2024 started off with a bang as the highly anticipated new Spice & Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf TV anime revealed on Monday that it is scheduled to premiere in April this year. The big announcement was accompanied by a special New Year’s visual featuring the beloved character Holo adorned in a traditional kimono.
Check out the colorful visual below!
To add to the holiday cheer and as part of the “Holo and the Tale of Four Seasons” project starting in August, the anime’s official website is running a New Year’s lottery until January 3. Participants can win a special visual, signed by Holo’s voice actor Ami Koshimizu, and also enjoy newly recorded voice lines by Koshimizu, adding extra excitement for fans.
The upcoming anime will be seeing the return of a number of notable staff and cast members from the first Spice & Wolf anime. Takeo Takahashi is making a return as the chief director, together with Hijiri Sanpei, who previously worked on Spice and Wolf II episodes, as the director. Kevin Penkin (Made in Abyss, Tower of God, The Rising of The Shield Hero) is set to create the series’ music.
The original voice cast is also returning, with Jun Fukuyama reprising his role as Kraft Lawrence and Ami Koshimizu returning as Holo.
Isuna Hasekura started the Spice and Wolf novel series in 2006 with illustrations by Jū Ayakura. Yen Press published it in North America in August and is also releasing the manga adaptation. It describes the story as follows:
The life of a traveling merchant is a lonely one, a fact with which Kraft Lawrence is well acquainted. Wandering from town to town with just his horse, cart, and whatever wares have come his way, the peddler has pretty well settled into his routine—that is, until the night Lawrence finds a wolf goddess asleep in his cart. Taking the form of a fetching girl with wolf ears and a tail, Holo has wearied of tending to harvests in the countryside and strikes up a bargain with the merchant to lend him the cunning of “Holo the Wisewolf” to increase his profits in exchange for taking her along on his travels. What kind of businessman could turn down such an offer? Lawrence soon learns, though, that having an ancient goddess as a traveling companion can be a bit of a mixed blessing. Will this wolf girl turn out to be too wild to tame?
The novels inspired two TV anime seasons in 2008 and 2009 respectively.
The upcoming anime Spice & Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf promises to be a fresh take on the beloved series, presenting a completely new storyline.
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