Tag: Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf II

Spice and Wolf II

Spice and Wolf II anime series cover art
Spice and Wolf II

Season Overview

Spice and Wolf II (Ookami to Koushinryou II / 狼と香辛料II) is the second season of the Spice and Wolf anime series. A lot of people describe this season as being more focused on romance than economics. But, I don’t know that I agree.

The arcs within this season are still very economics-heavy. And rather than focusing on romance, I’d say this season focuses more on dependence. Both Holo and Lawrence realize how dependent they are on each other’s companionship.

Don’t get me wrong; there’s definitely romance in this season. But, I wouldn’t say this season focuses on it. Instead, it sets up future romance by testing how our protagonists feel about each other. All the way up until the final episode, I wouldn’t call Holo and Lawrence romantically involved.

However, I will say that the two display affection more this season. Right at the start of the season, Holo is leaning against Lawrence on their carriage as they make their way to the next town. And she comments on how Lawrence would previously not have wanted that level of physical contact with her.

In most respects, I’d say that Spice and Wolf II is better than the first season. I enjoyed the relationship between Holo and Lawrence more. And, there was a surprising amount of suspense even though I knew everything was going to work out in the end.

The two parts of this season that are absolutely worse than the first season are the OP and ED. I watched the OP and ED of the first season every time, and I still enjoy them to this day. But after watching the OP and ED of the second season once, I skipped them every other time.

Holo Leaves (Twice)

As I mentioned, there are some suspenseful parts of this season. The first is when Lawrence agrees to a bet against another merchant for ownership of Holo. And by ownership, I mean the other merchant wants to marry Holo and Lawrence just wants to win her back (and make some money in the process).

The suspense comes in when Holo gets mad at Lawrence for hiding information he received that her homeland has been destroyed. She storms out and spends the rest of the arc with the man who challenged Lawrence to the “duel.”

Despite the fact that it’s obvious Holo and Lawrence are going to end up together again, the series did a great job at making the stakes feel real. There was the question of whether Lawrence would win the bet, and there was the question of how he and Holo would make up after their fight.

Holo having a meal with you from the anime series Spice and Wolf II
Holo having a meal with you

In the final arc of the season, Holo is sold off by Lawrence for 2,000 silver coins. Okay, that sounds pretty bad. But, it was all part of a plan that Holo herself agreed to. Lawrence didn’t want to go through with it until Holo questioned his trust in her.

The plan was for Holo to be pawned off to the church for the 2,000 silver coins, which would then be used to buy up furs. This would cause the price of furs to skyrocket, leaving Holo and his “partner in crime” to make a huge profit.

A portion of that profit would then be paid back to the church for the return of Holo. Again, we know Holo and Lawrence are going to end up together. But there are still a lot of unknowns on the way to that conclusion.

Gods and Men

One of the more interesting aspects of this season is the logistics of a romantic relationship between Holo and Lawrence. Both have put thought into what their future together would look like. And both, understandably, have their reservations about it.

For Lawrence, the biggest hurdle to get over appears to be the fact that Holo isn’t human. Holo is one of the pagan gods. The fact that she can take on a human-like appearance doesn’t change that. And so Lawrence has questions about both the practicality and morality of being romantically involved with her.

In search of guidance, Lawrence asks Dian, an expert in pagan mythology, if there are any legends about humans and pagan gods mating. Dian tells him that there are many examples of that, but doesn’t elaborate any further.

It’s curious that Lawrence specifically asks about mating and not simply being romantically involved.

Holo standing over the skeleton of Lawrence from the anime series Spice and Wolf II
Holo standing over the skeleton of Lawrence

On Holo’s end, the questions that need to be answered are a bit different. She knows that romance between gods and men is possible and she’s not concerned about the relationship itself. What she’s concerned with is what comes after.

As a pagan god, Holo is immortal. As a human, Lawrence has a very limited lifespan. To Holo, the lifespans of humans seem to last for mere seconds. Even so, if she were to stay with Lawrence for the rest of his life, she would be greatly affected by his death and the loneliness she would feel afterward.

I don’t know how Holo’s concerns are going to be resolved, or if they even will be. Maybe the question of Lawrence’s mortality will be brushed aside and forgotten. Maybe Lawrence will gain immortality or Holo will lose it. Or, maybe there’s not a happy ending to their story.

