Spice and Wolf - Overall Series Impressions & Total Series Rating

[Rodo K.]

I thought Spice and Wolf was ok. I wish it was a bit longer then 13 but oh well. I keep drawing Horo pictures i can't stop, she's just to cute. And i'm also waiting for an OVA for this series. :3

[yadango]

i gave it a 7. it was nice watch.

[SeedFreedom]

my rating 7/10, which is quite low for any series i actually finish.

Started off strong with lots of characters and interesting plot lines. But as it moved on it focused too much on the economics and told us nothing about Horo's past. Also it seems like Lawrence is a bigger idiot than i first thought. Near the end it was a surprise if things actually went according to his plans.

[RavenHawk]

Mine is 9/10.

Positives (+)
* What did I say about Horo being 3 dimensional? Well, she's not! She's more than 3 dimensional! If I take a few stock characters and combine them, I'd have Horo as a result. Yeah Horo FTW!
* Same goes to Lawrence, and yes as expected, he's no spineless moot despite getting a tsuntsun from Horo, and yes he counters her most of the time. Sure he tends to be a softie, but he's Horo's kind of softie.
* Voice acting is great, I love Jun Fukuyama and Ami Koshimizu and Mai Nakahara's voice projection there. Come of think of it, it's like Geass (Jun nd Ami) again, he he he he he!
* Great story, though it needs some adjustment, but still a great one
* The music's nice, blends well with the atmosphere of the show

Negatives (-)
* Only 13 episodes, I wish it went 15-20
* Some points in the story tend to be confusing

Overall, I love it! I wish there's a 2nd season.

[iXenomorph]

Beautiful. The characters come to life! One of the greatest female leads I've ever seen, up there with Saber and Arcueld from fate, and tsukihime, respectively.

[Methuselah]

It is one of those animes that teaches you a lesson such as greed and the result of forcing one to do the most shameful of method, such as begging for gold while being abused on the way. I find it rather interesting that the story focused a detail idea of economics in the medieval ages as well as some historic facts. I love it how they put up information at the end of every ending credits to further explain to us - the noob economic fans - of the situation involved by the settlement and decline of kingdoms.

I also love - and I really mean in love - with Horo's character. She is beautiful, cold, sweet, sensitive, strong, cunning, and all the other elements that couldn't be blend well enough to synchronize into one great character. Horo was so well built. She was the reason why I actually started watching the anime. Though I can't say the same about the other one.

To be honest, Craft Lawrence (with a nice name but doesn't suit his characterization) wasn't what I would liked him to be. I would have liked it more if the whole series doesn't involve him teaching us specific economics and that he was not a merchant. He doesn't suit Horo with his position. Its not like his status and reputation can take a dutiful role as a male (as how the anime keeps pointing out, the gender card) to protect her. Craft done many wrongs throughout the series, such as getting too greedy and merciless like during the event where he counter-scammed the scammer. An eye for an eye is an ideal and "real" logic, but such schemes doesn't really suit the Craft that was exposed to us so far from the very few episodes. However, it was a nice way to give us lessons about humanity, where there is full of greed, guilt, arrogance, ignorance, shame, etc etc.

**Too bad he wasn't replaced with some good-looking-youthfull-rare-vampire-that-is-a-flower-but-is-crimson-underneath-that-tries
to-live-with-humanity-while-have-experienced-long-generations-of-tragedy-and-angst. Now that will really teach us lessons and fit into the fantasy theme along with it. Who wouldn't want a dirtily evil, attractive "hero(?)" such as Lelouch in Code Geass? (I'm going to start a fanfic :P)

Speaking of fantasy, the anime seemed to have a problem of balancing it. And they did a rather bad job at it till the end. Too much left unknown in the whole actually fantasy tab. You know, gods and those sort of things. How did gods coexist with humanity in the first place? All the anime did was telling you in like 3 sentences how animal gods blesses humanity with good fortune while they were worshiped back; while the rest of the series never given us any evidence of the pre-worshipped religion (except from the first village we saw) I can only guess that Christianity got to the point where they whipped 99.99% of them from history, while expanding their religious superpowers and brainwashing the people so they won't go towards their old polytheistic Shintoism-like religion. (i.e: Chloe with the Church and their master plan on killing off Horo.) In addition to that, the whole [goddamn in some aspects] anime was drilled with economics and therefor focused themselves way too much - if not completely - on the humans when they should have also focused it on Horo's divine status tree as well.

