Random Roar: No Additional Spice Added, Thankfully
When Spider-Man entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was inwardly cringing a little because I didn’t want to see yet another take on Peter Parker losing his Uncle Ben and learning to wield his powers responsibly. Before the MCU, the market for Spider-Man media was still pretty saturated, what with two versions of the film franchise in recent years and several animated shows. We basically knew who Spider-Man was and fortunately, the MCU figured this out and delivered us a version who already had his powers. They knew we didn’t need Spider-Man explained to us again.
Reboot culture has seen many old properties come back, repurposed for new audiences (or possibly old audiences returning for a dose of nostalgia). Whether it’s giving Goosebumps a Haunting of Hill House style glow up, rebooting continuity in order to sell a new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare trilogy or Disney turning all of their hand drawn classics into photo-realistic CGI, everything old is new again.
Anime reboots may seem rarer compared to western media, but they can and do happen, especially when the original adaptation was incomplete or flawed in some manner. The original Fruits Basket aired while the manga was still being written, so the new version was able to deliver a much more faithful finale to Natsuki Takaya’s romantic comedy story. Fullmetal Alchemist got a similar treatment with its reboot, which was much more faithful to the source material than the original adaptation was. So when a new Spice and Wolf series was announced, there was understandably a bit of confusion. The original had stuck to the source material pretty well, with few changes, but remained unfinished, so was this going to be a reboot or a continuation?
A continuation was certainly not off the table. Inuyasha notoriously never finished during its original run, but received a sequel series five years later that finished things off, and Mushi-shi received a second season eight years after its first, with the cast from the first season returning. The biggest thing fans of the first Spice and Wolf series complained about was that it was only two seasons long and didn’t complete Lawrence and Holo’s journey north. A continuation would’ve been more than welcome.
However, Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf is a straight up reboot that appears to be adapting the series from the beginning and presumably won’t skip anything that the first adaptation did. As of this writing, we’re three episodes in and I’m more than satisfied with what’s aired so far.
I might be a bit easy to please in that regard. I haven’t watched a lot of reboots, so my only real criteria for the new Spice and Wolf is to not include any J. J. Abrams or Tetsuya Nomura bullshit. I don’t want time traveling villains from the future to suddenly show up and disrupt Lawrence and Holo’s journey, and I don’t want two separate timelines wrestling for supremacy. As long as this series covers the ground it’s supposed to, I’ll be happy.
You might question the wisdom of starting from the beginning when the original anime followed closely enough to the source material that the new version is basically a redo, but I imagine this is so that fans don’t have to track down the original version in order to catch the full story. With Spider-Man, the Sam Raimi trilogy was still widely available when Sony rebooted the franchise, and then both versions of the film franchise were still widely available when Spider-Man entered the MCU. Physical copies of anime don’t seem to have the same shelf life as physical copies of films, and I don’t know if the new version and the old version of Spice and Wolf share the same licensing deal, but this way, if the old one disappears, it won’t prevent anyone from watching the new one. The classic version is currently available on Crunchyroll alongside the new version, but knowing how things have been going in the realm of streaming, who knows how long that’s going to last?
It’s happened before, where only part of a series was available to watch, for some reason. Netflix has since removed Clannad, but back in 2020, I wrote about it in Quarantine Control and mentioned that only half of the series was available. To help illustrate my point, I also made reference to a joke from the second half of the series and pointed out that no one would be able to get the joke if they watched only the episodes available on Netflix. Fortunately, the entire series is available on Hidive now, but how fortunate you find this news depends on whether you have a subscription to it, I guess.
Since the classic version of Spice and Wolf is available on the same streaming service as the new one, impatient viewers certainly have the option of watching the classic version to get the general gist of the story. With that in mind, I assume the new version is basically for fans who already watched the old version, are eager to return to Holo’s world, and maybe want to see her journey to its completion.
Once more of it is out, we’ll be able to better compare the two, but from what I’ve seen so far, it feels like the new version is the superior version, even if the two basically share the same story and plot. Imagine if someone were to re-film all of the old Star Trek scripts but have a better budget to work with, so they utilize modern effects, sets and camera techniques. The new version is going to be better. That’s basically what the new Spice and Wolf is, but with the added bonus of getting the original Holo and Lawrence back in both Japanese and English.
What gives me hope for this version Spice and Wolf to reach its deserved conclusion is that the current anime landscape seems to support a popular series returning for another season, especially if the first season only covered some of the original source material. Campfire Cooking in Another World with my Absurd Skill is returning for a second season, Fruits Basket was allowed to run its course and finish its story over three seasons, Beastars is returning this year to adapt the rest of the manga into a third and final season, and that’s just the examples off the top of my head. Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation is currently airing its second season. A fourth and fifth season of Bungo Stray Dogs aired last year. The Rising of the Shield Hero is going to receive a fourth season. A seventh season of My Hero Academia is going to begin airing in May. While there are still shows that continue weekly without end, like One Piece or Case Closed or the longest running anime of all time, Sazae-san, it appears that more shows are being allowed a bit of time off between seasons, so once a series finishes airing its current set of episodes, there’s no reason to assume it’s finished. Given there’s a lot more material to draw from now than there was a decade and a half ago, it’s very possible that Spice and Wolf is here to stay. At least, until Lawrence and Holo finish their journey, settle down, and… well, let’s just say there’s a sequel series of light novels currently being written and which is already being adapted into manga. I would not be surprised if this, too, were to find its way to television.
About The Author
Joseph
Panthera Editus | In the great frozen land in the north known as Canada, a little to the east of that other frozen land in the north known as Alaska, resides the gaming enthusiast whom most people know as Joseph. When he’s not gaming or writing about gaming, he likes to enjoy life’s little ironies. Twitter
