Spice and Wolf

[Kawe / Dave]

Been watching my way through this. The IMDB page on it is incredibly light on content, so wikipedia is a bit better.

Spice and Wolf's story revolves around Craft Lawrence, a twenty-five-year-old peddler traveling from town to town buying and selling various things to make a living in a stylized historical setting with European influences.[6] His main goal in life is to gather enough money to start his own shop, and he already has been traveling for seven years while gaining experience in the trade. One night when stopped at the town of Pasroe, he finds in his wagon a pagan wolf-deity girl named Horo who is over six hundred years old. She appears to be a fifteen-year-old girl, except for a wolf's tail and ears. She introduces herself as the town's goddess of harvest, who has kept it blessed with good harvests of wheat for many years. Despite having the responsibility to watch over the town, she wants to go back to her homeland in the north called Yoitsu; she believes the people have already forsaken her and that she has kept her promise to maintain the good harvests. Horo wants also to travel to see how the world has changed while she has remained in one place for years. She manages to bargain her way out of the village by making a deal with Lawrence to take her with him. As they travel, her wisdom helps increase his profits, but at the same time, her true nature draws unwanted attention from the church. Throughout the novels, the two slowly fall in love.

The series has been called a "unique fantasy" by Mainichi Shimbun due to the plot focusing on economics, trade, and peddling rather than the typical staples of fantasy such as swords and magic.

It's currently only 13 + 1 episodes long (think the second series is still in production/one episode out - the most recent episode on zomganime is listed as 'Spice and Wolf 2 OVA'; I suspect this is the first episode of the second series). [EDIT** The 'Spice and Wolf 2 OVA' is infact episode 0 of the second series, an episode that will not be aired as part of the second series but which starts it off. I think it is on a dvd of some kind]. The artwork is very nice, the quality of animation is high, and the characters bounce off one another rather well. The parts that focus on the trading and economics (not today's kind... medieval setting after all) are interesting and a definite change of pace to a lot of fiction.

You can watch it streaming here:
http://www.zomganime.com/search/spice+and+wolf

A demonoid torrent link for episodes 1-13 (nice high quality! The artwork is pretty enough to warrant this. The blu-ray version, if you can find it, is better again).
http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1537383/14034288/

There is also a torrent at TPB, however it is missing episode 7 (no idea why).

So, there you have it. I will say if you're after action and fighting, you probably want to look elsewhere.

[Grishnag]

as far as i remember episode 7 was a dvd release only episode... allthough that doesnt matter all that much nowadays

[Sparrowhawk]

Just finished watching this. Have to say I really enjoyed watching the series.. something different from the "usual anime". Also season 2 will start airing in few weeks!!