Spice and Wolf sounds like it would be an interesting journey, but I was left feeling underwhelmed for most of the ride. I liked the premise of Lawrence meeting the wolf-deity Horo and promising to show her the world before taking her back to her hood, but along the way I began to care less and less about Lawrence. The banter between Horo and Lawrence was consistent from start to finish, and Horo was the only thing keeping me from dropping this show (aside from the short season length).
Story
One of the major flaws with Spice and Wolf is that so much of it hinges on deep discussions of economics. Now you can make a lot of boring topics sorta interesting, like in Yakitate or Hikari no Go, but it takes a certain narrative flair to pull it off. Unfortunately, this is not something Lawrence is capable of, and the long discussions about silver content in coins and other economic schemes are especially unappealing when Lawrence makes consistent bone-headed mistakes and disregards his own advice. I don’t know if he thought that Horo would cover for him, but as soon as Lawrence set out he abandoned his steady approach to chase every scam that was brought to him. I guess if you can overlook this maddening habit, then Spice and Wolf becomes more tolerable.
Characters
The truly bright spot in this show was Horo. Aside from the fanservice thrown in, I liked the duality of a deity who is both very powerful and very vulnerable. I think the voice actress and director did a great job of portraying the frustration of not being needed and finding that the world has passed you by. Horo’s loneliness was balanced by her playfulness and pride, and I was really rooting for her to make it back to Santa Claus in the North Pole. Horo also tended to have simpler schemes that actually worked and were easy for the viewer to understand.
Tilt and Verdict
The animation started out alright, but dipped considerably in the latter half (although it did recover at the end). The background music was alright, as was the OP. I did enjoy the engrishy ED with all the cute Horo x Apple images. The voice acting throughout was very good, giving that extra zing to all of Horo’s trash talking.
If you can get past Lawrence messing up all the time and you don’t mind extremely boring discussions on economics, you may enjoy Spice and Wolf. However, I felt like the pacing was slow and there was not enough focus on the main plot. I could see a second season eventually coming along, but I’m not sure I would watch it. I also want to mention that the manga is still in the early stages, but has especially good artwork. The manga has not yet progressed to the part where I felt the anime losing me, and I didn’t penalize the anime for being (slightly) different from the manga.
Kabitzin’s Rating: 3/5
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6 Comments
Certainly not the screenplay of Shigofumi. You make a good point about Lawrence’s boneheadedness, makes you wonder how he ever survived before he met Horo.
And, I’m singing Ringo Hiyori to myself right now.
I agree pretty much with what you’ve said. This show started with a lot of promise. The fact that it was the most-subbed show going into the Winter 2008 season says a lot (or at least shows us how crappy this past season really was), and the voice actors whom we knew well from Code Geass were something to look forward to.
I came out from the first episode quite excited about the show, the nice character designs, the good music, the decent animation and of course my personal guilty pleasure, the catchy Engrish ED. As the show progressed, I liked how the show was essentially a slice-of-life fantasy show with some fun economics put in. The furs and the apples were fun, and I was throughly enjoying myself.
And then I have no idea what happened, but the show lost it’s way. The schemes became increasing convoluted and hard to understand (without reading the liner notes in the Ayako translations), the animation went downhill, and new characters were constantly being introduced as if this were Darker than Black. To make it worse, the show was only 13 episodes long, so it really was kind of strange that they’d have so many ’side stories’ and having it end so abruptly. I was also disappointed that the wolves weren’t nearly as cool as the wolves in Mononoke Hime, even if they reminded me of it.
I understand that it’s based on a series of novels (I actually downloaded them but then I realized they were in Japanese and I can’t read Japanese), but I also hear that it does the novels no justice.
All in all, it was a very lacklustre series that could have easily been so much more. While harem series are a dime a dozen, and fantasy shows based on video games always suck, it’s not that often that we get a show based in a believable fantasy world with a solid foundation and likable characters that screws itself over so badly. There’s nothing worse than seeing a lot of wasted potential, and this is the worst offender I’ve seen in a very long time.
I’ve seen less-awesome subs before, but never watched a show that was as dependent on really good fansubs as Spice and Wolf. While waiting for some of the better ones, I occasionally watched some of the faster ones, and I ended up debating just how well some of them understood Lawrence’s schemes themselves.
But by the time it ended, I definitely came to Epi’s conclusion. There was promise there — not a ton, but the interaction between Lawrence and Horo was clever, the voice acting was great, and I really wanted every other aspect to match up with that. Unfortunately… it was a big disappointment revolving around an increasingly unlikable character instead.
Just like Epi, I also got Mononoke Hime vibes from the show, but not so much from the wolves, but from a particular scene where Horo is eating Lawrence’s beef jerky….. it reminded me when Ashitaka (from Mononoke Hime) was injured and San had to MOUTH-TO-MOUTH feed him! Not to turn this into naughty discussion, but that scene makes me blush and think inappropriate things all the time…..AND IS THE REASON WHY I CONTINUED TO WATCH THE SERIES!!!
I also stuck around because of the OP and ED songs =3 they’re mad gangsta! I especially like “Namaiki na Bokura” (which is the other song in the ED CD single) EVERY LIFE IS SIMPLE!!! (…those lyrics actually made me alittle depressed
but the song is still as catchy as the ED song)
i watched this show only because of the power positioning between lawrence and horo. i’m a sucker for romance and power positioning in a relationship is the pinacle of romance:D lawrence being weak in everything fit perfectly in because if i was in his shoes i would be getting some tail halfway through and his all talk weak play explains why horo liked him in the first place.
Ha! Man, people hate Lawrence. But blaming him for taking advantage of the situations Horo brings him is kinda odd. Sure, he’s out of his element, but there is nothing stopping Horo from saying “you are a twit, don’t be greedy”. She practically seems to want him to fail.
But then, everyone loves Horo, and some fansubs go the distance in making Lawrence seem even stupider than he’s supposed to be. So it’s all good. We need someone to look bad next to Horo, so go Lawrence!
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