What if the bible was the guide to obtain a power beyond the human? Spriggan is the manga with the answers to the theories that the Discovery Channel always raised you.
Spriggan follows Yu Ominae is a young high school student who doesn’t seem interested in learning, but he’s hiding a secret. He is an armored warrior from the ARCAM organization. His mission is to help protect and study the artifacts of a pre-human civilization whose technology could change or destroy the world. He action, conspiracy theories, mythology and supernatural powers in a classic manga that was a great success in its animated version.
The world hides secrets, some of them are very dangerous and world governments would give anything to have access to them. The ARCAM Foundation fights to keep these dangerous resources out of the wrong hands. In the antediluvian era, a civilization much more advanced than the human one populated the world. Its science has been confused with magic, and its members with gods and prophets. The clues to find their remains are found in biblical and mythological texts. And in his work, ARCAM needs warriors to protect his work, the Strikers.
Yu Ominae is one of them, and her teenage life ends up taking a backseat when she receives the call of duty. He is a soldier in a war for responsible evolution, to prevent the rise of dark powers, and above all for knowledge to transform humanity. And by the way, it helps him fight a lot, which he loves. Sarcastic, arrogant, and overly proud, Yu is an outlier Striker, but his worth far outweighs the trouble he can cause.
Hiroshi Takashige on keyboard and Ryouji Mingawa on pencils created a successful series, which in Spain has seen two previous editions. The first a disastrous attempt at Planet that kicked off the series in its third arc, and left the reader thinking that something was missing. And a later one that did start from the beginning, and that has been out of print for a long time. Panini Manga brings us this new edition in kanzenban size to be able to rediscover this series fondly remembered by fans.
Ryouji Minagawa’s art evolves with the series, and from the first installments we see how it evolves and develops a more refined style, losing details and unnecessary shadows and gaining packaging. Action is his greatest strength, and he has a very cinematic style with vignettes that freeze motion to overexpose the fight information and break up the pacing into fast, dynamic sequences and speed up the read.
Takashige developed for seven years (from 1989 to 1996) a story that brought together elements as disparate as religions, mythologies, aliens and government conspiracies. But the clever addition of action and intrigue keeps the series flowing. In this first volume we find the presentation of Yu, the best ARCAM soldier, and the first of the important cases that will lead the organization to its greatest discoveries and confrontations. The writer measures the action well with the information to be convincing, within what a science fiction story can be, and does not thicken the narrative with useless data.
Spriggan, Striker the armored warrior for older readers, is a well-developed action series with great worldbuilding and just the right amount of futuristic technology so that it doesn’t get outdated by the time that has passed since its creation. Recommended for all fans of Cuarto Milenio and Von Daniken, and all fans of action and great fights.