Review Rodeo: Spice and Wolf
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010At first I didn’t think the Tokyo Vice review was of interest but then it got a pretty good discussion for which I’m grateful.
Mini-blog: “The birds remind me of what remains.” I think Immolate Yourself is the last album Telefon Tel Aviv put out. I’m only familiar with “The Birds” but it’s a pretty good song. I AM GOING FOR A WALK!
Ok, I’m back from my walk. I took the trail to the town line road which, if you know Rochester, is one of the craziest areas around. Getting back to “The Birds” I wonder if any of it is somehow about the issues behind Cooper’s unfortunate od/suicide?
I love Spice and Wolf. I mean, I just love the show. And I’ll say it again if you don’t believe me.
There was a time, however, when I was fairly uninterested. Just from reading forums, I first found out about the concept of a “waifu” in the context of Spice and Wolf. A “waifu” is basically when someone, usually a lonely guy, declares in no uncertain terms a particular devotion to a female anime character, to the extent that it’s basically a husband and wife relationship. Many felt this way for Holo, (or Horo depending on the translation) the wolf deity from Spice and Wolf. I’d feel wrong casting judgment, but it made me hesitant about the show.
I don’t know at what point I had a change of heart. I think I was just bored one afternoon and noticed that there were some episodes streaming. Who can I thank for this because, as stated above, I ended up thinking Spice and Wolf is really rad?
Kraft Lawrence is a traveling merchant in a time evocative of late medieval Europe. Modern agriculture has basically put a harvest deity, Holo, out of work. Holo is a magical wolf but she can also take the form of an attractive young woman with ears and a tail. At the beginning of the story Lawrence purchases some very important wheat which leads to Holo inviting herself along on his travels. Their goal is to make enough money so that Lawrence can realize his dream of opening his own shop and to bring Holo to her homelands in the north. Along the way, we see how the transient lifestyle and the details of medieval economics nurtures a deep connection between one “Spice” and “Wolf.” “Spice” because, after a successful business venture, Lawrence asks for payment in pepper.
You can’t overstate the economic aspect of this show. I had this whole mathematical metaphor for Spice and Wolf that I wanted to explain with diagrams. Just look at this planetmath entry about short exact sequences. Think of ‘B’ as an entire pie, then think of ‘A’ as a single slice of pie that you take out and ‘C’ as the pie that’s left over after you take ‘A.’ In the parlance we say that ‘B’ extends ‘A’ and ‘C.’ If you give this some thought you might wonder if ‘B’ is the only way to extend ‘A’ and ‘C’. It depends on what sort of mathematical objects you are studying. There is always one way which is called the direct sum which I tend to think of as a way to blindly combine two things, by construction into one object. Anyway, I’m really going off the deep end, but what I wanted to say was that Spice and Wolf is like a direct sum. You take a kind of man and woman romantic story and put it next to a course in medieval economics. The point is that you don’t really change around the romance element, you add something to it.
Does that make sense?
Anyway, watch Spice and Wolf and you will come away with thoughts of coins, barter, market values, and credit and you won’t be disappointed.
Oh, and just for the record Spice and Wolf has a really great ED. The opening lyrics are pretty thought provoking.