Hi there, following Andrew's suggestion, I will now be posting feedback threads for reviews, in this case "Spice and Wolf, season 1". Please post contructive criticisms, your own opinions, and indeed any issues raised by the anime.

That said, its its awful, please tell me

I remember reading this (and wanting to comment at the time). A fair review; I'd rate it more highly only because it sticks to what it does, and does that very well - you can't ask for a finer example of a economically-driven narrative!

I think it also works as a short series - a small book (or few volumes) you can tell it was made from stands out but not to the detriment of a cliffhanger ending or packing in a large cast or long-running plot - while the general ongoing travel is just that, ongoing, each mini-adventure is kept well paced and is, if you actually bother to follow it, very fun and interesting. I enjoy being made to think about something which, while adventurous to a degree (and somewhat magical with wolves) has a lot of logical sense behind it - especially the medieval style economics!

Thanks for the feedback.

Andrew wrote:

QUOTE:
I remember reading this (and wanting to comment at the time). A fair review; I'd rate it more highly only because it sticks to what it does, and does that very well - you can't ask for a finer example of a economically-driven narrative!

Fair point, though I would have liked to have another example of economically-driven narrative to compare it to. Writing reviews of animes with nothing to judge them against is tricky.

Rather weird, but enjoyable

The theme sometimes is inconsequential as long as it is understandable and makes sense.

But comparisons then; perhaps the use of the theme as a backdrop to Trading Places (gotta love the stock exchange sequence, if you can follow it!), or The Hudsucker Proxy being (somewhat!) about business - both off the top of my head. There's a fair few TV series and films that rely more on corporations/businesses/money to do plots.

Spice & Wolf tends to put it more to the forefront - except perhaps Trading Places, meaning the wordplay and conversations tend to be full of it but since it is pretty simple it acts as much as two people discussing any narrow theme. The comparison perhaps then could be widened to any source which took a specific thing and ran with it but also used it in the plots which make sense (ie; you'd not have a fashion designer just designing clothes to battle aliens...but would have them design clothes well to get ahead in life, etc.).

Not easy to find in Anime as much - generally it tends to action or comedy, meaning if it isn't talking about guns then it'd not fit my "narrow theme" definition, so I'll give you that!

However, one thing that reviewers tend to also abhor is unoriginality! (Don't you ever think "Oh no, it's clichéd and repetitive? urg!"?). It's ironic any reviewer complaining they don't have something to compare it to given that angle!

Heh, true, but too many times I have seen something declared as original and a masterpeice, when it is in reality not that original and/or flawed. Originality can also be a double edged sword, if something is too different people won't like it. As a reviewer, I know nothing is perfect, and not to acknowledge an issue with something would amount to an ommission. I try very hard to maintain a balanced opinion when writing a review, (or if I can't, I say so,) and in Spice and Wolf's case, this was actually tricky because it was so different.

Whew, back from Paris.

Well, people as a group can be surprising. Popularity is just that, something having a large mass appeal; and familiarity is the watchword when it comes to big things, especially since film and TV are typically hard to create to a high standard so sequels and so forth currently are safer bets.

Slowly it is improving mind you; accessibility is an issue so even lower key films (which may be surprisingly popular) get bigger releases over just arthouse cinemas, and TV shows get their iPlayer downloads made available so popularity of poorly-timed shows increases. Without getting access to the more original titles, it is hard to judge how much people like them - after all is my statement above just a self-fulfilling prophecy? That they get money from sequels because they create them incessantly?

(In fact me being cynical and actually based on mucho data, it is mainly marketing which determines box office results, and for TV a mixture of marketing and slot timing - ie; people always watch TV at a certain peak time so things on then are, well, popular! again...self fulfilling prophecy and all that. Anime and other more foreign or low key things never reach the peak of "common popularity" I think to have this be in effect though - ie; marketing is non-existent, and accessibility is an issue).

Of course poor critics, reviewers and others just declare things as original without really checking (I am sure even simple searching the internet for things based off Romeo and Juliet you'd find this!). That can be another issue of course