Category: Finished Series: Romance

Spice and Wolf S1 – 6 [Wolf and a Silent Farewell] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Spice and Wolf, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone to the almost halfway point of Spice and Wolf season one! This week wraps up the arc as people get stabbed, Holo goes wild and Lawrence gets huge bill. So without further ado lets dive in and talk about “Wolf and a Silent Farewell”.

Starting off I want to take a moment to appreciate the OST of Spice and Wolf. Composer Yuuji Yoshino has a clear vision for how this series should sound and I didn’t realize until this week. They have chosen a few key instruments and centered the entire album around them. Take tracks such as “Hashiru” and “Zawazawa Suru” or “Satoki Hito Tachi”, all of which you can find here. The violin is a constant presence in each, tying all of them together and giving us a common sound throughout. But the way Spice and Wolf blends and leads into each track over the course of the episode is fantastic. I particularly enjoyed how the each song slowly ramped the energy of the scene up more and more until we got to the grand finale. It was an incredible example of what a good OST, fit to a scene, can do.

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Horimiya – 07 [You’re Here, I’m Here]

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Romance, Horimiya

One of the cool things about anime OPs is that they sometimes change as a show progresses. New characters may be added to foreshadow their appearance in the story, and scenes may be swapped in or out to indicate a change in tone. I tend to watch OPs all the way through each week to spot these changes – a habit that paid dividends in this episode, which traded shadowy, isolated shots of Horimiya’s cast for summery group scenes. Images of chalkboards and record players were brightened to match this sunnier outlook, and the penultimate shot of Miyamura walking away from his reflection was edited to depict his acceptance of himself. The overall message is clear: the characters have found friends who love and support them, which has made their world a bit brighter. I like a lot of these changes, but I’m saddened by the loss of this cut, which was my favorite from the original OP. If any manga readers know the context for Miyamura’s mistreatment of those sunflowers, let me know!

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Spice and Wolf S1 – 5 [Wolf and Lovers’ Quarrel] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Spice and Wolf, Throwback Thursday

We’re back with another episode of Spice and Wolf! This week Holo and Lawrence reunite and… not much else happens. Yet for some reason, I don’t mind it. So without further ado lets dive into it.

I typically try to start these posts off on a positive note, something to get us going. But since I can only think of one negative for this week, lets start there instead: The opening scene. I tried my best to follow it, I really did. But Spice and Wolf is going a mile a minute with these economic theories and plans to strong arm a King. I had to rewind and rewatch the segment a few times to really understand what they were saying. Part of that is because I’m just an idiot when it comes to economics but I do think they could have slowed it down a bit. What I caught across those rewatches though did make sense. The back and forth between Lawrence and Marlheit, basically haggling and threatening each other to free Holo, was good. I just wish I could follow it easier.

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Horimiya – 06 [This Summer’s Going to Be a Hot One]

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Romance, Horimiya

This week gave me just what I wanted from Horimiya: more clownish behavior from an absentee father whose daughter clearly resents him! The episode was bookended by dad scenes, which you’d think would provide the opportunity for at least one honest family conversation, but most of his dialogue led to punchlines instead. Complaining about being a stranger in his own home, failing to recognize Miyamura after his makeover, interrupting his daughter and her boyfriend just as they were about to kiss… These sorts of gags are typical of feel-good romcoms, but Kyousuke is far from a feel-good dad, so they feel out of place to me. This series has already shown us the scars resulting from Hori’s lack of attachment to her mom, so why is her father’s neglect being played for laughs? As a matter of fact, why is he still hanging around the house that he so rarely visits?

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Spice and Wolf S1 – 4 [Wolf and Her Helpless Partner] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Spice and Wolf, Throwback Thursday

Welcome back to Spice and Wolf everyone! This is a big week for the series, at least for me, as it completely breaks what expectations I had. So without further ado lets dive in!

