Alright everyone I have no excuse for how late this post was, I just forgot. Not to watch the show of course, Spice and Wolf is good shit! But it completely slipped my mind to do the writeup. Personally I blame the Government. Why? Because I can. Anyways without further ado, lets dive in to this weeks episode!
And what better place to start than with the pacing! Seriously its ridiculous. When I went to start the episode I saw “#4” and couldn’t believe we were only a 3rd of the way through. This season of Spice and Wolf feels so much denser than the last and this episode is a perfect example of that. The whole thing takes place in the span of just a few hours in the night as Lawrence mulls over the recent argument. Yet in it he confronts and accepts his feelings, strikes a deal, plots Fermi’s downfall, has a heart to heart with a friend and prepares to crash the economy of an entire town. Does that sounds like a lot? Good, because it was. Yet Spice and Wolf made it all feel natural and snappy. I was really impressed with how it handled the pacing this week.
Speaking of crashing the economy lets shift over and talk about Lawrence, the main actor this week! We got a lot from him and I enjoyed it all, especially his realizations ala Holo. How he thought through what she said, recognized it and steeled himself. Even if he isn’t capable of the same sort of public displays of affection Fermi is, that doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t there. And I expect we will see that before this arc ends as Lawrence sacrifices his own profit for Holo. After all, prior to the big argument his plan was to let Fermi pay, pocket the money then have Holo choose him. But now he’s soaking his money into Fermi being unable to pay, which of course means he won’t see it either. He will probably make some profit of course. But in the grand scheme he’s giving up money for Holo.
As for the how, well, that’s a bit more complicated and comes in 3 steps. The first is rather straight forward: Convince everyone to buy something else. Effectively tanking demand for pyrite by shifting the market elsewhere. And like usual Spice and Wolf laid out the economics for this quite well. How all of the traders are only in town for the festival and so will want to leave with something useful or of value. They can’t do that with Pyrite, that’s a local bubble that only exists in this town for this celebration. They can’t turn a profit on it once they go elsewhere so they will have to liquidate it into something else. Something like… wheat. All Lawrence is looking to do here is to speed that along with some well placed rumors. The kind of market manipulation that is probably illegal in todays world.
Phase 2 however is when things get interesting: Lawrence also wants to dump Pyrite into the market. Simultaneously tanking demand and ramping up supply to utterly destroy the market in a single day. Of course this doesn’t come without complications as we see in the conversation with Mark. And you know what? I really liked this. I liked how Mark said no, how their priorities and situations were different. How reputation mean something different to a stationary store owner compared to a traveling merchant. It was unexpected wrench in Lawrences plan that made a lot of sense. And you know the best part? Lawrence was totally understanding. These are adults discussing macroeconomics and the futures of their families. They both completely understand the others perspective and are able to stay friends despite Mark not being willing to throw everything away for him. It’s a nice, mature kind of friendship.
And the final phase of Lawrence’s plan? Well that would be Fermi and his insurance policy. Lawrence is basically shorting Pyrite, like many companies short stock in the modern day. Taking out a loan of something in the assumption that the price will drop. That way you can buy a new one at a cheaper price and keep the difference. Except this time by taking the loan from Fermi Lawrence is hoping to cripple his opponent by spending his own money. And the best part? Lawrence is doing to Fermi exactly what happened to him at the end of Season 1. Taking him out on credit when Fermi lacks all of the information at hand, exploiting his “shallow cleverness” shall we say.
What’s really cool about all of this though is how Spice and Wolf has slowly introduced these concepts. First the obvious all the way back in Season 1 with the armor. But it also reintroduced us to credit back when Lawrence sold a bunch of stuff to Mark when they first entered town. A sort of intro-course on how it works, why its useful and how it can fall apart. Once both of those are established and in our heads it then takes them and applies them to Fermi. Walking us through both sides and exactly what needs to happen for Lawrence to come out on top. Its hardly an in depth discussion on the ethics and function of shorting. But for a 5 minute scene in an anime it did a pretty good job of not only explaining but keeping it interesting as well.
So yeah, all in all I would call this another successful episode of Spice and Wolf. It made Lawrence running around town in a single night engaging. Contrasting his own mood with the liveliness of the festival, all the people around him yelling, laughing and getting drunk while he mulls about. Even Fermi is having a good time. Going to far as to approach Holo at the inn and even get her to sign a marriage contract. Of course Holo isn’t so far gone as to not think it through. She’s given Lawrence a chance, a report on his finances, and basically issued a challenge: If you truly want me, than win me. It’s an engaging challenge for us to watch and its nice to see that she hasn’t left Lawrence behind just yet. I’m looking forward to seeing how this resolves next week!
