Spice and Wolf holds an odd place in my listing of Shows I Have Seen And Enjoyed. On the one hand, it has a lot of elements that would otherwise raise it to a Highly Recommended slot, shared by luminaries such as Princess Tutu. Horo is attractive, perhaps even cute, although in a more refined and less sugary way than that descriptor would suggest. The art is clean, and while I can see several occasions of slightly off-model animation, these are never jarring enough to bring me out of the story (unlike Seven Arcs's sins with the Lyrical Nanoha series and Asura Cryin). There are plenty of little touches which give me a little thrill of satisfaction every time they happen, like the way Horo's headwear twitches when she moves her ears.

On the other hand, after I finished watching the last episode, I had absolutely no desire to rewatch the show ever again. And I don't know why.

It took me a long while to craft together this blog post, since I didn't know where to start. (To be clear, however, it hasn't actually been that long; I don't have as much time as I did to watch anime, so Spice and Wolf had been my "I should watch this because of the anime blog" series.) I should be loving Spice and Wolf, but I don't. It doesn't have a lot of aspects I would actively dislike, such as crushing angst and long self-pitying soliloquoys, but I finished the show with an odd sense of discontent. It was as though despite the high production values, I found the show wanting, somehow.

I still don't know precisely why I feel that way, but I do have several ideas which don't seem obviously wrong. Chief of these is the assertion that Spice and Wolf did not meet my expectations.

Now, when people use that phrase, often they mean that it was not good enough, or it fell short somehow. In this case, however, the show may or may not have surpassed my ideas of quality, but it went wide off the mark nevertheless. I had a certain idea of what the show would be, or at least what I wanted to take from that show, but this idea was defeated.

This may be because Spice and Wolf is not, relatively speaking, a new show. Everyone I spoke to about it mentioned surprise at the heavy emphasis on economic theory, to the point of almost being educational. And so I went in expecting a lighter, fluffier, and certainly shorter anime version of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle with a cute wolfgirl. Obviously it would not be as grand in depth and scope, but the applied examples of currency speculations were a great deal more interesting when placed in the context of a society in the midst of a scientific revolution, despite the political upheavals at the time muddying the waters. (I realize that things have not changed much since then.)

What I got was a show which certainly tried to introduce a few concepts, but got sidetracked often by personal drama that seemed, to me, to be shoehorned in for the sake of some action.

It's weird: I could accept Horo's nature of being a wolf spirit taking human form as "normal", or at least normal enough not to interfere in the economic theory. Her superior (and supernatural) senses can provide more information than Lawrence would otherwise have access to, but that is fine, since a free market would theoretically work best with total knowledge of information. (This never happens in practice, which is one reason why economic theories never work as well when applied to real life. Ask ten economists, get fifteen answers…)

But when she takes an active hand in influencing the story by turning into her Big Bad Wolf form, or when her supernatural nature and background affects the plot significantly (the last couple of episodes, for example), it takes me out of economic theory and dumps me into a fantasy adventure. I would actually enjoy fantasy adventures in another context, but the transition here is a little abrupt.

It also felt a little odd that certain concepts, mostly to do with characterizations (how shepherds are used to fending off wolves, for instance), are repeated several times, presumably in order to hammer it into our heads, while others (mostly the financial stuff) are explained once and left at that.

I suspect that this is because the plot is not supposed to be about Lawrence and Horo's adventures in market theory, but more about the action and drama bits. It's certainly more interesting to the average viewer: a giant rampaging spirit wolf attracts more attention than haggling for clothes.

I also suspect that in the original source (light novels, if I'm not mistaken), the intellectual and emotional aspects are more closely integrated. Never having read them, I can't tell for certain.

All in all, Spice and Wolf deserves a rewatch, this time without any pre-conceived expectations. Honestly, I would not say that I have the time to do so, especially with so many other obligations that is Real Life. Perhaps I can put it off for a while, until my initial opinions of it have subsided into dim memory.

But to leave it at my current viewpoint would be unfair to the show, and any recommendations for anime I might make in the future.