Review by Frank Plowright

These days Striker is better known as Spriggan, the title of the 2022 animated series based on the material, and of the reissue (and eventually continuation) in bulkier volumes.

Writer Hiroshi Takashige’s priority is the action thriller, and takes his lead from the cinema equivalents in being extremely fuzzy on details and high on action. Some time in the past aliens concealed technologically advanced devices on Earth. They’re capable of devastation, so an organisation was founded to protect the planet, its agents also using advanced technology when the likes of the CIA, KGB and individual madmen locate the devices. As unexplained as the motivations of the aliens, is why the world’s security is entrusted to sixteen year old high school students. They form the basis of the protection team, here named Striker.

While suspension of disbelief is required to a greater or lesser degree for any form of fiction, Takashige might just about get away with stretching credulity to breaking point were it not accompanied by daft villains and poor dialogue. There’s no use of captions, so primary agent Ominae Yu is constantly explaining to readers, as are those villains.

Despite Striker originating in 1989, artist Ryouji Minagawa still uses the action template established three decades earlier by Osamu Tezuka. Lots of small panels are crammed onto the page in an unnecessarily fussy method of breaking down the story. While the art is technically good and conveys the emotional needs, the breakdowns don’t make the most of the action possibilities. Minagawa is reluctant to expand into illustrations any larger than half a page, and it’s not the best use of his designs.

Striker may have been state of the art in 1989, but it’s not aged well, and the breakneck pace is the most impressive aspect now. The next volume skips several stories to present The Forest of No Return.