The first season of Spice and Wolf introduced us to a memorable pair of characters through an unusual premise: a walking tour of the economy of a medieval society. Based on the light novels of the same name, the adventures of merchant Kraft Lawrence and the wolf-goddess Holo made for an intriguing and off-beat show.
Now comes the second season, where Lawrence and Holo glean that many more details about Holo's village of origin and finds themselves tempted on all sides by unanticipated possibilities.
There's a lot I liked about the first part of the show, which I'd been aware of long before it had been brought to the U.S. by FUNimation. It revolved around character rather than plot -- or rather, it let the characters drive the plotting to a strong degree instead of the other way around. And it used its setting to impart technical information about a subject -- something you see often in Japanese popular culture (e.g., the various manga about cooking or sports), although there don't tend to be quite as many anime in this same vein as there are other media.
With the second half, my main concerns were whether or not the show would simply repeat the same beats as before, or find new things to explore. So read the review of the second season of Spice and Wolf, and see for yourself how it stacks up.
Image: Spice & Wolf Season Two. Image courtesy Pricegrabber.
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