Speechless. 10/10.

you probably will have to wait for 2 more episodes to see how this all will end. They are doing one episode per chapter and things are not solved till the very end of chapter 5. i don't know if they will include the epilogue in episode 5 or do it all in episode 6 because the epilogue is about half a chapter long and there is a lot of good stuff in the epilogue.

spice and wolf is rly one of the best animes out there^^ (and i watched around 5 TB)
wonderful protagonists with so many aspects that i am just delighted, wonderful voice acting and a nice story. I hope they ll make a 3rd and 4th season etc....
the more i listen to the OP and ED song the better they are^^
i am rly curious if they make up in the next episode. after all the title is "end of shallowness"

Upon watching this episode I left with the feeling of oh what the hell who am I kidding it hurt so fucking much dammit!:upset:

So immortality, is it a blessing... or a curse?

Throughout the series there's been a lot of talk between them about how long Horo's lived but we've ever really seen how she really, REALLY feels about the long life she's lived, aside from her dreams anyway. She reminisced here and there about her past experiences, people she's encountered and the wisdom and intelligence she's gained over centuries. Still we never really saw how much such a long life as really affected her as a person/god. She's always been good at evading the question.

Until today anyway, we finally get a real glimpse of what she feels having lived and outlived over many centuries.

In one outburst we see despair, sadness, anger, regret, the whole motley crew, not necessarily in that order.

Most of all, loneliness. So much so that she's willing to almost get pregnant by any person necessary just to continue her line of wolf gods and have someone who will as long as she will by her side. Without a doubt she knows her time with Lawrence is only fleeting in the years she will be alive, but I guess she's never had companionship that has lasted longer than a human life and she's tired of seeing people be born and then die before her eyes like it was a normal occurrence.

You'd think she'd be used to it by now, but by meeting Lawrence she's probably realized that immortality has its price, and with Lawrence realized immortality means being alone, something she knows deep down she can't stand. She knows Lawrence cannot possibly fill the role she so desperately seeks.

Of course he can't. He's merely human. She a god.

100/10 (No that's not a typo).

i can't help but lol very hard at this scene
i pretty similiar with the doujin

I am the only who thought the last part of the episode felt really "scripted"? I really couldn't believe the answers Lawrence gave Horo after she started questioning him, it was like the scene was forcefully set up so Horo could lose her trust in Lawrence.

On another note, I couldn't help but notice how poor the animation quality was this week. Sure, It's not a big deal for this kind of show, but the festival could have looked much more impressive with some decent animation.

Perfect depiction of Horo's mental breakdown = 10/10.

Lawrence is a huge tool. When I read this in the volume I remember thinking "o no she can... Lawrence, fix this, Lawrence shes losing it you have to fix this, no... WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?... FIX THIS!" Exact same feeling I got from watching it. I think Horo is tying Belldandy for "characters you never ever ever want to see cry"

Seeing how well they did this important scene, I am looking forward even more to the next big moments in the volume. I am 1000000% confident they will do them justice.

As for the Immortality thing, if you are a firm believer in the whole immortal soul thing (I'm not) then I suppose this wouldn't be as bad. But even still, if Horo was willing to accept Lawrence's short lifespan, and Lawrence was sure Horo wants to, then they could spend the remainder of his life together. 60 years of companionship beats 60 without I suppose. And if they did have children Horo would have the company of her family for the rest of her life, and the connection to Lawrence through them. So she might have a good idea with the baby thing, just not while she is suffering a mental breakdown.

And she being a God, once she has a baby she can repopulate her clan. Gods don't care too much about the taboo of mating with kin :) Zeus and Hera :)

No, discussing events in the current episode does not count as spoilers. It's a courtesy to discuss events from the raw episode in a spoiler box, but once the sub comes out, discussion of the episode's events can be done in open text.

Discussion of events not shown in prior or current episodes, however, are spoilers and are not allowed in episode discussion threads. Save those discussions for the other threads in the forum where spoilers are allowed.

In other words - spoilers button is pretty much useless - you are not allowed to post actual spoilers and what are you allowed to post are not spoilers already (and since its just a courtesy it is not a must at all to use it).

I thought the complete opposite actually, they were building up the tension between Horo and Lawrence since episode 1, she knew he was hiding something and at the same time, Lawrence knew that he had to tell her about it or it would be a much bigger problem later on, but he just couldn't. I was mostly surprised with Horo's reaction to the whole thing, she took the news about Yoitsu a little harder than I thought she would, maybe because she has been so strong so far, but Lawrence was the same as always, pondering about his action way more necessary.

Wow the next episode preview, I am seriously going to be ticked if Horo actually does that scene.

Personally I never thought Horo was as strong as she tries to show. It felt more tied to trying to present a "god-like" presence and demeanor towards those around her (and especially to Lawrence), but there are little bits and pieces of scenes that pop out during important and stressful moments that further hint that some of her strong-willed maturity is very good acting.

Under it all is really just a person who's either been glorified by people who don't really understand or vilified for her supernatural status. The curse of a god methinks, that you exist on heightened existential plane that very few mortal humans are capable of understanding, let alone reach. As the cliche goes, it's lonely at the top.

And when you're alone at the top... well... Horo might just be the last of her kind, and I can't begin to imagine the metaphysical problematic of realizing that you're the last surviving individual of your race.

In other words, not only has she been an object of wonder beyond the reach of humans and therefore has never truly interacted with them, she now realizes she is essentially alone. She perhaps never really considered Lawrence as a lifelong companion because... well the spans of their lives are radically different. She realizes that no one is left to bear the anguish of an extended life where she has only met people lives and deaths are only blinks of an eye to her.

