After taking a 13-year breather, Holo and Lawrence are ready to get back on the road.
If you’ve been playing “Unexpected Anime Adaptation Announcement Bingo” this week (what, that’s a game normal people play, right?), you’ve now got two reasons to smile. On Thursday, we found out that the greenlight has been given to a Nier: Automata TV series, and today comes news that there’s a new Spice and Wolf anime on the way too.
Unlike some anime with titles made up of words chosen seemingly at random (looking at you, Bleach, and looking intensely at you, I My Me! Strawberry Eggs), Spice and Wolf is actually a nice, succinct description of what the series offers. Its main characters are Lawrence, a traveling trader in a fantasy realm who, by nature of his business needs to track the prices of medieval-era commodities such as spices, and his travelling companion Holo, an agricultural deity who usually takes the form of a girl with a wolf’s ears and tail.
The announcement comes as part of the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the publishing of the original Spice and Wolf novel which started the franchise, and a teaser video for the new anime has also been released.
Spice and Wolf’s previous anime adaptations came in a pair of TV seasons that aired back in 2008 and 2009. Though the franchise has continued to have new novels since then (with the most recent coming out last September), as well as manga and video games adaptations, 13 years is a long time for an anime series to be dormant, so it’s definitely a surprise.
Despite the long pause and current trend of remakes in the anime industry, the new Spice and Wolf anime is being billed as “a completely new anime production,” so it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a reboot or rehash of existing material, but instead carry the story of Lawrence and Holo forward, with the on-screen text for the anime teaser keeping Horo’s verbal tick of nou as she asks “Is another journey about to begin?”
▼ Cover for the first Spice and Wolf novel
No release window has been mentioned for the new anime, nor has anything regarding the format (i.e. TV series or movie). When the last episode of the previous anime aired, the 12th Spice and Wolf novel had been released, and the main novel line is now at 23 books and counting, with a sub-series Wolf and Parchment as well, so the new anime should have plenty of source material to work with.
Source: PR Times via Otakomu
Top image: YouTube/電撃文庫チャンネル チャンネル
Insert images: PR Times
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