I can only hope that this alluded but very cunning and well drawn anime is a trail run, and that they will improve on them drastically in the possible season 2. I guess this anime is not that much of physical violence like the good animes these days. Heck I was so disappointed when we didn't get to see Lawrence slit some throats with his dagger (if he has any talents at all) and Horo bites some limbs off. I caught the signs of non-aggressive approach during Craft's flashback of the wolf attack during the second episode. I was like "no blood?? Suspicious, suspicious." I hate it when I'm right. It is not so good that it's at a philosophical level and neither as it is in comedy; but I'm fine with it. It is a new approach to something great with the characterization involved, though there needs to be some fix on Lawrence to be suitable for the interactions with Horo..

Overall 9/10

(7/10 originally but my love for Horo gave the score +2 points) XDDD Alright, maybe I'm way too kind to this particular anime...

[DazarGaidin]

I gave it a nine, i really liked the artwork and i never noticed an animation problem. Music was great, the characters and their interaction were good as well. I might have given it a 10 if they had more space to flesh it out some, especially the second arc which was kinda confusing at points. My biggest problem tho was that lawrence really started to fade near the end. In the beginning he was very clever as a merchant and it was his strong suit, but as the story went on he seemed to get dummer and dummer....

[Masanori Ota]

Originally Posted by Methuselah

To be honest, Craft Lawrence (with a nice name but doesn't suit his characterization) wasn't what I would liked him to be. I would have liked it more if the whole series doesn't involve him teaching us specific economics and that he was not a merchant. He doesn't suit Horo with his position. Its not like his status and reputation can take a dutiful role as a male (as how the anime keeps pointing out, the gender card) to protect her. Craft done many wrongs throughout the series, such as getting too greedy and merciless like during the event where he counter-scammed the scammer. An eye for an eye is an ideal and "real" logic, but such schemes doesn't really suit the Craft that was exposed to us so far from the very few episodes. However, it was a nice way to give us lessons about humanity, where there is full of greed, guilt, arrogance, ignorance, shame, etc etc.

**Too bad he wasn't replaced with some good-looking-youthfull-rare-vampire-that-is-a-flower-but-is-crimson-underneath-that-tries
to-live-with-humanity-while-have-experienced-long-generations-of-tragedy-and-angst. Now that will really teach us lessons and fit into the fantasy theme along with it. Who wouldn't want a dirtily evil, attractive "hero(?)" such as Lelouch in Code Geass? (I'm going to start a fanfic :P)

I want to kill you for most of everything you wrote including and past this point.

[radioIzzy]

I thoroughly enjoyed this series
I agree, the animation isn't stellar. But hey, who cares... The story was great and fascinating and pulls you in.
The characters were definately different from stereotype and gave it a more "human" qualities. I do wish the series was longer, just because I didn't want it to end.

Awesome I'd definately recommend this series to everyone.

By the way, have they announced anything on a second season?

[serenade_beta]

Originally Posted by radioIzzy

By the way, have they announced anything on a second season?

Nothing yet. No 2nd season announced yet.

[anime ronin]

i gave it a 6 out of 10 - average. nothing good really happened in the story. it was just lawrance riding around with horo selling stuff all day and talking about nothing. then lawrence gets jipped and they go to that city to smuggle the gold and get out of the hole (wow real exciting :/). however im sure the next season will be better. probably more going on.

[Vexx]

Hate to tip your boat - but the overall story is pretty much a verbal romance tale --- like the old Cary Grant / Hepburn romantic comedies or even Shakespearean comedies.

Lots of verbal jousting and flirting, occasional action -- somewhat like real life. The depth is in the characterizations, not necessarily in the action. They *do* have some rough'n'tumble adventures but not on a frequent basis.

There are 8 volumes of the story so far in light novel form and the anime covered the first volume.
This spring - a manga adaptation was started and there is one manga volume released. I'm trying to decide if I have enough hubris in my japanese skills to scanlate it or not.

