Story: 9
I rated the story of this series 9 but... There is actually no story. The plot is about a medieval merchant, Craft Lawrence, who one night stumbles upon Holo The Wise Wolf. She seems to be a normal girl, despite having a "Wonderful Tail" and wolf years on her head, but she's actually a kind of goddess. Her will is to return to her homeland, to the north, and Lawrence is supposed to fulfill her wish. That's it, as far as the plot only is concerned.
What happens in the episodes then, you ask? In each and every episode we'll have Lawrence simply making his job. He's a travelling merchant, so he travels from town to town trying to make convenient deals and make profit. Be prepared to see a lot of PURE medieval economics.
So the "Story" if you want to call it like that, is divided in two big parts: the first one is the economics one, in which we simply follow Lawrence's deals; the second one is the relationship between the two protagonists, and that's the main event of the whole anime. But I will get to that later.
Art: 9
I'm not a huge expert as far as Art is concerned, but I can say that I liked pretty much everything in the show.
Sound: 9
The opening, Tabi No Tochuu, is by far the best one I've ever heard so far. The 1 minute and 20 seconds edit we hear in the show gives even more pathos than the original song, in my opinion, because such beginning with a soft piano and the beautiful voice of the then 18-year-old Kiyoura Natsumi is magical, mysterious and extraordinarily fitting with the atmosphere of the anime. I was literally chilled the first time I heard it and for the first time I was actually sad that an anime opening ended so fast. The ending is just funny.
The soundtrack of the anime itself is very very nice and it perfectly fits with the medieval setting of the show. There are no particular tracks to quote, but all of them are good.
Characters: 10
Here we go. This is the real reason why Spice And Wolf should be a MUST. As I said before, one whole half of the story focuses on the relationship of the two main characters Lawrence and Holo.
Lawrence is just a merchant. He's not any kind of "The Best Merchant Of The Lands!" or "A merchant of incomparable ability!" or some other epic guy who's gonna take over the world with his trades. No. He's a simple travelling merchant who simply does his job and lives like that. His job requires ability and luck as well. So if he's not good enough or lucky enough, he's gonna pay for that, and you WILL actually see him in desperate conditions, during the show.
He's an open person, who enjoys talking, exchanging information, he's quite the solar guy. He's just a little slow with women, which makes his relationship with Holo way more awkward than it should be, sometimes, and quite funny other times. His best quality, though, is his generosity. He doesn't turn down Holo's request of taking her back to the north, and he's even ready to put aside his own future goals for her sake.
But the shining gem of this show is Holo. She is, so far, the best character I've ever seen in anime, and with no doubts my favorite one. What about her?
As I said, she's some sort of Wolf-Goddess, but she introduces herself as "Just Holo, nothing more, nothing less". During the show we will see almost every kind of her personality. We will happen to see a teasing Holo, a drunk Holo, an apple-loving Holo, a funny Holo, an angry Holo or even a heartbreaking sad Holo. We will be surprised of how much human a WOLF-GODDESS is. We will notice how her immortality is an actual burden to her, and how sometimes she genuinely wishes to be mortal. The depth of this character will catch you in every possible way and as I said in the very beginning: the more you'll know about Holo, the more you'll WANT to know about her. There can be no filler episodes in Spice And Wolf, because whatever we know more about Holo, that's like gold to us.
I'll just make an example and share my own thought about Holo. There is a saying, that "People die only when they are forgotten". Holo is immortal, so in other words, she can't die. On the other hand, all the people she's met in her life were all mortals, and soon or later, they all died. But since Holo is alive and has memories of all of them, they still "aren't dead", as we refer to that saying... But is Holo really alive, having nobody to remember HER? The beautiful, cruel and very delicate contrast in this is that Holo, in some ways, isn't actually immortal, but she grants immortality to everyone she meets. She's really alive only for small periods of her life, and Spice And Wolf is set during one of them, while she's making room in Lawrence's memories.
Enjoyment: 9
This rating is an average of two other ratings, one for each half of the show. I rated 8 all the economics parts, since even though I didn't really understand everything, it was quite interesting to see how things worked back then, what is actually a travelling merchant and so on. I won't give more than 8 because I have to say it, in certain moments I really got bored and was tempted to skip parts of the episodes, which I fortunately didn't.
The other half, the relationship between the two protagonists, gets a 10/10 hands down. It's natural, you actually feel like you're with them, their third companion, and you are actually able to share their thoughts and feelings. I really loved to see how the two behaved during difficult or critical situations, as well as their psychological development. You'll always want to see more from them, even about their most stupid or less important aspects, such as drunk Holo.
Overall: 9
The show itself is awesome, and I really really loved it. It isn't a full 10/10 simply because of the whole economics half which is great, but if someone isn't specifically into it, it's hard to follow and it might lower the expectations of the show. So you should better avoid it if you aren't ready for a lot of talking about hard stuff. But if you love well-made romance, with really awesome characters, then I'm sure that all of the economics won't be a huge burden to bear.
