Spice and Wolf

Plot Summary: Craft Lawrence, a 25 year old peddler travelling from town to town selling and buying various things to make a living during a period much like Europe in the Middle Ages. One night when stopped at the town of Pasroe, he finds in his wagon a 250 year old pagan wolf deity girl named Holo. She appears to be that of a 15 year old girl, except for a wolf tail and ears. She introduces herself as the town's goddess of harvest who has kept it blessed with good harvests of wheat for many years. Despite having the responsibility to watch over the town, she wants to go back to her homeland in the north called Yoitsu, she believes the people have already forsaken her anyway and that she has kept her promise to maintain the good harvests. She manages to bargain her way out of the village by making a deal with Lawrence to take her with him. As they travel, her wisdom helps increase his profits, but at the same time, her true nature draws unwanted attention from the church.

Source: ANN

Genres: adventure, drama, fantasy, romance, supernatural

Number of episodes: 13

Spice and Wolf (Ookami to Kyoshinryo) is an anime adaptation based on award-winning visual novel with the same title by Isuna Hasekura and was scheduled as part of Winter 2007/2008 anime season. It concludes on 25^th March 2008 with 13 episodes; 12 episodes for actual TV series and 1 episode of OVA which will be released later.

Spice and Wolf is by far one of the best shows I’ve watched in 2007/2008. One thing I like about this series is the theme. It’s quite rare to see an anime using economy, merchant and trading as a theme, yet manage to give fairly good impression toward the audience. This theme may be encompassed in a possibly generic storyline - a young merchant named Lawrence travels across the cities to trade items and later meet a wolf-deity girl named Horo, and together they start the journey to the north, the place where Horo belong; however what makes it interesting is the series of events happened along their journey from town to town. It’s all about profit!

Story: This area gives me a mixed bag of feeling, but overall I’m more on the positive side. It’s always a pleasure watching the banter of Lawrence and Horo in almost every episode, having some nice conversations and critical analysis on the economic stuff then ran into. Horo is undoubtedly the center of attraction in almost every episode, showing a strong characteristic and pride (that is, in her tail). Her loneliness which was depicted in several occasion were outweighed by her bright, adorable and cheerful characteristic shown whenever she spend her time with Lawrence. The voice Actor (Ami Koshimizu) did a splendid job to give Horo an outstanding characteristic. It appears that Horo voice sounds more erotic and appealing that what the subs appear, so it’ll be more enjoyable if I fully understand what the character says. As for the economic stuff, I wish they could give a better and creative means to convey them to the audience, like what Hikaru no Go did with Go board game. Sometimes the way they tell the details about the trade, the silver content and such are very linear and boring. Well at least to some extent Horo did a good job to explain certain thing in a simpler way to solve the puzzles. And lastly, it seems to me that due to the short length of this anime, sometimes the story looks compressed that some details are failed to be covered. Cloe for example, I think she plays very little role in the overall story of Spice&Wolf. She appears early in the series as Lawrence apprentice, and later with a link to the church, become a threat to Horo. But that’s all she had to offer, despite being an original anime character (in place of someone else, according to the novel reader) she totally miss the climax of this series. I was hoping she could give a bit more impact to the overall story, especially for the final 3 episodes where the real conflict arises.

While the animation quality is not something to be proud of particularly in character animation area, the way they describe the Medieval Europe setting is very impressive, with in depth detail of building structures and environment. Character design is fairly simple, reminding me a lot to Princess Resurrection. The main characters (Horo, Lawrence, Nora and Cloe) somewhat gain the most out of it, making most of the side characters a bit disappointment with many of them lacks variation and look unappealing.

As for the music selection, I have to say that the BGM used suits very well with the scenarios and theme of the series, especially because they’re using actual instrument rather than synthesizer. While many of the tracks are not really fit to be put on your music playlist, they certainly sounds unique to Spice&Wolf and likely more recognizable, just like the unique BGM tracks in titles like Rozen Maiden, Mai Hime and Hayate no Gotoku. The opening song, Tabii no Tachuu by Kiyoura Natsumi is one of the sweetest OP I’ve listened to, and while I’m not that fond with the ending song (Ringo Biyori by Rocky Chack due to the “Engrish-ness” thus made me hard to follow the song without actually reading the lyric. But somehow I grew attached to the song after listening to the full version of the song, although if you read carefully to the lyric, it kind of does not make much sense to the story.

Overall Spice and Wolf is very enjoyable show to watch. Sure it would be boring if you didn’t enjoy the economic stuff, but for me the presence of Horo is enough to make this show interesting in its own way. In my anime dictionary, I would normally give this one a 10 out of 10 rating, but considering some weaknesses that this series posses, I would give this 8.5/10. I hope with that kind of ending shown in the final episode, it will open an option for second season, which I would be more than happy if it really comes out.

Spice&Wolf OP: Tabi no Tachuu
Spice%Wolf ED: Ringo Biyori