Spice & Wolf: merchant meets the wise wolf

Episode 16

I have a protip for Lawrence: anytime you feel confident about anything, rein that in and brace for the worst. Murphy's Law is a universal constant. I'm not complaining, though. Spice & Wolf would be a lot less spicy if Lawrence weren't so prone to miscalculations on both the economic and emotional fronts.

I like the intersection of gender dynamics/expectations in Amati's challenge to Lawrence. There's a lot going on. Amati's perspective hews closely to the stereotype that women are damsels in need of protection by men. Sensing as much, Holo acted the part for her own amusement last week, and Amati wasted no time swooping in to be the hero. Lawrence knows Holo better than that, of course, but he, too, is beholden to societal pressures. When Amati publicly throws down the gauntlet, Lawrence accepts his contract to preserve his reputation as a man, affecting his reputation as a merchant. He assesses the situation and makes the safe choice. Holo, however, is absent in this scene. She might be the focus of this conflict, but she isn't allowed a say in it.

To her credit, Holo is magnanimous when Lawrence reports back to her. She understands the optics of the scene, and she's impressed when he spins his confidence into a compliment directed at her. That doesn't stop her from lambasting the inherent absurdities, though. She dissects the foolishness behind what a "good adult" and "good male" would do. One is cowardly, and the other is rash. I love this conversation because it adheres to the usual playful rapport between our leads, but you can also sense some retaliation behind Holo's teasing. Neither of Lawrence's possible choices would have been completely correct in her eyes, and that's the point. Holo is many things, but she's not a trophy.

Before this conflict comes to a head, Holo and Lawrence mull on Amati's plan and enjoy the festival together. It's no surprise that Lawrence isn't too concerned about whether or not Amati pulls the money together. Either he does, and Holo and Lawrence enjoy a hefty payday, or he doesn't, and they continue on their journey per usual. The side bets on whether or not Holo betrays him are a funny recurring bit, although they turn darker and more dramatic after the explosion at the end of the episode. For the time being, though, the festival scenes provide a cute exhibition of our heroes' chemistry with each other. While Lawrence later laments this distraction from his mercantile duties, he should really appreciate this calm before the storm.

And what a storm it is. Holo has never been more upset with Lawrence, and you have to admit he had it coming. There are a lot of emotions that overlap in her outburst, however, and he's only responsible for some of them. I'd wager the news about Yoitsu's probable destruction is the main component of her despair. After drifting through the wheat fields for hundreds of years, Holo has anchored herself to two points, Yoitsu and Lawrence, to ground and preserve her sense of self. Yoitsu, to her, functions less as a physical destination and more as the avatar of capital-H Home. It's proof that she's from somewhere and that she isn't just a harvest goddess spawned from the ether. If Yoitsu is gone, she's unmoored. She's lost one of her anchors.

Unfortunately, this news also compromises her other anchor. Although Lawrence's intentions weren't nefarious, Holo nevertheless feels betrayed by his lack of honesty. Sure, they've indulged in lies and mind games before (often at her discretion), but the stakes here are much graver. She's furious that Lawrence didn't treat her like a partner and instead treated her like one of those delicate flowers she loves to tease him about. She's also frustrated with herself because she can feel just how weak and lonely she is. So she leans into that. She throws aside all coyness and playfulness and directly asks Lawrence to have sex with her. This is the second gauntlet thrown in this episode, but Lawrence backs away from this one.

That's the right thing to do, too. Holo feels depressed, desperate, and pressured, and those emotions don't add up to a particularly romantic moment. The tragedy, of course, is that the two of them obviously want to bone each other's brains out. Like most lonely people, however, they fear commitment about as much as they fear being alone. To commit is to break down the walls one has already built to protect oneself from one's own loneliness. That's hard to do. Lawrence hesitates to answer Holo's pointed question about the nature of their relationship but notes too that Holo avoids directly asking Lawrence if he loves her. Begging him to mate with her is less scary than asking if he truly cares about her. Retreating to Amati's fervent and one-sided affection is also safer than tangoing with Lawrence on equal footing. If this is the only choice she's allowed to make, then she's going to squeeze all of the advantages she can out of it. If she can no longer tether her heart to anything, then she will live as cold, large, and unstoppable as a glacier.

I love this scene. It sucks to watch because I want these characters to get over themselves and be happy together, but I also live for the drama. This argument works exceptionally well as a plot development, too. It pushes the story forward, upending Lawrence's prior confidence in Amati, and it puts his and Holo's emotional complexity on display at the center of this arc's conflict. The voice acting and character animation do this scene justice as well. Ami Koshimizu perfectly captures Holo's pain and sadness, and the animators do an admirable job transitioning between her myriad facial expressions. This adaptation knows that this is an important moment. As painful as this fight is, it expertly exhibits the psychological richness that attracted me to Spice & Wolf in the first place.

Rating:

Spice & Wolf: merchant meets the wise wolf is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve is on Twitter while it lasts. He still knows "The Wolf Whistling Song" by heart. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.