The positives firstly. Animation is consistently good. Not mind blowing, but rarely sloppy. Action sequences are particularly great (just a pity there so few action sequences in WR). Yoko Kanno's music is, as always, gorgeous. In particular the opening and closing songs 'Stray' and 'Gravity" are moving and gorgeous little tunes. Another positive is the camerarderie oif the 4 main characters, the 'wolf pack'. We really develop a bond with them on their journey.
Now, what i didn't enjoy. The story gets points for originality. But honestly, it's a bit of a mess. Essentially 4 wolves meet up and join together to search for this place called Paradise, which is never really explained but apparently it's really important that they travel across the world to find it, but to do so they need some girl called Cheza (who is actually a flower or something in human form) to gain access to it. But bad guys are after Cheza, as they want to find Paradise too. Thats about a simpe as i can describe it but trust me it gets very convoluted. Not to mention the story does DRAG quite a bit. I think it easily could have been a 13 ep series. Oh yeah, and they also decided to insert 4 flashback (i.e.filler) eps in the middle for God knows what reason.
The ending too, i really thought was pretty lazy. It didn't satisfy me at all, and i couldnt help but have a "so what the hell was the point of all that???" feeling when all was said and done.
So should invest your precious time into watching 30 eps of Wolf's Rain? My answer would be YES! But followed by a strong BUT....