[Littm]

8/10. One of the best in romantic + fantasy genre ever. Nice atmosphere, interesting characters and very good scenario. But something is missed and some parts are not so interesting enough. Yes, scenario has a really good potential (that based on novels), and I hope, that there will be the second season.

[WolfCoder]

There's so many ways I felt a connection with Horo it was kind of scary, but at least it was a good story that I could get into. I hate how it has a "ride off into the sunset" kind of ending and nothing really big actually happened with that ugly unfinished feeling. It actually looks like they were going to make 24 episodes and then just randomly quit at the end of a scenario. The music was OK, I actually kind of hated the Opening and the Ending tracks.

One thing that was sad was the way that the village citizens neglected Horo and tossed her aside for a new god, and that now she feels lonely and no one really actually sees or cares about her anymore (or even believes she exists anymore for that matter). She probably even had fun with the village in the beginning (otherwise she probably wouldn't have made the contract to begin with). Eh, good riddance ^^ Horo heads back north~

[incube]

Originally Posted by Khaos

Spice and Wolf gets a 10/10 from me.

+ Horo is an outstanding female character, it is so refreshing to see her compared to all the other generic anime-females
+ Lawrence is an outstanding male character, it is so refreshing to see him compared to all the other generic anime-males
+ Their interaction is awesome, funny, beautiful, complicated, realistic and if somewhere a stereotype pops up, then it's not meant serious.
+ Good story arcs, it is however not easy to understand the backgrounds of the economical stuff, but on the positive that adds some more complexity to the story.
+ No clear good-bad-differences...Horo ate humans before, Lawrence gets deceived but ends up not taking revenge.
Only drawback:
- Cloe didn't fit in that well and she didn't appear in the second arc.

On the technical side, animation was decent but not outstanding, however it didn't attract attention negatively, so I don't mind. The music is nothing to remember apart from the Op and Ed songs, which are great.
Horo's voice acting was outstanding, Ami Kochimizu did an awesome job! Her voice in wolf form, when she was raging and wild sent shivers down my spine!
The other voices were good, too.

Cookie for you

That is exactly how i feel about this series although i gave it a 9/10... i hope we get a great ending for this anime in the next season. Im specially interested how will the romance between Lawrence and Horo end... after all we are talking about a 250 years old wolf and a mere human merchant =?

[salv87]

Originally Posted by incube

Cookie for you

That is exactly how i feel about this series although i gave it a 9/10... i hope we get a great ending for this anime in the next season. Im specially interested how will the romance between Lawrence and Horo end... after all we are talking about a 250 years old wolf and a mere human merchant =?

ehmm.. well Horo is tiny bit older than 250.. about 2.5 times older ^_^
and another issue is that the anime covered 2 light novels, out of 8 (I think) available now ^_^
for more info check the novels ^_^

PS.. S&W is the anime that made me interested in l. novels ^_^

[GuidoHunter_Toki]

This was one of those animes where it was all about the characters. And I enjoyed it for that. Horo is one of the most well built female character I've seen. I dailogues between Horo and Lawrence were a joy and they felt natural and real. For a show with really not much going on in the sense of "big things" it did really well. The only down side was that it had a lack of backstory with Horo, but of course another season could easily fix that.


And with that I give it a 8.5/10

[Prov1]

This story was good. Didn't have too much going on but Horo's char boosted this anime up to an 11.

[Traece]

I should probably come back to this series and post my final thoughts:

I had to give Spice and Wolf a nine out of ten, which is pretty good.

I'd say it'd be easier to point out negatives with such a high score. Most of the negatives result from the fact that the series (or supposed first season?) is left VERY open and gives an extreme lack of any fulfillment. There was so much potential in this show that doesn't seem to get used to any noticeable degree beyond what's really shown in the thirteen episodes provided. Within those thirteen episodes are some great story, but my main complaint truly is the lack of extortion for the possibilities.

I suppose realistically I should give this show a much lower score, but it was a great show none-the-less and all things considered it hasn't been proven that there will be no second season. However if there is none, then I will have immense disappointment.

[salv87]

I suppose that it is because the 1-st season (let hope it is so) is based on the novels and it is said that it follows the novels closely.. So it would be natural that the ending should leave people wanting more.. actually such an open ending is what actually made me interested in the S&W novels..