Review: Spriggan

Yu is pulled into a conspiracy surrounding the rediscovery of Noah's Ark - a conspiracy that sees many of his colleagues gunned down in cold blood. At the centre of the conspiracy is Colonel MacDougal, a child with extraordinary psychic powers.

In a confrontation with the fate of the human species in the balance, Yu must face MacDougall and find a way to defeat a person who he can't even reach, let alone understand...

The plot is a mix between secret-agent action and supernatural peril and mystery. Overall it keeps the blood flowing and is rarely predictable, with a few unanticipated twists along the way and a largely satisfying conclusion.

The actions of the "bad guys" are a little unpredictable at times, switching from bloody mass slaughter to menacing threats with surprising rapidity. While this does lead to some of the aforementioned twists, it also means that at times they seem a little inconsistent. This is one of the few things I disliked about the film.

Characters are complex, with motives varying from the transparent (trying to save their own lives) to the incredibly murky (particularly MacDougall). Overall this is a good thing. Most characters are fairly realistic; there are a couple of common anime stereotypes (the maniac with the knife, the big guy with a chain gun) but these are rare and even these have some depth.

However, while there's nothing overtly wrong with Spriggan, I find myself liking it less and less with time. In many ways it's a Hollywood blockbuster in anime form - lots of flash, but fundamentally soulless. It's hard to care about the characters.

The quality of its animation is very high, on a par with, or perhaps better than, Ghost in the Shell or Blood: The Last Vampire. However, there were two problems. The first is that in some cases the frame rate would drop to a point where spotting the frames go by was quite easy. The second is oddly a consequence of the effort put into the animation; on rare occasions it becomes easy to see what's going on inside of peoples' mouths - not only is this a little distracting, but it's not even terribly realistic, as frankly mouth movements are rarely so obvious in real life.

The English voice acting is very good. Nobody seemed particularly out of place, although the "evil capering hand-to-hand nutcase" minion was a little overdone. :-) The Japanese voice acting was also very good.

Sound is very effective - a fairly standard action mix in many ways, but chosen particularly effectively.

Packaging is a fairly standard DVD case with butterfly clip - an attractive and fairly effective design.