Spriggan

One of the most eagerly awaited anime releases in recent years has finally arrived in region 4; anime’s first blatant foray into the world of Hollwood-style big dumb action films - Spriggan. With resplendent huge guns, lashings of testosterone fuelled bravado and the shallowest of characterisations, it’s literally teeming with the kind of poorly motivated, beautifully orchestrated mayhem and destruction that critics dismiss and audiences crave.

17 year-old Ominae Yu is a 'Spriggan'; a member of the secret organization ARCAM whose job it is to save the artefacts of the ancient world from exploitation by unsavoury powers. When the remnants of Noah’s Ark are discovered buried at the top of Turkey’s Mt Ararat, Yu joins the team of ARCAM scientists already stationed there. But no sooner has he arrived than the base is attacked by the most evil force in the world - the CIA - who has its eyes firmly set on the Ark; now revealed to be an alien terra-forming artefact of enormous power. Leading the attack are the infamous CIA mutant-cross-cyborg operatives ‘Fattman’, a heavily-armed giant, and ‘Little Boy’ a razor-wire wielding psychopath, and it's up to Yu to take them out. A tough ask, you might think, for a mere high school student! Well, yes and no - you see Yu is not your average young buck, but is himself an escaped CIA experiment; genetic engineering having rendered him the ultimate killing machine.

But no sooner is Yu gaining the upper hand, with a little help from fellow Spriggan Jean-Jacques Mondo, than the diminutive Colonel MacDougal arrives on the scene; a young boy with incredibly enhanced psycho-kinetic powers. And this little tyke, baseball cap and all, is in no mood to play games; unless of course you include playing god..

Despite what you may have read, Spriggan is not the latest film by Otomo Katsuhiro, the legendary director of the anime cult classic Akira. What Spriggan is, however, is a collaborative project between, Otomo (who is given the rather ambiguous title of ‘supervising producer') and first-time director Hirotsugu Kawasaki. Not that Otomo’s influence isn’t obvious for all to see. Visually, Spriggan looks like a cross between Akira and the more recent Ghost in the Shell (not surprising given Kawasaki’s heavy involvement in the latter) and the film is populated with a bunch of Akira-esque characters: a psycho-kinetic boy, a ruthless government and a power that can't fall into the wrong hands. Add to this a dash of sci-fi and a dab of religious reference (reminiscent of Evangelion) and it all adds up to a mouth-watering mix for anime fans.

The results are certainly amazing, but not in the way you might expect. While Spriggan combines the style and some of the plot points of both Akira and Ghost in the Shell, it certainly doesn't exhibit the depth of plot that characterised its predecessors. It’s big and it’s dumb; a hyper-kinetic string of obvious setups, shallow dialogue and explosive action scenes. But Spriggan's obvious failing is also its greatest asset. It might be big dumb and loud, but it's unpretentious and unabashedly entertaining. You may need to check your brain at the door, but Spriggan is as breathless and as exciting an anime as you'll see.

You can count on one hand the number of anime releases that are a definite must-see due to their quality of animation alone, but Spriggan is just such a title. The animation is simply stunning, imbued with realistic character designs that display beautifully fluid movement; a realism that is extended to all members of the cast, even the lowliest of supporting characters. It is the film’s signature action sequences, however, that take the visuals to an even higher level. Exquisitely animated, richly detailed and frenetically paced, both the heavy weapons and hand-to hand fighting are wonderfully realistic; be they in the jungle, on the slopes of Mt Ararat, winding through Istanbul’s famous covered markets or blowing the crap out of ARCAM’s scientific laboratories.

Like Ghost in the Shell, Spriggan contains a number of CG effects, but the most obvious of these are restricted to computer displays and the output from other specialty equipment (such as eye goggles). Much more subtle is the use of CG to produce some stunning computer animated overlays. In the same way that Ghost in the Shell used CG to breathe life into its future vision of Hong Kong, Spriggan uses a number of CG models to great effect in animating the film’s key locations. And whilst Spriggan’s background artwork doesn’t display quite the depth of detail to be seen in Ghost in the Shell, there results are still wonderful to look at. One shot in particular literally took my breath away – a simulated hand-held shot during a frenetic fight in the backstreets of Istanbul.

As this region’s premiere producer of anime digital transfers, Madman has a reputation for their outstanding treatment of this animation medium on DVD and Spriggan is no exception; sporting a widescreen (1.85:1) anamorphic transfer that is very close to perfect. As the film begins, one thing that is obvious is a sparing use of colour; with subdued hues and a great deal of black. Thankfully black level is perfect, and when the vivid colour does come (all too frequently streams of rich red blood) the colour is rendered perfectly, free of bleeding or chroma noise. The image is beautiful and sharp without introducing aliasing of any kind, and there’s a wealth of detail on display.

