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Colette is a refugee from Echelon, where she was persecuted by the
totalitarian regime headed by Empress Lucia because she had some yet
underdeveloped telekinetic and extrasensory powers (called
"Shard-sensitive" here). She had to see her parents die trying
to save her. In her new home in Archon, she becomes a student of the cult
of the Shard, where she develops her powers to the fullest. She later
joins the Archon defense forces in order to pay back her new home,
especially now that Lucia has her Archon forces attack. Like Colette,
Lucia was once a student of the Shard, and maybe the most promising one,
her powers were extraordinary - but she also was a woman and fell madly in
love with Maurice, one of the maintenance workers at the temple. This is
of course a no-no for Shard-sensitives, especially since she was just
preparing for her final test. So Maurice was relocated to somewhere else -
where he died in a terrorist attack. Lucia made the council of the Shard
responsible for his death, and with her growing hatred, her Shard-powers
developed to the fullest, allowing her to wipe out the council, and later
take over the Empire of Echelon. Back in the now, the Archon defense
forces put up a valiant resistance against the Echelon forces, but it
becomes clearer and clearer they fight a losing battle ... until Colette
discovers the secret of the black globes seemingly randomly popping up on
all battle sites - they are some sort of holding devices for souls of
those who have wrongfully died, and only those with extraordinary and
benign Shard-powers can control them. She also learns she will find a
globe containing the soul of her unborn brother on Echelon that will hold
the key to defeating Lucia. Without wanting to give away too much - it
all ends happily. An impressive feature length piece of
computer animated science fiction - not so much so because writer/director
David T.Krupicz made the film pretty much all on his own over a period of
three years, but because Archon Defender manages to create a world
with its own rules, its own history, its own logic in a matter of 67
minutes, without ever forgetting to tell its story for the sake of lengthy
explanations or the like. And while the animation as such might show some
room for improvement (at least for someone who has grown up on hand-drawn
animation like myself), Archon Defender manages to impress with
incredibly detailed backgrounds that always serve the film's atmosphere, a
very cinematic direction, and plenty of action that at times takes on a
surreal appearance (due to the film's own reality). Basically, the film
most closely resembles sci-fi animes, sharing their marriage of animation
and mature storylines, their occasional esoteric subtexts, their outbursts
of violence and changes in rhythm, and their emphasis on style, but
looking closely one might also find touches of French comicbook artist
Moebius in this film ... and these are not the worst sources to be
inspired by. Recommended, actually.
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