Spriggan

Supervised by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), Kawasaki's typically spectacular manga animation begins in James Bond/Indiana Jones territory, with 17-year-old Ominai Yu - premier agent of the Spriggan, highly-trained warriors working for Arcam, a covert international association dedicated to sealing off the world's ancient ruins and their secrets - jetting to Turkey where Arcam's guardianship of Noah's Ark is under threat from two freaky villains and an army of cyborgs apparently trained by the Pentagon. Things take a turn for the improbable when Arcam's senior scientist and a viciously prodigious little boy calculate that the Ark is in fact a superior atmosphere control system which caused the original Biblical flood. Shortly, the kid is playing God with the planet's thermostat. Quite what the Turkish authorities make of these apocalyptic goings-on remains unclear, but they're certainly left with heaps of bodies to dispose of. Characterisation is regulation thin, plotting largely nonsensical, 'camerawork' and effects increasingly pyrotechnical until an amazing final light show inside the Ark.