Hello and welcome to a new season of Throwback Thursday, now featuring the 2008 mercantile simulator Spice and Wolf! This has been on my list for a long time, so its nice to have an excuse to see it. Maybe I can finally figure out what all the hubbub around this Holo girl is. So without further ado, lets dive in to Spice and Wolf!
As always with these things, lets talk about production first. Initial impressions of Spice and Wolf are… not great. The character designs are very mid-2000’s, low-detail faces and the big moe eyes, etc. And something about the proportion, the structure, of Laurence’s face feels off to me. Maybe its how his chin looks when facing the camera, I’m not sure. Meanwhile the actual animation is almost non-existent. That makes sense since this is a Slice of Life show about merchants. This isn’t a deal breaker if Spice and Wolf has good direction moving forward though. If it can give us some iconic shots with good composition like our last series, Twelve Kingdoms did, then it will be fine. I do want to say before I move on though that the backgrounds are quite nice. It does a great job of establishing locations them and I’m looking forward to more.
Story wise, Spice and Wolf is clearly setting itself up as a slow burn. There is no pressing quest, no time limit, just a casual journey in the vague direction of “north”. What it does do though is setup a lot of its world. For example, we are shown early indications of trouble between what I think is the Catholic Church and pagan villages. Lawrence also mentions a “demon-born” when first meeting Holo. I don’t know if that’s just superstition or they actually exist in the world, but it sets up an interesting conflict with the church. What happens when Holo and Lawrence get to a big town for example? Will she have to hide her ears? Will they be run out of town? I’m very curious what this worlds reaction to a Demi-God like Holo is going to be.
Speaking of Holo, she is easily the most interesting character of the story so far. Design wise Spice and Wolf puts a lot of emphasis on… certain parts of her. And I won’t lie to you, it’s not half bad. The camera work can feel kind of voyeuristic at times but I do enjoy the lithe way she moves, the arching back, etc. Getting back to her character though, I liked what we saw. On initial impression she seems desperate for human contact, to get away and to have someone to talk to. Like she is tired of being stuck in that forest. We can see this in a lot of her banter, and how she seems to enjoy just talking, how she isn’t in any big rush to get to the north. I’m looking forward to what Spice and Wolf does with her and Lawrence’s relationship.
Meanwhile, Lawrence seems sort of like the opposite. Almost as if he is avoiding much human connection, or at least avoiding settling down. It may just be conjecture on my part, but take his final scene with Chloe. He doesn’t seem like an idiot, I think he knew what Chloe was doing in that scene, but he turned her down anyways. Maybe he just wasn’t interested in her, but some of the evocative camera shots were clearly shot from his perspective, so I don’t think that’s true. Rather he seems to enjoy being alone and on the road, to be always traveling, beholden to no one. He doesn’t even tell anyone in the village he was leaving, just heading out first thing in the morning. I’m curious how this effects his work as a merchant, but I’m also looking forward to see how Holo breaks down those walls of his.
That’s about it for the characters, so now lets talk about the world a bit. Spice and Wolf seems to be going for a sort of late medieval period. People are starting to abandon old ways and actual science, such as crop rotation, is taking over. It fells like Spice and Wolf wants to use that and take a look at this transitionary period through Holo and Lawrence. A god of the old world, pushed out by modernization and a merchant of the new world, in love with the eccentricities of the old. I really hope we get some more exploration of this balance between modernization and old spiritual ways. Maybe through the church, or through meeting other spirits like Holo, etc. There is a lot of potential here for Spice and Wolf to capitalize on and should it not, the series might end up feeling… empty.
One major concern I do have is just how much of this show is mercantile focused. As a setting, being a merchant is good. It gives Lawrence and Holo an excuse to travel around a lot, similar to Kino from Kino’s Journey. It enables the series. But if large portions of the episodes end up being actual trade deals and negotiations, economies of scale, I can see that getting rather dry. Spice and Wolf could maybe alleviate this with some moral questions about being a merchant. Maybe selling at a loss to help a struggling village, or choices between profit or selling ethically, etc. There are plenty of ways to make it interesting. But it’s definitely something I am going to be keeping an eye out for moving forward.
So all in all, how was episode 1 of Spice and Wolf? My initial impressions are that its fine. Slice of Life isn’t really my genre, Kino’s Journey didn’t click with me very much either. However there is certainly potential here for Spice and Wolf to surprise me. If Lawrence and Holo’s relationship can carry the show, or if it can make trading interesting, it could definitely work. I just don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, not this early. I would rather surprise you positively than set you up thinking its going to knock me away from the start. And if anything I said up above is true? Don’t tell me! Let me be surprised and you can bask in being right and knowing something I didn’t when I get to it. It’s a lot funner that way, trust me.
Anyways, thanks for reading. Since this is a 1 cour show we are only going to be doing 1 episode a week. A nice and leisurely pace compared to Twelve Kingdoms before. See you next week!
