Spice and Wolf Season I & II

[pfarber]

Burned through the two seasons pretty quick.. 13 episodes each season are available on kissanime.com

This anime is kind unique (for me) as its man characters are all adults with real jobs and families. The male lead Craft Lawrence is a peddler who dreams of money. Like A LOT. So initially his character it pretty thin. He meets up with Holo The Wise Wolf who has taken human form and just so you know is nekkid for most of the first 2 episodes. Its not gratuitous fan service... but in her mostly human state she has no concept of nudity initially.. all animals are nekkid in her eyes. She does have a bushy wolfs tale and dog ears, but that is all that separated her from humans. That and red eyes. While Holo does actively conceal her tail and ears, here red eyes don't seem to phase people at all.

Holo is some sort of pagan god that provided bountiful wheat harvests for a small town. In return the town would worship her. Her back story with the town is pretty well filled in, she was asked by a farmer to care for the towns wheat and she did in return for, well I really don't know.. the town had festivals in her honor but IIRC there were no sacrifices that I remember. Holo 'lives' in the wheat and uses the wheat grains to change her appearance back into her pagan wolf form (a significantly larger that your average size wolf.. she stands an easy 30 ft tall in wolf form). Holo being a pagan god was initially 'from the north' and she makes frequent comments about her long life and how long she has been alone, tending looking after the towns fields. So her deal is she wants to go back home, to the north. This is where Lawrence comes in.. he promises to take her home in exchange for her help in business dealings. Holo also has the ability to detect lies and is a superb judge of character. Lawrence uses her ability in his business dealing to make the most profit he can, or avoid lying peddlers all together.

Of course they grow close and whaa whaa Lawrence in typical stunted Japanese male stereotype cannot show his growing emotions for Holo even though they are constantly helping and enjoying each others company.

Shit happens and season 1 ends. Like, just ends. Season two is more of the same. A lot of talk about credit and microeconomics... A LOT. Like Ferengi Business Institute level lectures. It just kills time and should have been taken out for more character development...we are into the second season and still have no idea about Holo's life in the North. Its not until the last 5 episodes that they decide to rejoin the 'go home' arc. Even at the end of Season 2 there it only slight movement towards resolving the 'get Holo home' arc. From what the forums say there is no Season 3 and you will have to read the entire manga series to find out what happens.

So Spice and Wolf started out with promise. Then you get some microeconomics lectures, and the end. 1/3rd of a story... and even then not really that much as Holo's pagan god life is never explored.

The animation is OK, the opening theme is good, but ambient sounds are poorly done during the scenes. So bad it distracted me enough to mention it. Dialog was clear, and the English dub, especially Holo's voice, was very good. Lawrence was a bit monotone. I would give the voice acting an C.. not horrible, not great.

I would not recommend this series unless you like furries or whatever they are called. The story just dies with absolutely NO closure (but the end, where it stopped with respect to the arc it was in, was ok) and if you want to know you have to trudge through the manga... so just read the manga. Really. There is nothing to see here that resembles a story.