stats
also known as: ookami to kyoshinryou
# eps: 12, jan 2008 – mar 2008
anidb rating: 8.46 (547 votes)
my rating: 8.50
thoughts
interesting setting, interesting characters, interesting economic facts.. but as it was all crammed into 12 (13 only when the ova is released) episodes, i do rue its wasted potential. i felt that this anime would have been much more enjoyable as a 26-episode series, as i wasn’t satisfied with the lecture on medieval economics 101 – it was way too rushed – and i wanted to see more of the chemistry between horo and lawrence.
now that i’ve watched the anime, i think i understand why people from all over the anime blogosphere loved horo!
she’s cute (a fact which she keeps reminding lawrence about), she’s much wiser than she looks (for obvious reasons =P), she’s playful, she’s very sly when it comes to doing business, but yet there’s this vulnerable side to her is just so.. moe. lawrence’s one hell of a lucky guy!
the small cast of characters is, i feel, a blessing in disguise – that just means horo has more screen time! partly why i’m able to watch the episodes in rapid succession was because i liked the jibes hurled between the two main characters. this is especially true in the last episode, where lawrence shouted horo’s name when the bell was ringing. comedy at its best!
what would have made this anime better was if they made more effort to explain the economics better. i finished the anime understanding some of the concepts of medieval trading, but most of it was lost on me. thank goodness i managed to find a great blog post (many thanks to the guy who wrote it!) which explained the economic principle behind lawrence’s plea to milone trading to hoard more torreny coins.
sigh. if i lived in those times, i bet i’d be as broke as i am now =P
in conclusion – yes, this anime is a good watch going by the strength of the cast alone, but you better be wide awake if you want to understand the economics behind the show.
oh one more thing – the singer’s pronunciation of words in the ED song is horrendous. no offence intended, but wouldn’t the song be nicer if sung by someone fluent in the language?
ps biological musing-of-the-day: realistically speaking, if there were wolves of horo’s transformed size, they’d be really sluggish as they would have a very low metabolic rate (similar to why elephants are generally sluggish while mice are generally frisky). that means travelling on horo’s back would take far longer than it should, which means nora would have been betrayed, which means.. sorry, i digress.
