Rating: B+
Last episode ended with Lawrence seemingly in deep trouble, though this time viewers don’t have to rely on meta knowledge to know that the worst for Lawrence is now past; with Holo around, humans are a much bigger threat to Lawrence than wolves. The irony here is that, while those humans find out that there are consequences for getting squeamish about directly killing Lawrence, they at least aren’t fatal consequences because they didn’t kill him. (Holo’s rage would have known no bounds if Lawrence had died.)
Holo taking on full wolf form here was to be expected, since this is the same pattern and almost the exact same timing as in the first arc. Logically speaking, it’s also the only real way to resolve the problem of Remerio’s betrayal. That being said, this isn’t a deus ex machina ploy because Holo alone cannot resolve the issue; she’s just the muscle here. Lawrence is the one with the understanding to figure out how to best play the circumstances, including how Liebert was being deceptive about how much gold he had actually obtained. He also has a keen enough understanding of how both business and humans work to know that the best way to get back at Remerio is not to force them into bankruptcy, but instead to force them to continue paying out as they recover, and guarantee it by selling the rights to the payout to the merchant association that Lawrence is aligned with. And, of course, he’s also the one who has to sweet-talk Nora into going along with it.
That Lawrence isn’t blindly trusting Nora here is also significant. He has no reason to believe that Nora would betray them; she doesn’t seem the type, is too naïve, has essentially befriended both Lawrence and Holo (even if Holo is still miffed by the whole shepherdess thing), and was put in the position to make the choice for herself. Despite that, he clearly considered that he has Holo’s ability to chase her down as a back-up plan if Nora flees. Nora, for her part, shows again that she’s far from helpless. She and Enek stand their ground even in the face of how intimidating Holo can be, but she was also sharp enough at a key point to recognize that the giant wolf wasn’t after her or her sheep and so hold Enek back. She didn’t seem fazed for long upon learning about Holo’s true identity, either; doubtless she suspected that something wasn’t right after the wolf chase the previous episode.
For all the big, dramatic elements in this episode, though, the little details are still what I enjoyed the most. The way Holo chose to peacefully resolve the confrontation with the giant wolf, Lawrence taking a clue that Holo was fishing for compliments after undressing (and that going for the tail would probably work best), that Holo is most hung up about whether Lawrence was calling her name or Nora’s name at a key moment, and the way Lawrence strings her along – all of these were delightful little details. I do wonder how Lawrence managed to get Remerio tied up like that, but hey, I can let that detail pass with how well the rest of it was handled. On the downside, the episode suffers from the same problem that episode 6 did: Holo’s wolf form is too cute to be sufficiently intimidating, and all of the dramatic staging with the thunderstorm and the music cannot fully overcome that. (That the sheep don’t seem to be reacting to Holo’s presence also seemed incongruous.) That is the main reason why I cannot rate this episode higher, although many of Holo’s movements in wolf form didn’t look fully natural, either. The direction seems to be struggling here to figure out how to best portray both Holo, and Enek; the latter looked disproportionately small in a couple of shots.
That the original adaptation handles all of this better isn’t the only noteworthy comparison here. The original adaptation left the fact that Holo had knelt before the great wolf more implied than shown and had the conversation about Holo still hating shepherds as they were running instead of before. The original also made it much clearer that most of Lawrence’s conversation at the end involving which name he said was him teasing Holo (and Holo’s reaction to it was more comical) and explained better how Lawrence knew where Remerio’s lockbox was hidden, while this version more clearly shows how beat up Lawrence was and leans into the fan service in one scene just a touch more. The biggest difference, though, is that the two adaptations may start in the same place and cover the same ground, but they don’t end in the same place. In the original, episode 13 was the season finale, and so ended with Lawrence/Holo and Nora parting ways. This adaptation is also going to an episode 13 for its first cour, and the episode title strongly suggests that it will be the content originally released as “Wolf and the Amber-colored Melancholy,” an OVA episode which takes place between novels 2 and 3 and effectively serves as an epilogue to this arc (though it was originally used as episode 0 for season 2).
In other words, that means one more episode review is forthcoming for this cour, so join me here again next week.
USA Anime 