For all my disappointment with H₂O, I've been comforted recently by the excellence of Kimikiss Pure Rouge.  Mao-neesan's really taking things hard, and I've been getting flashbacks of School Days, though I'm sure that's not in the cards here...

Posted by: mparker762 at 07:59 PM
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

"Spice" in the title would be Craft Lawrence, an itinerate spice/fur/whatever trader.  "Wolf" in the title would be Horo, aka Horo the Wise, a Wolf kami (animistic spirit) who's previous occupation was guardian of the fields and guarantor of good crops.  But when the church moves in, and brings with it farming technology, then the villagers no longer believe in Horo and she decides to move on.  In her human form, of course, because wolves don't have the T&A that humans do.

Horo from the intro...


Villagers worshipper her in her salad days...


Horo hitchhiking, and a very surprised Craft Lawrence...


How the villagers can disbelieve such an attractive young wolf-girl is beyond me...


Horo dressed decently.  And pretty happy by the looks of her.  I've never figured out why a wolf spirit has fox ears and tail though...  They don't have phones in this era, so we don't know if she can say "moshi".


There are a lot of gorgeous scenes in this show.


Horo, happy again.  Once again food is involved.


The Trading Game.  This is actually the episode that got me interested in this show - in this scene they're trying to figure out if the silver content in a particular coin is trending up or down.  Horo's wolf ears help tremendously here, listening to the clinking sound they make.

Posted by: mparker762 at 07:42 PM
Post contains 226 words, total size 2 kb.

So the big secret evil that that gets her called "Roach"? The one that causes her to get beaten to a pulp by the schoolkids?  The one that so inflamed the villagers that they came out out with torches and pitchforks to burn her ancestral home and kill her grandparents and parents?  The one they've been building up to for five episodes now?

Turns out her grandparents weren't sufficiently charitable towards the villagers.

Barf.

I'm washing my hands of this one.  Anime can be wierd and still be good (and the correlation is surprisingly high), but this is just stupid.

On the other hand, Spice and Wolf is turning out to be a lot more than just a T&A vehicle.  Episode 3 with the trading intrigues and currency manipulation really hooked me.  Hopefully it won't jump the shark like H₂O did.

Posted by: mparker762 at 06:38 PM
Post contains 147 words, total size 1 kb.