Spice & Wolf: merchant meets the wise wolf

Episode 17

Lawrence is on his own. Outside of the flashbacks, Holo doesn't deliver a single line of dialogue this week. All we see from her is a warm smile directed towards Amati and an icy glare shot towards Lawrence. It's an effective dramatic choice. The first adaptation let Lawrence's mind wander to an imaginary meeting between Amati and Holo, which works too, but I like that Holo essentially gives the audience the cold shoulder here. It's a subtler way of putting us in the shunned merchant's shoes.

A humbled Lawrence is usually a recipe for a good time and that holds true here. He pivots hard into his scheming mode, and it's fun to watch both his mind and heart race to hold on to Holo. One also has to imagine that these mercantile machinations provide a welcome distraction for him. Sure, he's doing all of this to stop Amati from buying out Holo's “debt,” which seems straightforward, but in truth, he's avoiding a direct confrontation with the real problem: his and Holo's relationship. Objectively, it would be easier for him to talk things out with his partner than it would be for him to singlehandedly manipulate a highly volatile market. To Lawrence, however, only the latter seems remotely feasible right now. Matters of the heart are far scarier to him than matters of the coin.

This means we get another heaping dose of Spice & Wolf economics edutainment, and to my puny brain, this is the most complicated topic yet. It's actually a twofold lesson on both speculative bubbles and credit, both of which tie into Komerson's current pyrite craze. Regarding the first topic, the most obvious historical antecedent is the “tulip mania” that swept the Netherlands in the 17th century—but there's a perfectly good modern analogue with NFTs. Thankfully, Spice & Wolf's explanations make it simple to understand the parallels. While Holo bought her piece of pyrite because it looked pretty, the majority of pyrite has been bought by merchants and visitors looking to resell them at higher prices. We can see how these bubbles perpetuate themselves. As more people buy pyrite, the demand and price of pyrite go up, and that rapidly increasing value attracts other buyers looking to flip it for a quick buck, which makes pyrite's value skyrocket even higher, and so on and so forth.

The problem with bubbles is that they pop. Fads are temporary, and eventually prices will reach a point where it no longer looks lucrative to either buy or flip the asset, and someone will be holding a very expensive bag of worthless rocks in the end. Or, to put it in modern parlance, someone is going to be stuck with a Bored Ape in 2024. This is where the second part of Lawrence's scheme comes into play: buying on credit. Honestly, the show gives a better breakdown than I could, so I'll just remark on Lawrence's cleverness at roping Amati all the way in. Amati knows something smells fishy (that's his area of expertise, after all), but Lawrence emotionally manipulates him into accepting his “duel” by preying on his infatuation with Holo. That's ice cold. And that's why he's a strong protagonist whether or not you have a business degree. His silver tongue just makes for good conversations.

Lawrence, however, clearly feels the weight of Holo's influence as well. He misses his partner in crime. One can imagine he might also be trying to be both a good adult and a good male, per her descriptions last week. He's doing the stereotypical macho thing, defending his honor and fighting for the girl. Yet he's also doing so in a “cowardly” way, i.e. not through brute force but through mind games and market manipulation. He's playing to his strengths and it seems like Holo hasn't entirely given up on him either. She leaves him a ledger detailing Amati's net worth, which is valuable intel for what Lawrence wants to accomplish. Granted, she also leaves him a marriage contract signed by her and Amati but it's not like she's any stranger to mixed signals. Even in a situation like this, Holo retains some sense of playfulness. Consciously or not, she wants to see what Lawrence does in this situation.

There's a big issue with that marriage contract, though, and I can't wrap up this review without addressing it. It's Holo's signature. It's all wrong. Recall that Holo isn't fully literate (not a lot of reading and writing to do in a wheat field). In the original adaptation, therefore, her signature is a tangled scrawl that resembles “Korbo” more than any one of her names or titles. It was a really cute touch that humanized the wise wolf. This adaptation, however, uses a fantasy script that makes it much harder to gauge how well her name is written compared to the rest of the document. More importantly, it doesn't look like “Korbo” at all. It looks like a concatenation of crappy asterisks. I'm on Team Korbo. I hope you are too.

Outside of that hiccup, this is another propulsive episode. This remains my favorite arc yet and it's not slowing down. Predictably, Lawrence will have to rely on his new friend Diana to help him out, which is consistent with the series' themes. Lawrence and Holo are outcasts (both by choice and by happenstance), so it makes sense for them to keep forging bonds with other people on the fringes of society. These are the people who have to stick together, if for no reason other than self-preservation. This is also why it's hard to imagine Holo with Amati. Her and Lawrence's shared loneliness set off their argument but it's their foundation as well.

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.