Spriggan ADV 90 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles Released: 04/23/2002 Reviewed: 11/15/2005

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Invariably this movie is going to get some comparisons made between itself and the previous Otomo classic, Akira. It's my opinion that the two have relatively little in common, aside from the appearance of super powered childrern and... well... that's it. The two movies really don't have a whole lot in common. What a movie about brainwashed super soldiers and ancient biblical relics has to do with a movie about genetic experiments in Tokyo's near future have to do with each other I couldn't tell you. Suffice it to say, I don't share the majority populace's opinion. There is one more comparison, I guess, copious amounts of boiler plate philosophy and exposition. This is not to say that it's exactly up to Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor, Mamoru Oshii-esque levels, but if characters talking about god's intent for five or ten minutes at a time isn't your thing than you can freely leave. Nobody's gonna hold it against you. I think it'd be a mistake though, you'd be missing a rocking fun time.

Spriggans, besides being cute little elves of Celtic lore, are super soldiers trained by powerful countries in order to safeguard important artifacts. Yu Omanae is one of these, the result of training by an evil (aka American) government and its little kid recruitement program. Whether or not pre-teen slaughter is a requirement for being a Spriggan isn't really gone over in the movie -- I don't know, maybe it's something that's further explained in the manga -- I'm willing to bet that you don't get to be a super cool special agent without busting the heads of a few Peruvian dictators, though. Yu eventually decides that he's tired of being a pugnacious preteen and takes it out on his commanding officer with a rather ungainly assault rifle. Somewhere along the line he gets picked up for some serious Spriggan action. Despite being one of these super soldiers, Yu seems to lead a life as normal as you or I. Normaly enough if you discount watching your big fat classmate blow himself up with a stick of dynamite after revealing a cryptic phrase to you on the roof of your local high school. The phrase, "Noah will be your grave" spurs Yu on a mission that leads him to exciting places like Turkey and the Himalayans.

 

So maybe he's not THAT much like you or I, but that's what makes it so cool. You wouldn't want to see a movie about my life. It'd be all grocery stores and alcohol poisoning. Sure that's fun... but only for like a week and a half. Gun battles, fat men with chainguns, and psychic dinosaurs have quite a bit more staying power. Nearly the moment Yu gets off the plane in Turkey we're treated to a steady flow of action and exposition so sweet that it might as well be the crisp waters of the Nile river. A car chase segues nicely into a trek up a mountain and a discussion with a crazed inventor that would like make James Bond's lifetime companion blush. Now kitted out with strength augmenting suit (the Japanese love those things!) and super-duper cutty-knife Yu is ready to slice up the evil Americans who would cause him trouble. Then a baby comes in. A PSYCHIC BABY! And this isn't even halfway to the point in the movie where we get to see the fish rock!

I think anyone that dislikes this movie is looking at it the wrong way. It is to be enjoyed, like the simple pleasures of a mid-80s Schwartzenegger movie. Consider this Japan's alternative to stuff like Predator and Commando, except it makes sure to throw in some stuff about god and awesome dinosaur effects before the 90 minute mark is up. Spriggan is hardly life changing and it's certainly not evasive in its purposes. It doesn't even have the lofty goals of thought provocation that stuff like Ghost in the Shell exudes. It's just a genuinely good time in which brief conversations about god and the end of humanity are peppered in as a delicious seasoning that compliments the explosions and giant army men and the beating of little blue psychic children. I guess if you think about it like that... it kind of is like Akira...