You can buy meetings, but you can't choose their quality. Words of marketing brilliance that ring no matter your profession. So when a fateful encounter with another person occurs, not matter the barter cost, it's one to be treasured.
Spice and Wolf seems to run parallel story lines of business and romance that both fall under a slice of life category. Countless times the two sides cross paths but almost always come out bad for business. With the second season playing out more casually than the first, it was almost a disappointment that they both ended the same way but under different circumstances. The first season could not have been played out better while the second season lacked the same thrill.
The art is that of a typical pre industrial revolutionary anime setting with a strong European style influence. It makes for much beautiful scenery but at the same time can instantly make for an ominous, back water town, style in the quick turn of a corner. Lighting effects are used to a great extent to add a certain feel to many scenes and really do add to the over all environment on both a small scale conversation, to the larger scale environmental setting of a town or city.
While scenery music is used a lot throughout both seasons, it was far more predominant in the first than the latter season as everything from a thick, tense atmosphere to a cheerful humor scene had an addition of music where as the second season still had it, but far less for the latter, which made for more bleak humor.
As far as character development goes, both seasons played separate parts. The first playing more of an introduction to the main hero and heroine and their early journey, while the second season was far more focused on the relationship of the two. We learn very little about the past of either main character, but it seemed to be irrelevant as what is learnt is deemed sufficient as their past is something their past is not something of an easy topic for either of them.
Enjoyment is where the story story lines come back into the fray. In both business tactics and as a romance anime, many will find great amusement out of Spice and Wolf as their wits are sharp about their marketing but their intimacy is something that is forever growing but always poked at. Humor on both accounts is strongly present in the first season while in the second its more on the marketing side while the relations of the two take a more serious turn, for better or for worse.
