About.com Rating



The second season of Spice & Wolf explores further the intricacies of economics, and edges that much closer towards making its two main characters—merchant Kraft Lawrence and the humaniform wolf-god Holo—into an actual couple. But it ends right as things get most interesting, on an open-ended note clearly intended to allow for a third season. Fans of the first season will like it, but they shouldn’t expect too much.

Pros

• Two sharply contrasting main characters make for charming banter.
• Includes an interesting exploration of medieval economics (and economic theory in general) as part of its plotting.

Cons

• The novelty of the first season has dried up somewhat.
• Details about economics can drag a bit for those not interested in the subject.
• Also ends inconclusively, possibly as preparation for a third season.

• Director: Takeo Takahashi
• Animation Studio: IMAGIN / Brains Base
• Released By: Kadokawa Pictures
• Released Domestically By: FUNimation Entertainment
• Audio: English / Japanese w/English subtitles
• Age Rating: TV-14 (partial nudity, mature themes)
• List Price: $64.98 (Blu-ray/DVD combo)

Anime Genres:

• Drama
• Fantasy

Related Titles:

• C: Control
• Spice & Wolf: Season One

The merchant and the wolf, continued

The first season of Spice & Wolf set up an intriguing situation and explored it in an intriguing way. The setting: a medieval land similar to Europe during the 16th century. A traveling merchant, Kraft Lawrence, comes across a pagan deity—“Holo, the Wise Wolf”—who has taken human form after being more or less abandoned by her human worshippers (shades of Our Home's Fox Deity).

She elects to travel with Lawrence, to make her way north to the land of her birth (about which is known little but rumor). He agrees, and soon finds he has his hands full with someone who’s part business partner, part confidante, and part would-be amour. Their adventures are interlaced with various working examples of economic theory, like the devaluation of currency or the logic of short-selling.

This stuff was all entertaining and novel the first time around, but the second season of the show makes only the most incremental progress with it. That said, I liked parts of it. I liked a whole subplot about pyrite, a normally-worthless mineral that suddenly becomes valuable (a nice analogy to the real-life tulip-bulb craze). I liked the subplot where Lawrence and Holo research, with some difficulty, the mythology behind Holo’s land of origin.

Some progress, but not enough

The biggest reason to watch Season Two is the deepening of the relationship between Lawrence and Holo. For so long, the two of them have been dancing around the very issue of what each is to the other—a lover? a friend? a co-worker?—that it requires the presence of other women to force the issue. Not just the shepherd that the two of them met in the first season, but others as well—a barmaid, for instance, who gives Lawrence the eye (and some useful information). Or Eve Bolan, another trader who startles both of them by asking if Lawrence would like to sell Holo off. Even more startling is that Holo takes the idea seriously: she is growing fond enough of Lawrence that if selling herself gives him enough money to fulfill his lifelong dream of opening his own shop, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.

If this season of the show has all these good ingredients, why don’t they click more effectively? Part of it is pacing. Too many scenes ramble and putter about, accomplishing little more than variations on the same point. There’s a line between a show savoring the way two people interact and simply using that to pad out an episode, and it feels like that line gets crossed too often here. And the conclusion to the season is, well, inconclusive—it’s designed to allow a door to be left wide open for a third season, and only accomplishes just enough to allow the season to end without leaving you feeling no real progress has been made.

This isn’t a bad show, mind you. The premise is still original and clever, and any anime that focuses on well-observed character interaction is always worth a look. It’s just that the promise of the first season doesn’t seem to have been followed up on in a way that really shines. But if you liked the original installment, this one’s more or less a shoo-in, if only to see that much more of Lawrence and Holo together.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.