Perhaps the answer to this question lies in the recently announced new Spice and Wolf anime project. It’s not yet known if this is a third season, but I can hope.

Conclusion

I debated giving Spice and Wolf II a 7/10. But after thinking about it more and comparing it to the previous season as well as other anime I rated that score, I decided that an 8/10 is more appropriate.

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Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf anime series cover art featuring Holo
Spice and Wolf Cover Art

Overview

I think after 11 years of being universally loved, I can safely say that Spice and Wolf is a classic. However, I didn’t have high hopes for it when I began watching. I mean, it’s a series about a merchant teaching a wolf-girl basic economics, so how exciting could it really be?

As it turns out, all those people who loved this series over the past decade were onto something. Spice and Wolf isn’t really supposed to be an exciting anime, if anything it’s a cozy anime, and if I had watched it when it originally aired, I probably would have thought that meant it was boring.

Yes, there’s action at times, but I never felt that the action was all that important. What’s more important is the relationship between our main duo of Lawrence and Holo, and the suspense that’s generated due to the various situations they find themselves in.

The main draw to the series for a lot of people is probably the romance aspect between Lawrence and Holo. Over the course of the first season, which this post is exclusively about, the pair become near inseparable as they fill the void in each others’ hearts from years of living solo lives.

But, as I mentioned, there’s also a fair amount of suspense generated by the story even if there isn’t all that much actual action. Sometimes we’re left wondering how Lawrence is going to get out of some debt he’s incurred, and other times Holo is being chased down by the church for being a pagan deity.

Characters

This time around our protagonist’s name is Kraft Lawrence, and he’s a 25-year-old merchant. Honestly, when I learned that Lawrence was only supposed to be 25 I was shocked. I was sure he was supposed to at least be in his 30s if not 40s.

Lawrence is currently a member of a merchant’s guild and travels between various towns and cities with his wagon of goods. However, his true dream is to one day make enough money to open up his own store so he can settle down and truly begin his life.

Despite his apparent age, Lawrence is also highly skilled at his craft. He knows when to invest in certain goods, the differences in purity between all the coins from various cities, and they best ways to avoid being robbed; all skills a good merchant needs.

Holo and Kraft Lawrence from the anime series Spice and Wolf
Holo and Lawrence

However, it’s Lawrence’s unlikely companion who really pushes his ability as a merchant over the edge. Holo is a wolf deity who once watched over a particular village and helped its crops flourish. However, with the invention of new, more robust seeds, the people no longer have a reason to worship her.

So, she decides to return to her homeland in the mountains to the far North, and chooses Lawrence as her travelling companion. While he sees her simply as another mouth to feed at first, it quickly becomes apparent that Holo possesses unique abilities that will aid him in his quest for wealth.

Not only can Holo determine if people are being truthful, something merchants have to worry about on a daily basis, but she’s also an extremely sly negotiator. She’s able to talk vendors into decreasing the prices of their goods, or even convince buyers that Lawrence’s goods are higher quality than they really are.

Also, Holo is basically just an older, more tsundere predecessor to Raphtalia from The Rising of the Shield Hero. Her design isn’t quite as nice, and she tends to act more mature, but other than that they’re the same character as far as I’m concerned.

The third and final character I’ll mention is Nora. Nora is a young girl who works as a shepherd for the local church. However, because she and her dog Enek are so good at protecting sheep from wolves, the church believes she must be some sort of witch.

Ah, yes, the good old days when being good at your job meant you were a witch. Because of this fear, the church constantly sends Nora to graze her flock in the most dangerous regions where other shepherds dare not go.

Their thought process is that if she comes back safe, she must be a witch, but if she dies, then she wasn’t a witch, but also isn’t their problem anymore. It’s a classic case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

Nora joins Lawrence and Hollow on their travels after she successfully leads them through dangerous territory multiple times safely. But, Holo isn’t exactly fond of Nora both because she’s a shepherd and because she thinks Lawrence will fall for her.

Conclusion

The first season of Spice and Wolf is a solid 8/10, which isn’t something I really expected from the studio Imagin. I’ve seen one anime they’ve produced, Alderamin on the Sky, and that was bad, so I wouldn’t have expected a series animated by them to be much better.

The second season is animated by two different studios I’ve never heard of before, so it’ll be interesting to see what differences there are between that season and this first one. Stay tuned for a review of season two in the eventual future.

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My review of Spice and Wolf II is available now.