Category: Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! We’re in the final stretch, with only 4 more weeks to go, so it’s time for Wolf’s Rain to start wrapping things up. Is that what it does? Well lets dive in and find out.

Starting off, I want to praise Wolf’s Rain’s production this week. Music, animation, backgrounds, there was a lot to love in these two episodes. Between the soldiers combat sequence and the giant walrus, the action especially stood out to me. While the Darcia keep standoff had some nice stuff in the Kiba vs Darcia fight, this is the first time I’ve been legitimately impressed by Wolf’s Rain’s animation for a while. That isn’t meant as a knock against the series of course, you can’t keep that up forever and it hasn’t looked bad in any way. Just that this weeks production got me excited for whatever finale Wolf’s Rain is cooking up, hope that it will look gorgeous.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 21/22 [Battle’s Red Glare/Pieces of a Shooting Star] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone to another (probably late) week of Wolf’s Rain! This week sees us through the aftermath of the castle explosion, a little vision quest to remind us of our goal, and a whoooooole lot of recap. Let’s dive into it!

First up, lets start with the recaps. I promise I won’t spend long here. These were, by and large, disappointing. That shouldn’t come as a big surprise, no one really likes recaps. But what bothers me is how easily these could have been much more interesting. Wolf’s Rain could have given us new perspectives on past events, recontextualized scenes by putting us in the heads of characters we normally don’t get into. We saw a bit of this in episode 18, where it let us watch from Hubb and Quent’s perspectives. We even got a few small new scenes to spice it up, such as getting confirmation Quent is the one who shot Kiba! Do this a bit with Tsume, Hige and Toboe’s episodes and maybe they could have been less of a waste of our time. As is though, I can’t recommend anyone ever bother with these.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 15-20 [Recap x4/A Dream of an Oasis/Consciously] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone, to the mid-way climax for Wolf’s Rain! This week sees all of our characters in one place first time since the show began. A lot happens, we have so much to talk about, so lets dive right into it!

Starting off, I want to take a moment to appreciate Wolf’s Rain’s music again. Episode 13, which we will get to in a moment, saw one of my favorite tracks so far, “Coração Selvagem” I believe, appear. This thing is a certifiable bob. The discordant rhythms, plucking guitar strings, beautiful vocals. Fantastic. And it works even better when played over the scene in question, as Hubb and Quinn are driving through the countryside. Great stuff and I’m quickly falling in love with this OST. On top of that, it also feels like Wolf’s Rain’s production is starting to kick back into gear. Everything just looked… better this week. Not just the action scenes, though we got those as well in episode 14, but the day to day stuff to. Hubb and Quinn in the car, Hubb’s backstory, etc. Maybe that’s just the mid-season climax effect, but it was nice!

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 13/14 [Men’s Lament/The Fallen Keep] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome all, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! Apologies for the delay, I had a tattoo appointment today and that took up most of my time. This is a big week for our villains, with lots of important drops, so lets dive right into it!

First up we have episode 11, “Vanishing Point”. This episode felt like it was all about the Nobles. Orkham, Darcia, and this new one named Jagara. Starting with Orkham, this really surprised me and I’m honestly not sure if I like it or not. The dude makes his first on-screen appearance and then just immediately dies. Does this demonstrate Jagara’s power, that she can so easily waltz into another Noble’s city and just end it? Yeah. But so would have simply letting Jagara replace Orkham in full. The Nobles are already terrifying. All this does is show us something we already knew, that they weren’t all necessarily friendly with each other. It just feels unnecessary to me to spend all that time setting Orkham up just to use him to prop up someone new that we are just now meeting. Even if they are our new primary antagonist.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 11/12 [Vanishing Point/Don’t Make Me Blue] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week see’s return of Blue and the Hunter, Darcia makes a new friend, and the gang has a pest problem. Lots to talk about, so lets jump right in!

