Spice and Wolf, Season 1

Spice and Wolf is a curious show. At a quick glance through some of the art, it seemed designed for the viewer to fawn over a wolf-girl who doesn’t mind being naked. Anime character designs are usually a decent barometer of what a show aims to do. However, Spice and Wolf proves the rule that one should not judge the book by the cover.

The primary activity of the main characters, Lawrence, a traveling merchant, and Holo, the wise wolf-god is businesses. Buying, selling, trading and talking about it while they’re on the road in between towns in a fictional, vaguely European, world. After each trade, the two postmortem the transaction to find what they can use in the future, one of them usually did something which surprised the other during the deal. It turns Spice and Wolf into be a fine, dialogue driven story about the two drifters, off to see the world — and make some profit. Some of the dialogue runs a little far down the rabbit hole on the minutia of trading silver coins and currency manipulation strategies, but this dialogue builds an interesting relationship between Lawrence and Holo. Through conversations about how to succeed in business, each of them builds a bond of understanding and respect with the other. Neither character treats these lazy conversations idly and it’s through these conversations where the growth in their relationship takes place. They create value in their relationship, to extend the business analogy.

Conflicts in the story arise from the complications of doing business. Justice, saving the world, existential turmoil, freedom, peace, love, war, the standards of stories in a fantasy world don’t make much of an appearance. All conflict in the story stems from money, transactions gone wrong, and refreshingly, avoids any message condemning money. It’s not pro-money either. Money is just a fact and how people and companies deal with that fact builds relationships and creates conflict.

There’s a great scene where Lawrence is begging for money and the fact of money and what it says is thrown back into his face. It’s really an interesting show in how it utilizes spaces most fiction treats as prop and scenery.

All well and good, Spice and Wolf isn’t furry ecchi, is down to earth, plays with economics the same way other stories play with morality, love, etc., but is it fun to watch? Yes. While it’s a lot more sober than a show with a wolf-girl would suggest, the interaction between Lawrence and Holo is entertaining. They go through a subtle change from a sort of you’re there to a you’re important to me. And, they really are important to each other as partners.

The episodes do have a decent amount of tension. A couple of the transactions gone south lead to life and death situations for Lawrence, which as a result become vital to Holo in spite of the fact that she’s under no threat of physical harm.

Now, I’m off to order Season 2.

Dub Notes: One benefit of almost all the dialogue happening through two characters is both actors get into a nice groove. I wasn’t immediately grabbed by Brina Palencia’s take on Holo, but quickly warmed up to it once I began to feel the dynamic between Holo and Lawrence. J. Michael Tatum’s take on Lawrence strikes the right tone for where he is in life and as Holo’s verbal sparring partner. Most support characters sound stock male townsfolk in a fantasy series, which has that odd effect of drawing undue attention to itself for me than just becoming invisible like it’s probably meant to. On the plus side, Leah Clark sounds great as Nora, a young shepherd, one of the prominent side characters.