that
formula but is downright enthusiastic about it.
The viewer doesn't care how preposterous the story
is, being too distracted by a thunderous,
adrenalin-soaked, guns blazing on full auto,
blood-spattered, high body count, maximum overdrive
thrill ride.

And it's supported by excellent, conscientious, "give
the customers their money's worth" production values.
The artwork is, if not groundbreaking, consistently
first-class; much attention is paid to details,
particularly of weapons; the action choreography is
so wild that it could be viewed again just to see all
that is going on; and the soundtrack is, much to the
surprise of a viewer used to anime, a full-blown
Hollywood-style symphonic score.

SPRIGGAN is a pure guilty pleasure. Yes, it's
wildly violent, but violence is what it's all about,
it couldn't exist without it, and if you can buy into
that you'll probably like this movie.

Rating:
Summary: Great action and visuals, but thats it!
Review: Let me start out by saying the visuals are stunning and the action is good, but there's one major problem... the story ...! I bought this, on sale, at EB and then traded it in for credit as soon as I could. It has been the only anime DVD I ave ever given up. The action is also great but whating the movie all i was saying to myself was "what were those writers thinking?" So if all you want are visuals and action, look no further. but if you want anything else steer clear of this DVD!