SPRIGGAN

Based on a manga by Hirashi Takashige, Spriggan is a thrilling, high-tech Japanimation saga. The Spriggan are highly trained agents of Arcam, a worldwide organisation dedicated to protecting humanity from a malevolent artifact left on earth by an ancient civilisation. The film opens deep in the mountains of Ararat in Turkey, where Noah's Ark is rumoured to be situated. Here, an Arcam investigation party suddenly loses outside communications contact and is massacred. At the same time, powerful magnetism emanates from the mountain causing three American military satellites to vanish. Six months later, in Japan, Yu Ominae, Spriggan #1, receives a bomb with an anonymous message: 'Noah will be your grave'.

Spriggan comes with all the right credentials. Director Hirotsugu Kawasaki was the chief animator for Akira and Ghost in the Shell, two of the biggest international Japanese animation hits. His film is meticulously drawn and coloured, possessed of heart-stopping pace and drawn from a script both intelligent and gripping. Extraterrestrial conspiracies, enhanced mutant cyborgs, impending apocalypse and a hero of superhuman resolve—Spriggan is total adventure.

Against the orders of the Japanese Arcam staff, Yu flies to Turkey, and suddenly the stakes are raised to a lethal level. Fitted with a futuristic armoured suit that amplifies his strength and agility, Yu and a fellow Spriggan, Jean-Jacques Mondo, must face the wicked MacDougall and his inhuman cadre. The last war to determine the survival of mankind has begun.