New from Japan: Anime Film Reviews
Spriggan.
Although the visually impressive Spriggan theatrical feature (with animation by Studio 4ºC; released September 5, 1998) is based upon a manga by Hiroshi Takashige & Ryoji Minagawa (being published in America under the title Striker by Viz Communications), it looks and feels like a work by its general supervisor Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator/director of the classic Akira. Major elements, notably the ruthless experimentation upon children to create mutant superman under the government's control, and the mutants being led by an adult mind in a blue-skinned child's body, are right out of Akira. So is the character art style and the direction, although the credits list others as director and character designer.
If Spriggan comes across as an "Akira Lite," that is the fault of its plot which is "comic bookish" in the worst sense of that term. The simplistic sci-fi premise is that Earth was originally the home of a mighty civilization which destroyed itself through super-scientific warfare. Legends such as the sinking of Atlantis are the only remnant of this. A United Nations-like organization, ARCAM, has been suppressing any archaeological finds of this dangerous super-technology. ARCAM accomplishes this through a worldwide net of secret agents, The Spriggan, whose most accomplished operative is 17-year-old Ominae Yu who leads a cover life as an ordinary Japanese high school student. ARCAM's rival is the U.S. Pentagon, whose generals want to gain the lost technology to establish American world supremacy. The Pentagon has created the "U.S. Machine Corps," a secret army of cyborg commando saboteurs (their training graduation assignment is to be sent to slaughter an entire village in some minor country) to wipe out ARCAM's scientific research teams and steal the caches of super-technology. There is no discernable difference between these "six million dollar man" enhanced sadistic killers and Marvel Comics' mutant super-villains. They even have comic-bookish costumes and names like Fat Man and Little Boy (which were the actual U.S. code names for the two nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945).
In the Spriggan manga sequence used for this movie, ARCAM finds that the real Noah's Ark buried atop Mount Ararat in Turkey is a spaceship filled with weather control technology. This is established in about the first five minutes of the movie. The rest is a non-stop battle-action film fest, switching at breakneck speed from military commando firefights to individual secret agent combat duels to sci-fi hero vs. planet-destroying-super-technology-running-amok suspense. The quality of the direction and animation is top-notch. Animation students will appreciate Spriggan, as will anyone who enjoys action movies with stars like Arnold or Sly or Bruce blasting their way through hordes of cannon-fodder, without worrying about plot holes.
Theatrical feature, 1998. General supervisor: Katsuhiro Otomo; Director: Hirotsugi Kawasaki. 90 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: ADV Films.
Armitage: Dual-Matrix.
Hiroyuki Ochi, the director/author/character designer of the 1994 Armitage III direct-to-video short serial, stated that he was a fan of Philip K. Dick's sci-fi and this was his tribute to it. Most fans agreed that it was an excellent futuristic thriller, with obvious overtones of such movies as Blade Runner and Total Recall based on Dick's novels but with enough originality to stand on its own. Ross Syllabus, a Chicago policeman in 2179 A.D., is reassigned to human-colonized Mars to help fight murders and vandalism associated with both a movement for independence from Earth, and anti-robot prejudice caused by crude mechanical laborers taking jobs away from humans. When it is discovered that there is an unsuspected improved android that is indistinguishable from people, and that Ross' new cop partner Naomi Armitage is one of these Class III's, the two must team up to learn who is infiltrating these androids into human leadership positions and why; and Armitage must prove that she has free will and is a person rather than someone's programmed puppet. Armitage III was of high enough story and production quality that it was edited into a theatrical feature, Armitage III: Poly-Matrix, which was released in America in August 1997 with Kiefer Sutherland and Elizabeth Berkley voicing the principal roles. It was a film-festival favorite for a couple of years.
Armitage: Dual-Matrix was finished in time to be shown last October 31st at the 2001 Tokyo Fantastic Film Festival, but it was not released until June 25, 2002, when its "World Premiere" on the American pay-per-view CinemaNow.com TV channel coincided with its DVD release. Dual-Matrix matches the high quality of Poly-Matrix. The only problem is that the story follows it so closely that it is Part 2 of a two-part serial. Viewers need to see Poly-Matrix first to know who such supporting characters as the ghostly Julian are.
Six years after the events in Poly-Matrix, Ross and Armitage are living on Mars under assumed names, and have a daughter, Yoko. (How Class III androids are able to have children by humans is a key plot element of the first movie.) News reports of anti-human violence on Earth by Martian-manufactured Seconds (the cruder, obvious robots) threaten to revive anti-robot prejudice and demands for greater Earth governmental control over the Martian colony. A crude linkage between electronic minds leads Armitage to believe that Earth's robots are the victims rather than the instigators of violence. She and Ross suspect that some power clique is using the robots as scapegoats in a plot to control public opinion. Most of the movie is excellently-choreographed high-tech urban commando action by Armitage and Ross against the would-be secret controller of Earth's military/industrial complex, with six-year-old Yoko as a hostage who must be rescued from the villain's lair. Fans of Armitage III: Poly-Matrix will not be disappointed.
Fred Patten has written on anime for fan and professional magazines since the late 1970s. He wrote the liner notes for Rhino Entertainment's The Best of Anime music CD (1998), and was a contributor to The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons, 2nd Edition, ed. by Maurice Horn (1999) and Animation in Asia and the Pacific, ed. by John A. Lent (2001).
Animated feature, 2002. Director: Katsuhito Akiyama. 90 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual feature only $19.98/"Special Edition" DVD including Assembling Armitage "making of" featurette, 16-page booklet & other extras $29.98/"Special Edition" plus limited edition collectable action figure, lunchbox, other bonus extras $69.98. Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment.
Printer-friendly version
Post new comment