Welcome back to another episode of Spice and Wolf. This week see’s my prediction come true as Lawrence’s greed bites him in the ass! But there are consequences I couldn’t have foreseen. Will Lawrence pay off his debt? Is Norah important? Will Holo get her preserved peaches?! Read on and find out.
Starting off, I was right Lawrence does get screwed! This is all a continued parable for the dangers of greed! What better way to take on the capitalist machine than snarky waifu’s with cute ears?! Jokes aside though, the writing was on the wall and anyone could have predicted this. The only question was how and in this case it appears to be natural market forces. No malevolent scheme or Church doctrine, just simple supply and demand as Lawrence doesn’t bother to check the market. It’s kind of weird to see him screw up so badly to be frank. Lawrence has always been this world wise experienced merchant. Making such a simple mistake as borrowing twice his net worth seems out of character. I suppose that’s the point though isn’t it? How greed can blind even the best of us?
Regardless though, I’m curious how Lawrence is going to get out of this. His first idea of splitting up the debt into manageable chunks wasn’t a bad one. Go around, get some more favorable loans, get himself more time to pay it off. For reasons I don’t quite understand however this first scheme falls through. Is there some Church doctrine about women I’m missing that shows his lack of piety? Is it insulting to bring a woman around when doing business? I don’t quite get what happened here so if someone could explain it to me in the comments that would be much appreciated. It’s probably obvious and I just missed it. That or I’m failing to put myself into the mindset of this medieval society. Because that last merchant yelling at Lawrence really didn’t make sense to me.
While the merchants reaction to Holo was confusing though, Lawrence’s was concerning. Not in how it was written of course. Watching Lawrence fall deeper and deeper as more people turned him down, eventually snapping at Holo, was great. But I am concerned for their relationship. The last time they split up like this wasn’t something they wanted, she got kidnapped. This time though the fight is completely internal. Lawrence has no one to blame but himself and is lashing out at Holo because of it. Obviously the two are going to get back together by the end. This is a romance series and Spice and Wolf has a season 2. I’m just expecting a lot of drama, some harsh reality checks and maybe an open admission that they love each other by the end. You know, nothing big, totally reasonable hopes right?
This brings me to the weekly “gush about Holo and Lawrence’s relationship” portion of this post. Hopefully you’re not tired of hearing why I love these dorks, cause I ain’t stopping. This weeks reason? I really like how Spice and Wolf dialogue has evolved from simple banter to conscious acts of flirting. We know they want to get together and we know they might as well already be together, but the important thing is that they don’t. Both of them have been trying to figure out if the other feels the same as them for awhile, with their dialogue taking on a more serious spin as the series goes along. This week Holo basically told Lawrence to tell his home-building that they were lovers. Sure they started the season faking being a married couple but this is a pretty blunt statement put into words.
Finally lets talk about where what’s next: How does Lawrence get out of this mess? And right now I see two ways for this to go. The first, he enlists Norah’s help to seek out the mercenaries that were mentioned earlier and sell the armor to them. This seems like a longshot to me though because not only are the mercenaries uh… bad, I also don’t think Lawrence can leave the city. Maybe the veiled threats were just if he tried to run. But I don’t think they would let him leave to sell either. Not without some kind of collateral at least. The second though is with something else mentioned on the trip here: Gold. Maybe he somehow trades the armor for gold or does some kind of smuggling, I’m not sure. Taking another risk doesn’t seem like the best plan but Lawrence is pretty desperate, so who knows.
All in all though, when condensed to a single question, did I enjoy this episode? Was it good? Obviously the answer is yes. The way Lawrence fell wasn’t as grand as I expected but the fallout and reactions after were exactly what I wanted. An eye opening experience to make him realize his focus on gold were causing him to miss out on the more important things in life. Of course we aren’t fully there yet, Lawrence is still losing everything. But I fully expect this arc to end with him reprioritizing from “Getting a shop” to “Traveling with Holo” and for this reprioritization to help him in the long run. We’ve seen what greed does to merchants multiple times in Spice and Wolf. Now imagine if they had been less focused on coin and more on enjoying life? I figure that’s what Lawrence is about to show us.
Let me know what you thought about the episode down below and I will see you next week! Also if anyone could let me know about the Holo and visiting the loan sharks, that would be grand. See you then!
