Ookami to Koushinryou
Spice & Wolf

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Spice and Wolf is a romance manga with touches of drama with power dynamics and intrigue, but let's break it down.

The central characters are Lawrence accompanying Horo in search of his homeland, both protagonists are very charismatic and with a chemistry that makes the romance engaging. In that sense, see how their relationship blossoms along the journey and how one influence on the other is not only fun but rewarding.

The story is surprisingly cool, focused on being an adventure where to find the location of the land of Horo they need to investigate manuscripts and collect information. However, knowledge has power and especially value for ... merchants who hold the documents, so Lawrence often ends up being swallowed up by the commercial dispute that is taking place between those who have the material in possession.
In this sense, it's really cool to see how the conflicts are constructed, being more strategic than really physical, where the antagonists have a great presence and malice that makes the protagonists feel pressure in a suffocating way.... However, unfortunately the author doesn't close as much well the conflicts in the same way that it builds them so it is very common the plot has an ending that borders on the innocent and easy.

The characters in the manga are one of its greatest qualities, it's a power game so the enemy at the beginning can become an ally along the way and that's good because it conveys the human complexity that the merchant profession requires. This is even why simplistic endings weigh heavily at the end of arcs, because the author is very careful in passing characters off as something more human to end up as something shallow.

The art is pretty average, there are moments where it can take pages to be mesmerized and impressive. However, in general, it is more common to be weak in passing movement and expression.

Ultimately, Spice and Wolf is an enjoyable novel with engaging arcs and, unfortunately, a simple ending. Having an average art that rarely delivers anything of impact, at least it has its perfect ending for those looking for a good romance.

I start this review by saying that spice and wolf is, for me, one of the few Japanese works that can uniquely describe a medieval / fantasy world, implementing slice of life facets to a solid and interesting story.

Moreover, unlike many lovers of spice and wolf, I believe that the manga is a work that has nothing to envy to the anime and the light novel, since it presents the engaging story of spice and wolf, adding however the fantastic drawings of koume sensei, which give peculiar details to Holo (in particular), and make Lawrence a character who demonstrates many more emotions.

Now I ... finish giving my personal judgments and list the reasons why I highly recommend reading spice and wolf to lovers of the genre, or to those who know this work but are reluctant to read the manga transposition.

Story (8,5/10)

The story follows the travels of Holo and Lawrence, respectively a divine wolf, who would like to return to his native land after a long stay in the village of Pasloe, where she is no longer respected by the inhabitants; and a merchant, who would like to open his own business and stop wandering, settling in one place and staying there for life. The story of the manga sometimes differs from that of the light novel, as it ended first, and the light novel still continues. However, in any case, the adaptation of sensei Koume is still enjoyable, sometimes it presents very long dialogues, but they're are very well chosen, and make perfectly understand the problems and adventures that gravitate around the economy.

Characters (8,5/10)

Characters are one of the strengths of spice and wolf. The imagination and effort put into creating main characters like Lawrence and Holo are remarkable. Moreover, even the secondary characters are very interesting and unique in their own way. The characters fit perfectly into the story, and never feel boring or underdeveloped. Indeed, in each narrative arc it is possible to discover interesting secondary characters useful for the resolution of the specific economic problem, who come into contact with Lawrence and Holo (who always find themselves in the midst of events and must resolve conflicts between cities or commercial companies). Sometimes these characters help the protagonists and sometimes they get in the way, but they are never bland or badly characterized.

Art style (9/10)

The art style of sensei Koume is elaborate, but at the same time it almost seems like a sketch at times. The expressions of Holo are priceless, as are the rural and medieval landscapes that are drawn by the sensei. Koume was really the right mangaka to draw this genre of manga, even if most of his works are h-manga, I must say that he is really talented and I would be happy if he could also adapt other works like spice and wolf.

Enjoyment (9,5/10)
In this section there is not much to say ... The manga is relaxing from start to finish, and its medieval atmosphere makes it even more enjoyable. Moreover, the alternation of serious and happy moments, with the continuous and inevitable company of the divine Holo (best waifu) make it one of my favorites.

Overall (9)

To finish this review, I recommend you to also read the original source and watch the anime, as they are worth all the time and money you will invest in watching / reading them.

tl;dr: A manga adaptation that has some weaknesses, but is overall a very good blend of romance and economics.

This manga is an adaptation of a light novel that was also adapted into a pretty popular anime. It is primarily centered around two core aspects. The first core aspect is the story of Holo and Lawrence, their relationship and their growth. It's an incredibly slow burn romance. A lot of their interactions stem from them both constantly teasing each other, with Holo generally being the one to start things off, but they're both also very cool headed and able to respond well to such teasing, and ... thus it's like something of a game between the two. There's some very subtle shifting in this which shows their relationship progress, but it's really subtle and thus overall, the relationship does feel quite slow. There are moments in the story that break from this and have more intense and honest moments, but for the relationship buildup things are very rarely explicit.

They do eventually properly become honest with each other and their relationship fully clicks, but that felt like it was a bit weak in that the transition wasn't handled that intensely or with enough impact, even though their relationship did clearly change afterwards. Them properly in a relationship was handled quite well too, where they properly consider together various things like what's most important to them and what they want to do and how that's changed from how things were before. Though it felt like there was a lot that was touched upon but not discussed in that much depth, such as Holo's immortality. This aspect also ended incredibly well with a pretty lengthy epilogue dedicated entirely just to it that finished off the manga perfectly, though I believe the novels continued past this and are still continuing.

The second core aspect is the various economic schemes and such that Lawrence gets involved with. I'm certainly not an economist, and know pretty much nothing about medieval economics, but what was shown and described felt pretty believable and consistent. The schemes themselves felt pretty well thought out and told pretty well in that they had good pacing with twists that worked well. Still, it did feel like it wasn't explaining things in that much depth. This was fine for most of the schemes, because they weren't too complicated, but the last couple were on another level and felt like they definitely could have used more explaining because I had to think about parts of them quite a bit, rereading portions in the process, in order to understand them and certain parts still don't completely make sense to me.

These schemes are episodic, in that very little from earlier ones affect later ones. I should note thought, that it is very clear that parts were definitely skipped, and that felt a bit jarring at times. All but the last episode also have very little to do with Lawrence or Holo personally, but rather are them simply being involved in situations where they may make or lose a lot of money. There are pretty solid stories behind each of these schemes, and the side characters that are involved with them are pretty decently fleshed out as side characters, though only to the level of side characters. Still, their relationship with Lawrence and Holo, and just as importantly their effect on the relationship between Lawrence and Holo, was substantial and well worth reading. Each of these episodes is self contained and has a pretty solid ending in their own right, but the ending of the manga overall does a good job of bringing them all together in that it doesn't involve any sort of scheme of it's own but it does bring everyone from all the episodes together which is a great way to end things as it makes the impactful ending focused on Holo and Lawrence even more impactful.

The art was decent, in that it could definitely be good at times, and consistently was with covers and full page illustrations as well as in both the beginning the end, but for the most part it didn't feel like it was trying all that hard and though there were panels that stood out, for the most part it looked kind of dull.