Rating: B-
Whether you’re a newcomer to the franchise with this series or a long-established fan, this was always going to be the make-or-break episode for this adaptation’s first story arc: the point where Holo finally fully reveals her true form. Up until this point, the new adaptation has done a mostly-worthy job of matching the late 2000s version as it follows the same story beat-for-beat. This episode continues to succeed on the latter point, as absolutely nothing happens here that didn’t happen in the original’s episode 6. However, it falls woefully short on the former, enough so that even newcomers may be underwhelmed by what should be a very impactful episode.
I could point to a number of small contributing factors to this weak performance: the music is, at best, only mediocre at setting the tone (and vastly inferior to what’s used in the original for this whole episode), scene staging is more pedestrian, Lawrence isn’t convincingly enough scared of Holo’s true form, and Yarei just doesn’t carry quite the same impact in the appeal to Lawrence when they finally meet as Chloe did in the original adaptation. (The latter point may be controversial, but I stick by it.) However, the biggest culprit is one thing that has arguably been the newest adaptation’s biggest strength up to this point: the design of Holo. Her giant wolf form is so vastly less intimidating here – so almost cute, even – that I could not shake the impression of her just being a large pet dog. Compare that to her much fiercer look in the original, especially in the eyes:
The novel describes Holo’s true form as being inherently terrifying, well beyond her just being a massive wolf. Which screen shot more effectively conveys that?
Beyond that, the first 2/3 of the episode is the most action-oriented the series ever gets, with an extended chase sequence, Holo scaring off hunting dogs with a howl, and even some brief, decently-handled fight scenes. These sequences do convey effectively that with the amount of manpower Medio is devoting to hunting Lawrence and Holo (or, really, specifically Holo) down in the sewers, them getting cornered eventually was inevitable, which was why this was always a desperate gambit to begin with. But as both the incident and its aftermath show, the fatal flaw to cornering the two in the sewers is that Holo can use her true form without fear of revealing herself to the general public, and Lawrence’s show of loyalty in the face of deadly peril is all the impetus she needs to go through with it.
But this whole scenario would not be complete without the conversation between Lawrence and Richten afterwards. It wraps up the economic side of things as effectively as Holo’s transformation wrapped up the physical danger side, and the the play Richten relates to Lawrence is a nice little touch which guides the series directly towards the “spice” part of its title. (I also like the added touch of how the king essentially soaked Milone on transaction fees to minimize his losses. Some aspects of business don’t change even despite the passage of hundreds of years.) The reuniting of Lawrence and Holo at the end was just as effective here as it was in the original, with the implication that Holo sent off that invoice knowing well how Lawrence would react to it; she was essentially saying, “if you were serious, come get me.” A little more reflection by Yarei might have been nice in here, too, but that wasn’t in the original novel and I’m not sure there was any convenient place to put it anyway.
In all, this episode bring the adaptation of the first novel – and thus the series’ first story arc – to a conclusion that justifies the series’ title and is at least satisfying in plot and character development senses. It definitely falls short of achieving what it could have, though.
USA Anime 