Spice & Wolf: merchant meets the wise wolf

Episode 21

It's a good sign when an episode begins with Holo chugging a tankard of beer. The lively tavern is just one of the places fleshed out in this week's Spice & Wolf chapter—which focuses mainly on the setting of the current arc. The unique history and arrangements of Tereo are most relevant to Holo and Lawrence's current predicament but we also get more juicy details about the wider world—a world that is sadly not yet wide enough to cover Yoitsu. Still, the additional information and context are appreciated because they move this arc forward while somewhat distracting the audience from the fact that this episode looks like a butt.

I've complained about the new adaptation's look and feel before but I honestly thought the anime was doing okay for a while there. While it's never going to be a virtuosic production, the plain and workmanlike approach was done competently throughout the Amati storyline. Or that's how it appeared to me, at any rate. As I'm looking back through the show's credits, I now see five different directors credited on episodes 19 and 20 (one director is the norm). That suggests some behind-the-scenes scrambling that may have finally caught up with the team this week, which has a noticeable uptick in off-model, stiff, or otherwise janky animation. It's possible they “sacrificed” this one for the sake of the previous two—and you can make a sound argument that the end and start of an arc are more important to get right than a lowkey chapter in the middle. At any rate, I'm hoping that's the case because the other option is that the production has been totally run ragged, which means this final stretch of episodes will only get more painful.

Alleviating some of that pain, though, is Kevin Penkin's soundtrack. It's taken me a while but I've fully come around to its potency, and right now, I think it can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Yuji Yoshino's music for the old series. The tavern scene is a great example. Penkin's composition bounces along with the drunken merriment of the candlelit tables. The arrangement feels diegetic like there could be a band of troubadours just offscreen. Given the returning voice actors and chief director, the music is probably the best new component of the new series.

The new arc is still enjoyable as well. By the end of the episode, Lawrence and Holo haven't learned anything about Yoitsu, but they believe they've learned enough other information to collect it from Elsa. The big picture resides in the relationship between Tereo and Enberch. Enberch is a bustling city propped up by the Church and Tereo is a small pagan town content with its serpentine heresies. While Father Franz fostered a trade agreement that kept their inter-municipal interactions icy yet stable, his death threw things into turmoil. Despite the tax breaks both sides enjoy, Enberch, by all accounts, wields greater influence and power, and if they wanted to subdue a pagan town in the name of the one true God, there's little stopping them. Franz, therefore, clearly knew something that kept them at bay, and the big question is whether that secret died with him.

Lawrence's description of the Church is analogous to the real-life Catholic Church of yore. As a lapsed Catholic myself, I relish any opportunity to put all of my years of elementary school religion class to some use, so you'll have to bear with me. The Vatican would audit miracles and saints along lines similar to what Lawrence describes. It too would construct large and lavish churches to function as its liturgical liaisons across Europe. And while I can't recall if the Catholic Church specifically taxed pagans in the manner Lawrence speaks of, it most certainly extorted the general population through donations, indulgences, and the like. In any case, the Church was an extraordinarily powerful economic force, and that informed its cultural sway as much as its teachings, if not more so. I think it's neat that Spice & Wolf takes these cues from the history of Christianity. Sure, most people (including me) will point to the romance or the economics as the series' true selling point, but grounded worldbuilding makes the whole much stronger.

That context also informs the uncertainty around Elsa. In not as many words, the townsfolk confirm that a young girl becoming a priest wouldn't exactly jive with Spice & Wolf's Church (women still aren't allowed to become Catholic priests either). Father Franz's standing in the Church might have allowed him some leeway with his interest in pagan beliefs but they wouldn't ever grant Elsa the same. Or that's how it looks from the outside, at any rate. The opening scene, however, introduces tavern owner Iima as another woman who buckles "traditional" notions of femininity, and she's a pillar of the community. There may yet be a path forward for Elsa and our heroes may be able to point her towards it.

I'm sorry I have to squeeze this in at the end, but I really, really love Holo and Lawrence's flirt sessions this week. They're especially spicy, too. I mean, you don't have to interpret Lawrence's talk of “eating” Holo as particularly ribald but I know that she reads it that way—as she should.

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.