Rating: B+
Of all of the story arcs in Spice and Wolf, this arc is maybe my least favorite, and the content covered by this episode is a big part of the reason why. Some would say that it’s because of Amati, who’s one of the least-liked of all of the guest characters in the franchise and one who never appears (or I believe is even mentioned) again in either core content or side stories. He’s not the problem, though. He’s a young man who’s been successful enough early enough that it’s gone a bit to his head, but as this episode makes clear, his success is also self-made. He was clearly lovestruck at first sight with Holo and is too inexperienced with crafty women to avoid being taken in by her BS. Hence, even though his bold merchant’s challenge to Lawrence contributes to the mounting emotional crisis between Lawrence and Holo, and he certainly is seeking to split the two, he’s not doing so with malicious intent and he’s hardly the cause of the protagonists’ mess. No, that blame squarely lies elsewhere.
And you don’t have to look far for the source, either. In the past two arcs, Lawrence getting in over his head on a financial matter was the source of the crisis, but in this case financial considerations aren’t even a factor. No, this one is all about emotions, and Holo deserves most of the blame. We’ve seen before that, for all of her confidence, Holo can also be very emotionally fragile, especially about the possibility of being alone. In this arc, that first showed with her reaction to Lawrence’s question about whether she could get back home from Nyohirra on her own, and while the two had seemed to recover from that incident, this episode shows that Holo hadn’t forgotten it at all. Combine that with how upset she was about learning that Yoitsu had, according to legend, been destroyed and a clever mind kicking into overdrive and Holo coming to the conclusion that Lawrence was maliciously keeping that information from her is understandable. It’s also enormously unfair to Lawrence, as she’s known him long enough at this point to know that he wouldn’t do something that mean and that he has gone well out of his way for her. And she was the one who spun those lies to Amati about her relationship to Lawrence, too, which egged him into making his challenge. She’s also apparently been lying about being able to read, for no better reason than perhaps being lazy.
If Lawrence has any fault in this, it’s that he wasn’t immediately forthcoming to Holo about what he’d heard about Yoitsu. Even so, him withholding saying anything until he could look into the matter more – and be sure that he had heard an offhand story right – is also perfectly reasonable and understandable. He also had enough sense to recognize that taking up Holo on her offer when she was almost literally throwing herself at him was both not the kind of comfort she needed and, in the long run, the worst thing he could possibly do. He did try to physically comfort her in other ways, too, but she wouldn’t let him. Really, I’m not sure what else Lawrence could have done in this situation.
All of this overshadows some neat scenes in the middle showing the festival, including especially the scene of Lawrence and Holo briefly dancing on their room’s balcony as the parade passes. The arc’s main economic issue also get laid out: fad-driven speculation on what is essentially a collectible item (i.e., pyrite stones). Is it a coincidence that an arc where the female lead is driving the crisis also features an economic issue which seems to be driven largely by women, too?
Except for the brief dance on the balcony, this episode covers exactly the same content as episode 3 of season 2 of the original adaptation. Technical merits in this one are decisively better and more stable, though which musical score works better comes down to a matter of personal preference.
Will Holo actually run off to Amati, or will she calm down first? And is there anything Lawrence can do here to smooth things out? We’ll see next episode.
USA Anime 