Before we get to deep into that though, I wanted to address some concerns regarding last weeks post. Namely, I think my concerns regarding Cheza were misunderstood. My fear was that Wolf’s Rain would treat her as a sort of McGuffin. That, based on her initial first impression, she would never become more. I wasn’t criticizing Wolf’s Rain, we had just met her after all, it would be ridiculous to do so. I even pointed out ways in which Wolf’s Rain had already started to avoid that. Rather I wanted to talk about what could happen in a lesser series. Something that I’ve seen anime screw up before, on this very website. So far though? Cheza isn’t bad. We haven’t seen enough to really judge her at all, I feel. At least until this week that is.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 9/10 [Misgivings/Moon’s Doom] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week is a bit of a lore dump, but it’s an interesting lore dump, which is how it should be. We learn more about Darcia and Cheza while Cheza finally meets up with the wolves, all things I wasn’t expecting to happen for a while yet. So without further ado, lets dive into the episodes!

So starting off, the visuals. This is the first week that I really felt some cracks in Wolf’s Rain‘s production. Not due to any scheduling issues yet, more just the limitations of the time in which it was made. I’m of course talking about the CGI airship fight at the start of episode 7. It felt… off to me. The ship moved weirdly, the lasers didn’t look very good, and the whole sequence moved in a confusing manner. Once we got past that Wolf’s Rain was back to its old self for the most part, but this sequence definitely took me out of it after an otherwise stellar start. Beyond that, I also found the way Cheza fell through the air to be kinda silly. I get it, she’s spinning like a flower in the wind, it’s funny and fits how she’s styled. But it was also a little silly.

P.S. Apologies for the delay by the way, I had some trouble getting images this week.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 7/8 [The Flower Maiden/Song of Sleep] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week we arrive at a new city, meet some new wolves, and see some dead dreams. All in all a pretty cheery episode if you ask me! But enough jokes, lets dive into the episodes.

This week I wanted to start off by taking a look at the music. After 6 episodes I feel like I have a decent idea what it’s like, of what the legendary Youko Kanno of Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop fam is going for. And you know what? I think it’s just as good as her previous work. She doesn’t restrict herself to any one style of music, picking and choosing what would work best for each track/purpose. In particular I love the sheer amount of vocal tracks in Wolf’s Rain’s OST. Stuff like this episodes “Strangers“, playing as they run in the snow past a train, or “Amore Amaro” as they all reconcile and recover from the night before. There were a few others in previous episodes as well, but I don’t want to look through the whole OST and spoil myself on anything coming.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 5/6 [Fallen Wolves/The Successors] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone, to week 2 of Wolf’s Rain! This week sees our intrepid heroes band together and set out on their epic quest. No doubt there will be many trials and tribulations along the way, disputes over territory, Tsume being a tsundere and Toboe having no idea how to do literally anything, but I’m sure it’ll be a good time. Now without further ado, let’s dive into the episodes!

Starting off, this week I wanted to talk a bit about the backgrounds. Don’t worry music fans, I plan to talk about that next week. I just want to give it a bit more time to settle and hear a few more tracks before I start talking out of my ass about it. Atsushi Morikawa is the Art Director for Wolf’s Rain, with Tomoaki Okada and Shingo Takeba doing Art Design. And while I don’t know the specifics of what goes into these jobs, what I can say is that the backgrounds that are coming out of their pipeline are stunning. In particular the natural expanses and variety of locations once our group leaves the city in episode 4 are just beautiful, as well as the war-torn city they pass through. I’m curious about how diverse the world seems to be for only 3 days travel, but hey its pretty.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 3/4 [Bad Fellow/Scars in the Wasteland] – Throwback Thursday” →

Welcome everyone, to the next season of Throwback Thursday! This edition? The 2003 Studio Bones piece, Wolf’s Rain, directed by Tensai Okamura of Memories and Darker than Black fame. Is it any good? Or will it be the anime equivalent of Twilight? Lets dive in and find out!

Starting off, lets talk visuals. I really like how Wolf’s Rain looks! It’s very animated, lots of character movement and effects, snappy designs and cel animation. It’s all very… 90s. Like the last call of a dying breed, Wolf’s Rain feels like a show that doesn’t belong in the modern era. Which makes sense considering how much of its crew is made up of the Cowboy Bebop team, and fits the premise of the show well. Now I do have some concerns, as during my preparation for this season I learned about the 4 recap episodes (Which we will be skipping) as well as the finale being knocked back to the OVA (Which we will be watching). I’m curious just how long Wolf’s Rain can keep this kind of production up, what with SARS and all. Personally though? I really hope it can, because it looks great so far.

Continue reading “Wolf’s Rain – 1/2 [City of Howls/Toboe, Who Doesn’t Howl] – Throwback Thursday” →