There really is little that I can say in terms of negatives. Early on, the darker scenes display a small amount of grain, as well as some slight macro-blocking, but either these artefacts disappear as the film progresses or I became so engrossed that I stopped noticing them. There are also a tiny number of specks here and there, but you’ll have to be looking hard to spot them. Even the layer change is well-placed, coming in a quiet fade between scenes.

All in all, Spriggan is a visual feast and one of the best looking anime discs you’ll see in this region or others. With a near-perfect digital reproduction, Madman should be congratulated on yet another job well done.

If great visuals weren’t enough, the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks in both English and the original Japanese are also fantastic. From the outset, Spriggan displays almost continuous surround activity, with the ambient sounds of crowds, traffic, and the crack of munitions in the heat of battle, emanating from all directions. Combined with nice channel separation, the results are a soundstage that is as immersive and as dynamic as any Hollywood blockbuster. Back-to-front and swirling directional effects come thick and fast, with streaming missiles, thundering aircraft and the ricochet of gunfire criss-crossing the room. With all manner of explosions and high-tech destruction filling nearly every frame, the subwoofer is called upon almost continuously to add its voice to proceedings. The score, a fusion of ethnic (predominantly Turkish/Middle Eastern), Western contemporary, and typical film-dramatic, provides even more depth to the soundstage, nicely balanced between the front and rear channels.

The one area of the soundtrack that I did find annoying, however, was the dialogue. The dialogue level in the Japanese mix is a little on the low side compared to the front and surround channels, making it often hard to catch amidst the commotion. And while ADR’s English dub is certainly serviceable, they have changed too many of the lines for my liking. Whilst the main plot points are retained, even a cursory comparison between the English subtitles and the English dialogue reveals the ridiculous disparity between the two versions. I can understand the motivation when producing, say, children’s cartoons, to develop a new script that gives as close as possible lip-sync to the detriment of all else, but for adult-oriented films? We all know it’s a dub – who the hell cares if the damn lips sync up or not? Aside from the scripting issue, there’s the normal problems with the English voice talent providing lacklustre performances, but if you want to watch anime in anything but the original Japanese, then that’s what you have to expect.

These problems with dialogue aside, Spriggan has to be one of the best sounding anime releases out there today. This is one reference-quality soundtrack that certainly mixes it with the big-boys of the action genre; animated or no.

Certainly ADR/Madman have pulled out the stops for this long-awaited release, with the production standards displayed by the Spriggan DVD the equal of many a big budget Hollywood extravaganza. The disc opens with some nicely animated, anamorphic menus that feature elements of the eerie, ambient score. The Prologic decoder makes sure that the surround channel is nicely active throughout, and the chapter menu features animated snippets from the film.

The menus provide access to a number of extras, and although I would have liked to have seen an interview with the actual Japanese movie-makers (a la Ghost in the Shell), we do get a commentary from members of the ADR production team.

• Commentary – ADR writer/director Matt Greenfield and ADR Sound Engineer Christopher Bourque: A pretty ordinary commentary, with the two guys focussing on the job of adapting Spriggan into English, getting the voice syncing right and so on. Although they do mention some interesting information early on about the history of the production, I ultimately found this commentary frustrating due to my disinterest in English anime dubs. If nothing else it did give me a handle on the trouble these guys go to produce their ultimately lacklustre adaptations.

• Character Designs: A collection of detailed initial sketches of all the major characters presented as a 16-page anamorphic montage. The feature’s dramatic score provides a fitting accompaniment.

• Vehicle and Equipment Designs: Similar to the character designs, here we have 12 pages of intricately detailed sketches of the many vehicles and eight pages of munitions, used throughout the feature.

• Key Backgrounds: Again, a collection of 21 amazingly detailed sketches of interior and exterior locations for the film, presented using a slow zooming pans so you can appreciate the work that has gone into them.

• Madman Propaganda: Trailers for six other Madman/ADV DVD releases Tekken, Gasaraki, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ninja Resurrection, Sin - The Movie and the Samurai X OAVs, all presented in full frame with reasonable transfers.

Have I convinced you yet? Spriggan is a mindless, violent, and totally kick-arse, big-dumb-action-film of an anime. With some of the best action animation I've ever seen, and rendered beautifully to DVD, this is one anime release that every action lover should not miss.