- Two sharply contrasting main characters make for charming banter.
- Includes an interesting exploration of medieval economics (and economic theory in general) as part of its plotting.
- Details about economics can drag a bit for those not interested in the subject.
- Ends inconclusively, as a second season has been released as well.
- Director: Takeo Takahashi
- Animation Studio: IMAGIN
- Released By: Kadokawa Pictures
- Released Domestically By: FUNimation Entertainment
- Audio: English / Japanese w/English subtitles
- Age Rating: TV-14 (partial nudity, mature themes)
- List Price: $49.98 (Blu-ray)
Anime Genres:
- Drama
- Fantasy
Related Titles:
The merchant and the wolf
Life is an endless bustle of traveling, hustling, buying and selling for Kraft Lawrence. He’s a wandering merchant, peddling various wares in a land that’s reminiscent of medieval Europe, going between a whole farrago of different kingdoms and fiefdoms, dealing with their varied (and variegated) currencies. Someday he’ll have enough money to open his own shop, but he has a long way to go before that’s a possibility.
At one of his stopovers, the town of Pasloe, he finds himself with an unexpected passenger in his cart. Her name is Holo, and she is a wolf—rather, a wolf-deity. For centuries she was the town’s goddess of the harvest, giving or taking as her whim suited her, but in time humanity found ways to more consistently coax wheat from the earth without having to propitiate her. Man, it seems, no longer needs her—and she, in turn, no longer needs them. She now has it in her head that she’s better off returning to her homeland in the north, and she also decides Lawrence is the one to take her there.
Lawrence is nonplussed, to say the least. He’s a merchant, not a tour guide or a bodyguard, and he’s especially surprised by the idea of toting around a goddess who’s taken human form. Well, almost human form—there’s still the matter of her rather prodigious tail and fox’s ears, both of which are dead giveaways to anyone even casually glancing at her that she’s … something special. She also has the power to discern lies, and after drinking a little blood she can transform into a full-blown wolf form that’s big enough to gobble a human being whole.
An unexpected business partner
Holo’s supernatural aspects are not nearly as immediately troubling to Lawrence as her general demeanor. She’s haughty, touchy, proud, and cheerfully in thrall to her own appetites. She’ll wolf down (pun intended) a bushel of apples without blinking. Lawrence’s normally easy-going nature is sorely tested by her presence, but he learns in time how to handle her, and how to make her whims work in their favor instead of against them. They make a fun team to watch, not least of all because it’s never guaranteed in any one moment which of them will have the upper hand. The show wisely does not use Holo’s powers as a get-out-of-jail-free card: they’re forced to rely on their own mortal resources the vast majority of the time.
Lawrence and Holo experience both success and failure in their joint business ventures. The failure is at least as important. At one point Lawrence picks up a cache of weapons as a quick moneymaking deal, only to learn he’s been gypped: the price of such arms has crashed, and they’re worthless except maybe as scrap metal. He’s forced to come up with an enormous amount of money in two days, and the only plan he can come up with involves using a naïve young shepherd to smuggle gold in her flock of sheep. How that plays out I won’t say here, but it becomes a key point of character for both of them: it shows how each is willing to grit their teeth and do potentially wretched things for the sake of their survival.
At least one of the show’s themes is how the modern age of science and commerce is displacing the old world of faith. Money has become the new god of this world, one at least as capricious and brutal as any of the old, and the irony of this is not lost on the heroes. Among the enemies they face is a church which has plenty of political muscle and no love of pagan gods, and there is a grim moment when Lawrence discovers that a girl he was fond of is prepared to turn Holo over to the church to further her own ends.