Starting off, like I said, this isn’t what I expected Spice and Wolf to be. When I first heard/read about this show, when the other authors here described it to me, I figured it would be more Slice of Life-life. Either that or some kind of mercantile Kino’s Journey. Basically I expected the focus to be on following Holo and Lawrence around as they traveled the countryside. So imagine my surprise when not only have we not done much traveling, but that there is a legitimate plot! Back in my posts about episodes 1 and 2 I just wanted some one-offs surrounding the Church or Holo’s image. Individual stories to build up the world that has passed her by. Instead we get a fully-fledge plot about people kidnapping her for her control of the harvest and threatening to reveal her to the church, and I love it.

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Horimiya – 4-5 [Everybody Loves Somebody/I Can’t Say It Out Loud]

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Romance, Horimiya

This series wasn’t titled “Horimiya” for nothing, as the people whose names comprise that portmanteau are far and away its most interesting characters. Whenever they’re on screen, I’m engaged; whenever they aren’t, I’m thinking about what’s for dinner rather than attending to the show. Thankfully, this week’s episode kept them in focus for the majority of its runtime, but last week’s was so preoccupied with other characters that it gave me writer’s block (hence this double post). I kind of want to start complaining right off the bat, but in the interest of optimism, let’s avoid chronological coverage and jump straight to the three little words that bridged these two episodes.

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Spice and Wolf S1 – 3 [Wolf and Business Acumen] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Spice and Wolf, Throwback Thursday

Welcome back to another episode of Spice and Wolf! This week is all about the stonks as Lawrence and Holo talk market volatility, currency theory and the economic value of an apple. Confused? So was I, lets dive in.

Now it’s at this point that I have to admit something to you dear readers: I am not smart enough for this show. I don’t know economics, I didn’t go to business school, I can barely balance my bank account. I have a Computer Science degree for goodness sake, computers do my math for me. So when Lawrence and Holo starting discussing economic policy and warfare via coins I got a little lost. I had to actually rewatch some sections a bit to fully… not understand, but to truly “hear” it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I can’t predict where this silver coin plot thread is going at all because of it. But it can certainly be a bit of a chore at times to listen to. Luckily the back and forth between Lawrence and Holo is interesting enough, their play by play entertaining enough, to keep me engaged

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Spice and Wolf S1 – 2 [Wolf and Distant Past] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Spice and Wolf, Throwback Thursday

Welcome to week 2 of Spice and Wolf! This week Lawrence and Holo have a sleep over at a church, get involved in shady deals and lie to a pastor. So without further ado, lets talk about these paragons of virtue!

Right off the bat, Spice and Wolf surprised me this week. You see, I’m typically not a fan of shows that are 90% talking. Hell, I don’t even like Re:Zero that much and that one at least has some murder. But some how, some way, Spice and Wolf did a good job of making its dialogue engaging. The back and forth between Lawrence and Holo was rather nice. Their constant one-upping of each other, of poking and prodding to figure each other out. I think a good portion of this is carried by Ami Koshimizu’s voice work as Holo. Her inflections and the way she speaks ride this line between smug and playful really well, pulling me along through the conversations. I especially like when she drops the playful bit and gets… maybe not sultry, but its a fitting word nonetheless.

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Horimiya – 03 [That’s Why It’s Okay]

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Romance, Horimiya

Any time a romcom dips into one of its characters’ sad pasts, a tightrope materializes beneath its metaphorical feet. Throw them a pity party and fall to the left; trivialize their pain and topple to the right. Kaguya-sama’s indulgent depiction of Ishigami’s backstory is a good example of what can go wrong during this process – it’s been lodged uncomfortably in my brain since I first saw it eight months ago, so I was highly conscious of the similar issue that Horimiya might create for itself. Now that we’ve gotten a glimpse of Miyamura’s elementary and middle school woes, it’s clear that the show intends to treat his past experiences with a tad more nuance than that, but it’s not out of the woods yet. The true test of Horimiya’s capabilities will arrive when we learn what happened to Miyamura ten years ago – what caused him to wish he could reassure that version of himself that things would be okay.

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Spice and Wolf S1 – 1 [Wolf and Best Clothes] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Spice and Wolf, Throwback Thursday

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.

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