OK, first review then, more or less. I’ll start with an anime: Spriggan (or “The Spriggan”).
I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time, salivating in front of the ADV trailer. Finally it’s here, and I’m stuck with a severe case of trailer withdrawal syndrome.
You know the feeling: you watch a trailer and think: “Wow, all this action! It must be a very cool movie…” And when you eventually watch said movie, you realise all the great action scenes were in the trailer and the rest of the movie is a lot of filler stuff and second-rate action. This is especially aggravating when you wait about one year after first watching the trailer!
Now, Spriggan left me with that kind of feeling. Not the worst offender in that category I ever encountered, but bad enough. But then, trailers have a tendency to reinforce action scene by editing the scenes in very short, MTV-clip-like fashion. This said, it’s not a bad anime; I would rate it around my top 20% (i.e. if I’ve seen 100 animes, this one is among the 20 best).
Animation is very smooth, with a bit of CGI (not always well-integrated, but OK). Quite a few neat “camera” effects (you’ll know it when you see it) and really frantic action scenes; the chase/fight inside Istambul’s market is very impressive.