So apparently there was a new “Indiana Jones” film released this Summer. My life’s been a bit hectic the last couple of months, so though I had some mild awareness of it, I didn’t get a chance to go see it. Earlier in the year, however, I did watch an anime series that reminded me a bit of Indy and his archaeological adventures, and I suspect that my time may have been better spent doing so (did anyone see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny? Was it good? Let me know if I should try to check it out).
In 2022, Netflix quietly released a 6-episode ONA adaptation of Spriggan, a manga series from the late 1980’s/early 1990’s that already saw a film adaptation all the way back in 1999. I feel like the series didn’t receive much fanfare; much like many Netflix exclusive properties the company didn’t seem to expend a lot of energy trying to promote it. I happened to watch it when I was preparing for an anime convention and going through the past year’s worth of new anime, and I was glad that I did. The series is a lot of fun – and it reminds me a lot of “Indiana Jones” (seriously – there’s even an episode about a crystal skull with neo-Nazis in it).
The series stars Yu Ominae, a high school student who has an after-hours job as an agent of ARCAM, an organization which identifies artifacts left by an incredibly advanced ancient civilization and ensures that they don’t fall into the wrong hands (those hands primarily being from various world governments who would use them to wrongfully assert political power). In episode 3, Yu travels to a mysterious forest to investigate reports of some missing soldiers as well as an “elixir of life” which the forest is said to protect. While there, he encounters Yoshino, an opportunistic archaeologist with her eye on a particular artifact, who becomes trapped with Yu within the forest. There they learn the fates of the solders trapped there, as well as the truth about the recipe for the elixir of life held within the forest’s grasp.
The series overall does a great job of capturing the tone and “feel” of a 1990’s property (it’s difficult for me to explain it more concretely that that, but if you know, you know) while also looking very slick and modern. It’s also one of the few series with teenage boy protagonists that I find tolerable. Has anyone else noticed the trend toward snarky, sarcastic, or just downright unlikeable male leads in anime? It’s not a new problem, but I feel like there’s been a noticeable uptick (or maybe I’m just getting old and happen to have very little patience for jerks nowadays).
This episode in particular manages an entertaining level of creepiness – as soon as Yu and Yoshino arrive in the woods, their compass stops working and they sense themselves being followed. It isn’t long after that they encounter malevolent reanimated corpses. The resolution to their situation involves channeling the spirit of a long-dead monk. That, as well as the show’s typically fun action component, makes for a great watch.
I’d recommend the series as a whole to those who have some nostalgia for the particular style of 1990’s anime and manga, but in a broader sense I think this series was overlooked by a wide swath of anime fandom who would probably find it to be a lot of fun and a relatively quick watch – it’s just 6 double-length episodes, each of which is a mostly isolated storyline. If anything, though, if you’re just interested in this episode for its seasonality, it can pretty easily be viewed in isolation from the rest of the series.