Review by Frank Plowright

Spriggan would be seen as an unlikely candidate for 2022 publication in English were it not for the 1990s anime being picked up for revival as a Netflix animation. Despite the title suggesting a collection of previously released volumes, the Deluxe Edition is the first English translation of Hiroshi Takashige and Ryouji Minagawa’s work as Spriggan, although the first two stories previously appeared in Striker: The Armored Warrior.

Over five stories covering 21 chapters, the longest running over a hundred pages, Takashige explores his scenario, in a manner long on staged action sequences and short on explanations, which can work, but won’t here for any reader with an enquiring mind not distracted by the fast pacing. The basis is a series of artefacts hidden on Earth for a reason not disclosed in these 650 pages. The technology remains beyond the level reached by humanity, and using it can be catastrophic, Tokyo’s survival is at stake in the first mission documented. Fortunately the aliens foresaw problems in the future and also founded an organisation to protect the artefacts. Their top action team is known as Spriggan, and members have access to advanced technology, which is just as well when both the CIA and KGB target them.

There’s no use of captions, so everything needs to be explained via the dialogue of main character Ominae Yu, and much of it is clumsily aimed at the audience rather than whoever’s being addressed in the story. This is at its worst at the long explanations for scientific trickery. Assorted cackling villains just want to rule the world, and to add the general sense of disbelief, the two agents featured in the opening chapter are revealed as high school students.

You’d not know that from Minagawa’s art, so the surprise works, and although efficient drawing is the order of the day, time has moved on since the 1980s. Minagawa so often crams six or more panels to a page when fewer could tell the story and while he’s a little more expansive with action scenes, he rarely features an impact illustration larger than half a page. Nevertheless, he does enough that one can see how an anime version might be more exciting, and perhaps in the 1980s the comic stood out.

When Spriggan was previously reprinted as three volumes of Striker publication continuity wasn’t followed, so the second half of this collection hasn’t previously been published in English. Minagawa ups his game slightly by occasionally providing more expansive art, but Takashige stretches a plot about a mask possessing one of Ominae’s classmates to breaking point with repetitive conflicts over a dozen chapters.

That’s followed by the shorter four chapters concerning the discovery of Noah’s Ark, and it’s here that the potential of Spriggan begins to take shape. Minagawa’s art improves again, the villain is more interesting, and there’s greater suspense about what the ark might still contain. When that’s revealed, it’s good, and shifts a balance while opening new possibilities. It’s by some distance the best story here.

The closer concerns the reactivation of a Bezerker, which lives up to its name by being a monstrous engine of destruction. The general path is predictable, although some moments work well, particularly the awakening. However, it’s again a case of there not being enough plot for the page count.

As a volume, there is improvement from start to finish, leaving hope that Deluxe Edition 2 will be better still.