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!
Getting into the episodes proper, first up is episode 13 “Men’s Lament”. This is one of Wolf’s Rain’s more interesting episodes I think, as it has next to no actual wolves. Instead it’s all about Hubb and Quent traveling together through the countryside. No big explosions or fights, not even a disagreement to drive them apart and leave one stranded before the other comes back for them. Just two guys driving along and wallowing in their mutual misery with hard liquor. And you know what? It works. These two have gotten perhaps the least focus of our leads, and this episode serves to fix that. It connects them to the rest of the world, both literally as they travel through it and figuratively as they just sort of shoot the shit over a long car ride. I feel like I know them both so much better now.
With Hubb, it gave us a look into his marriage and why it failed. Of course Wolf’s Rain doesn’t give us a definitive answer on that, leaving it a bit up to our interpretation. Did Cher get caught up in work and they slowly drifted apart? Or was Hubb just disconnected from it like he seems to be from everything else? Devoid of any kind of ambition or dream of his own? If you ask me, I think it was the latter. He seemed to try and give everything to Cher, to the point where he himself didn’t have much left. He just went along with her life, her dreams, her ambitions. And while I’m sure that sounds nice, to me it seems like he didn’t have much going for him at all. Just a husk making his way through life to afraid to really do their own thing.
Quent seems to say as much himself. As the two are driving, Hubb comments that he doesn’t know what mistake he made to wind up here, that he doesn’t understand when the world got like this. But as Quent points out, it was always like this. Hubb just never bothered to see/interact with it. He was disconnected. Uninvested. And now that Cher is gone, his only choice is to chase after her and directly involve himself, or forget about her and stay how he was. Seeing as he’s out here yelling at tanks and soldiers for starting fights, we all know what choice he made. And because of that choice, he’s starting to see the cracks. Starting to see how the Noble’s games are affecting normal people, how fucked up the world outside his little bubble was. Good stuff.
The only even marginal complaint I have is that the ending with Cher feels a bit clumsy. Maybe I just missed it, but I’m not sure when she got out of the keep or how she made it to the same town as them. Does it lead to a great ending where Hubb and Cher are reunited and Quent is shown they are on the right track? Yes! That stuff was great, and it forced Hubb’s hand in following her to Darcia’s keep or to turn back and forget this all happened. After all, Cher isn’t the kind of person to not act after seeing this stuff, that was always their difference. Overall it was a good episode about the side characters. Just that connection between last episode and this episode felt a bit… thin.
Moving on we come to the big mid-way climax, episode 14 “The Fallen Keep”. A whole lot of stuff went down here, and almost all of it was good. So I want to get my one complaint with the episode out of the way so we can talk about all the awesome stuff: I’m kind of tired of Cheza getting kidnapped over and over again. I get it, Kiba and the others need someone to chase. But I feel like they’ve been reacting a lot rather than proacting. They have some really awesome moments traveling together like their dream or the lake scenes, I think she does good things to their group dynamic. I really really hope that Wolf’s Rain gives us a few episodes near the end of them traveling together so I can get that again. Alright one complaint out of the way, onto the good stuff.
First up, the actual conflict. Like I said, this was good. I enjoyed all of the characters being in the same place at the same time face to face for the first time. It gave us a lot of mini-moments like Quent seeing Cheza, Blue blocking Quent’s shot, Hubb seeing wolves and noticing Cher notice Darcia. I wish it could have lasted a bit longer, because I want to see some of these characters interact more. But I get that this was a climax and they weren’t really in the attitude to “talk”. They were all on a bit of a timer. Hopefully after this episode, with the new groups that were setup, we can get some of that though. Like I would love to see Quent actually have a conversation with Darcia or Kiba or someone, and Kiba with Darcia, etc etc.
Speaking of Darcia and Kiba, their fight was awesome. Darcia had this sword, showing he can hold his own even without technology. Plus Wolf’s Rain gave us a lot of smaller lore tidbits in there as well. Stuff like Darcia being cursed by Paradise with that wolf eye, and that being part of why he hates wolves so much. I’m actually really curious about that wolf eye. Like what does it do? Is it just him that is cursed, or the entire Darcia line? And what did he mean that Paradise cursed him? Is it a lie, is it not actually as nice as its been described? Wolf’s Rain dropped a lot of new hooks there and it would absolutely suck for them to go unanswered. I assume they were setup specifically for the 2nd cour as we get closer and closer to Paradise, so I’m not particularly worried there.
One thing I am worried about with these two though is whether or not they are still alive! Not Kiba necessarily, he’s like… the leading role. But I swear to god if this is how Darcia dies, blown up with his castle at the halfway point of the story, I will be pissed. Not like “This killed the show for me” pissed more “Darcia is my favorite character and I want more of him” pissed. With Hamona well and truly gone, his keep destroyed, absolutely nothing holding him in place anymore except revenge against Jagara/Kiba, the man is a walking bomb and I am here for it. I’d love it the most if he could interact/be stuck with Kiba for a bit, I’d for them to actually talk without trying to kill each other. But I understand if that isn’t on the table, for either of them.
As for Jagara herself, they have well and truly taken over as the leading villain. Not just because they bombed Darcia’s house and have been hunting the wolves, but they also kidnapped Blue! Oh and Cheza, but mostly Blue! If I’m being honest I’m actually really looking forward to this pairing. Blue interacting with Cheza, Hubb and Cher should be a good time, as should Quent interacting with the wolves when they hopefully work together to free Cheza/Blue. It’s a good excuse by Wolf’s Rain to get them on speaking terms and the same side. They both want the same thing now basically, and neither can do it alone. Hopefully this leads to some awesome character moments, for both groups! I do still wish Cheza was with Kiba and Co, I’d love them to interact more. But this is a solid consolation prize.
So yeah, all in all these were some good episodes. I have minor concerns and gripes, but if I’m being honest I’m having to reach for them at this point. Wolf’s Rain has been a consistently great experience and I’m enjoying it a lot. The reason I bring up these sorts of nitpicks is because I have nothing else to complain about. So while they may sound nitpicky and like I’m making big issues out of nothing, I promise you, the only reason they get that much space in these posts is so I have something to talk about other then “WOOOOOOOO DARCIA SWORD FIGHT”. They break it up a bit, and lead to some interesting conversations in the comments at times. Just because I say I would have liked some other action more doesn’t make the action Wolf’s Rain took bad. I just have to see what it does with it first.
Anyways, minor rant done, it was a good week and I’m looking forward to more. Next week is the recaps I think so I’m probably just going to peek in, skip them, and do 6 episodes in one post. And by 6 episodes I mean 2 real episodes and 4 recaps. See you then!
I am surprised you are covering the recaps. I thought you would skip them.
I’m just going to give a one paragraph blurb over them all. I won’t be covering them in the sense that they won’t get an entire post. More just a “Do they do anything interesting with the recaps? No? Moving on.”