Spice and Wolf began it’s life as a series of Light Novels written by Isuna Hasekura and illustrated by Jū Ayakura. The first volume won Silver Prize in Dengeki Annual Novel Contest.

story synopsis

Spice and Wolf’s story revolves around Craft Lawrence, a young traveling merchant, who dedicated his life to a dream of one day saving up enough money to open up his own shop. That is until he meets Horo; a 600 years old wolf deity, who for centuries blessed harvests of wheat in local village. Since she feels no longer needed by locals she decides to become Lawrence’s companion and they make a contract: she will help him in trading and he will help her on her journey to the North, a land where Horo’s folk live.

The story takes place in a fictional world resembling early Renaissance. It’s very well built and coherent. There a little fantasy elements there, but it actually helps to make the it more mysterious, because when something supernatural happens it really does make a huge impact.
The plot is surprisingly original. I don’t remember any anime about life of merchants. Lawerence is pretty low key trader, but in a interesting way. The show manages to make things like selling spices, taking loans, smuggling gold or currency exchange interesting. The added mysticism and inquisition who hunts beings like Horo spice things up to create engaging and fun to watch story.
The strength of the show are characters though, or particularly Horo (more on her later). She overshadows other characters, but on their own secondary characters are pretty well developed, with their own unique motivations and codes of conduct.
Lawrence at first seems a bit flat, but it natural: he is after all intimidated by presence of Wolf Deity. However as show progresses he grows a lot and becomes bolder (I guess he got used to Horo ) and even manages to stand on his own against her in arguing(the ending scene from last episode is simply priceless).
I really liked how relationship between Horo and Lawrence progressed. It’s built slowly and naturally. What’s more it manages to escape all those damn cliches that anime romances have (especially characters being clueless, Horo and Lawrence are many things, but they sure as hell aren’t clueless).
The animation isn’t anything to brag about, but shows is pretty to look at with very nice character designs, detailed backgrounds and great lighting.

Horo

Many faces of Horo the Wise
novel, manga, anime
Yes, she deserves separate section ^_^. Horo is just extraordinary character. She’s not two dimensional, she has layers upon layers of complexity in her. She’s completely unpredictable, one sentence from her might completely redefine your understanding of her and it often does. She’s witty, smart and with sense of humor and at the same time she escapes all the cliches that plague even the best anime characters. This forms an irresistible combination that is always fascinating to watch.
She is the star of the show, stealing and dominating every scene she’s in.
Horo is the main reason why most people follow the series.
After watching whole Spice and Wolf every other female character in anime seems bland, there’s just no comparison. Even likes of Haruhi must bow their heads before the Wise Wolf ^_^

I don’t know who created those gifs, but whoever you people are: you rock like hell !

Soundtrack

Spice and Wolf was blessed with great soundtrack. Aside from OP and ED songs all tracks are instrumental pieces that imitate historical music. Especially the numerous “happy” tracks sound like something taken straight from Renaissance carnival.
Highlights to me are the action packed Hashiru , the dramatic Henka and my personal favorite: the incredible Kagen no Tsuki, which with it’s slow guitar and gentle girl chanting sends chills into my spine every damn time I listen to it.
The music really helps this show a lot, I haven’t heard anime soundtrack this good in a very long time.

I must say I had a blast with the show. The unique premise and setting coupled with great characters and excellent music made it easily my favorite show so far in 2008. And it left me with only two problems that are frequent symptoms of finishing great anime series:

-I want my damn second season!!!
-I need to learn Japanese so I can read original novels!!!

Oh, well, at least I still have a DVD-only episode 7 to look forward to.

rating: 9.2/10

No, he didn’t. The question is: why ?

Apple= devil fruit! Look it up in the Bible! ^_^

Not going to share those devil fruits with anyone!

They don’t call her Horo the Wise for nothing

Popularity: 9% [?]