Spriggan is an unusual Anime action flick. It looks like a crisp and polished early 90’s Anime but was released towards the tail end of the decade. It features an interesting premise fitting of an Indiana Jones film but is mixed with a Metal Gear Solid aesthetic and some good old fashioned late 80’s early 90’s Anime ultra violence. If all of that sounds like a strange combo, it’s because it is and despite all of that working in its favor, Spriggan isn’t nearly the amazing package it wants to be. It can try sure but it never quite hits the marks it wants.
The plot from Spriggan feels like an ongoing tale we’re just being dropped into, Star Wars: A New Hope style. But whereas A New Hope felt accessible to anyone who had never even heard of Star Wars, Spriggan tries to work double time to get you up to speed on who Yu Ominae is, who he works for, who he’s fighting against and what his ultimate objective in the movie is. Only the far latter is clear: Noah’s Ark (which doesn’t look like anything you’d expect from the Biblical references) has to be resealed or destroyed before it falls into the wrong hands. You never get a better sense of what the ARCAM organization is or how a secret government organization like the US Machine Corps is even allowed to operate. It all amounts to very weak world building for a movie otherwise presented as a potential gateway for a blockbuster Anime film franchise that never came to be. Which is a shame because the potential is there. It also doesn’t help that, at the end of the day, the main villains endgame is basically a Bond Villain/Cobra plot…which given the apocalyptic stakes which are presented is kind of laughable.
Yu is pretty bare bones but oddly enough I still liked him in spite of it. Perhaps its because of his uncanny resemblance to Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic (he’s even voiced by Chris Patton, the voice of Sousuke in the English Dub of Full Metal Panic). Maybe it’s because he’s got some bad ass fighting skills and some clever one liners to back up his hype (“We cant all be Schwarzenegger”). Heck, even his eventual backstory feels very Sousuke-ish (could Yu have been a prototype Sousuke?). So yeah, its fun watching him effortlessly mow down poor NPCs and go toe to toe with some pretty fearsome commander units. His supporting cast is lacking. Spriggan France, Jeanne Jacquemonde, appears out of nowhere and doesn’t really add anything besides being another cool dude to look at. Fatman and Little Boy have some fun toys but are little more than Metal Gear mini bosses without the depth. And then there’s Colonel McDougal, think Mariemea Kushrenada from Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz but with a massive God Complex and an even greater penchant for rambling about being chosen for a greater purpose. Short version: save for a cool lead, the cast is nothing to write home about.
It eventually becomes clear that Spriggan really just wanted to be a mindless action flick and when the action is allowed to happen in between fruitless exposition and megalomaniacal monologues, it’s pretty freaking awesome. I’m surprised Yu even needs a next generation super soldier suit when he seems capable of pulling off superhuman feats all on his own. Still, much of the best action comes in the first half of the movie during Fatman and Little Boy’s siege on the ARCAM research facility. Chainguns let loose hundreds of bullets, Yu fires off rapid punches like he’s playing Street Fighter and super soldiers dragging 50 caliber machine guns through the snow like theyre tugging a Samurai Sword. By the way, this all looks gorgeous. This is a movie and it looks like a properly animated one too. Nothing about the animation feels half assed (save for some corner cutting CG that does stand out). Characters look like theyre drawn to look like living breathing actors, kind of like Jin Roh. There’s even a pulse pounding, operatic score to go along with all the carnage, props to composer Kuniaki Haishima. Really, if the entire movie had been much like the first 30-40 minutes, without the need of a noisy and annoying kid villain, Spriggan could be an action classic on par with Akira or Ninja Scroll (Fun Fact: Akira Director Katsuhiro Otomo also worked as a Project Supervisor on this film).
I really want to like Spriggan as a whole but in the end…it tries to do too much and succeeds at only half of its required formula for a good action blockbuster. The story suffers from too much and too little exposition, an overreliance on tired villain tropes and very little proper explanations about the world we’re supposed to be invested in. As for the action, top marks all around when it gets to present itself. Fast paced, bloody and more epic than it deserves to be. This is a dumb action flick that should have been a lot more. From an animation and action stand point, Spriggan deserves at least one watch. Just be warned that you might forget it not long after you’ve watched it. Shame, I feel like I say this about a lot of Anime with promise but…this could have been a helluva lot better.
5.5/10
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