Lawrence is probably the closest person ever who has attempted to reach and understand her, treating her more as an equal than a god. I can believe that Horo doesn't really want to be exalted; she just wants to be accepted. Believe it or not, being accepted is much harder than being exalted.

I guess even gods get lonely too.

Admittedly, despite the somewhat normal first-half (with the exception of the proposal ordeal), I was on edge the whole episode because of the title name.
Someone did state that Lawrence's part at the end had felt somewhat scripted in order for Horo to lose trust in him. I kind of felt Lawrence did less than possible in his defense, but perhaps it was that Lawrence was unable to properly express the Yoitsu situation, coupled with his state of panic/depression in the wake of Horo's display of raw, core-cutting emotion. Powerful episode.

Now, after having finished watching episode 3 on a summer with nothing to do, my next week is going to be a living torment waiting for ep 4. Of course, this particular arc may not see conclusion until ep 5. . I'll be traveling that week but argh! it's definitely something worth waiting for.

I imagine I'll be going through the volumes like the bubonic plague one of these years :)

Which episode in season one had the flashback to Lawerence knowing the village was destroyed?

Yes, although she doesn't say it quite so plainly.

Lawrence had heard stories of Yoitsu's destruction before meeting Horo, but since Deanna is an authoritative figure on the subject, the fact that what she tells him coincides with what Lawrence had already heard lends further credit to the story.

I think you need to look a bit harder, because the English translations are definitely still around. I know so, because I did them.;)



A word on the episode: this is one of the scenes I was really looking forward to seeing in animated form, and I must say, I am extremely pleased with how it turned out, which is exactly as I had imagined it. 10/10, hands down.:D

That was a nice bit of character drama. Kudos for the work that Koshimizu Ami did with Horo; on the other hand, while I like Lawrence's character, I think that Fukuyama Jun should have toned down his performance a bit.

For the individual episode threads, the spoiler tags aren't totally useless - they should still be used whenever you reference a spoiler for a different show.

For example, the character dynamic in Spice and Wolf is similar to the one in the Crest of the Stars because:



More than just that, it's also pretty clear that Horo has been nursing precisely that fear. Having events turn out to match one's fears can't be very easy to handle, and Horo doesn't have any sort of release valve.

Couple that with the fear that Lawrence, the only one she's opened up to in umpteen years, was trying to get rid of her, and it's pretty clear where her degeneration comes from.

I think that Horo was already broken up from reading the letter, and over the hours that she had to work herself up about it, there wasn't a whole lot that Lawrence could do about it. Lawrence seems to understand this instinctively, and he acted as if anything he said was potentially dangerous. Under such a circumstance, I think that it's very natural for him to panic.

On a personal level, I love watching believable drama of this nature: where one or both speakers devolve into self-destructive behavior. It's great for what is revealed about the characters, for the hints as to how they'll recover from such actions, and because they just make for riveting scenes.

10/10

On the mating to not be alone note I fear that even that would not work.
1) Real life biology says it would be impossible
2) Since this isn't real life but fantasy then it would be likely that the fantasy rules apply. And Generally that means that the kids have the powers of the elevated being but not the immortality. So she could mate and have kids but I fear they would be mortal. Hance would distort Horo even further.

Not really. Lawrence is clearly taken by surprise, and more than a little afraid of what's happening, so he's completely tongue-tied as a result. It's normal.

As for Horo's reactions - she's very smart, so she's able to make all kinds of connections and deductions very fast. Combined with her emotional state, it plays against her here, by making her fears and insecurities more and more plausible. Normally, she'd have a clearer view of the situation, but right then, she could only see the negatives.

The rules of one fantasy work (or even most fantasy works) need not apply to one particular piece. In other words, we don't know if it'd work or not. Maybe Horo knows it would, or maybe she's grasping at straws - we don't know.




Some people need to not jump to conclusions:
- we still don't know what happened to Yoitsu. Even if we accept a giant bear destroyed the town at some point in the past, we don't know the extent of the destruction. We can't know from mere "legends", which are likely to be deformed and/or exaggerated.
- Horo isn't the last of her kind. She met another pack in S1, remember?
- She may be the last of her own pack... but the truth is, we don't know if her packmates were even there when Yoitsu was attacked. Even if they were, they may have survived. Killing a bunch of giant wolves is easier said than done, even for a giant bear.



To get back at the opinion of Amati expressed in the ep2 thread: he's not trying to buy Horo, but to set her free to accept his proposal. He's not doing it to impose anything (though he may want to impress her...), but because she legally can't marry him as long as she's "in debt" and her creditor doesn't give permission. Falling head over heel practically at first sight like that is a bit juvenile, but it's not evil. He's also a bit delusional in his vision of Horo and Lawrence's relationship - but, well, that's because he's in love.

As for the reputation of the guild - as I said, that kind of impulsiveness is a bit bad, but he'll probably be forgiven on account of his youth. Plus the fact that it takes nothing away from his ability to make a profit. In fact, a bet like that demonstrates his ability to make a large amount in a hurry.

If anything, Lawrence's the one who ought to look bad, if and when Amati pays 1000 silver coins, and Horo still chooses to travel. It could look like a con for gullible rich guys. Fortunately, that's not how it's perceived in town. At least for now.

I think that there was no scene of the legend of a moon hunting bear in the season 1.
I felt at the time that the bear scene of the season 1 was deleted from the original so that even if the season 2 was canceled, there might be no inconvenience.