Disclaimer! since Spice and Wolf is my favorite anime, I won't be able to 100% remove my bias for S&W for the review so keep that in mind when reading my review. Also since this is my first one it may be bad. without any more delay, here I go.

Spice and Wolf is an adventure and romance anime about travelling merchant Lawrence Kraft and the goddess of harvest, Holo. Lawrence encounters her when he was passing through the town of Pasloe on some business, and the initial encounter between the pair intrigues Lawrence and then they set off on a journey to get Holo back to her homeland up north a town called Yoitsu.

That's my basic description of S&W and all I can say without spoiling anything else so the review past here will contain potential spoilers, so if you haven't watched it, I marked the spoilers with the spoiler tag so you can read this review without me spoiling anything for anyone

Recently I've been trying to "fully" review some of the seasonals I'm watching this season, and I asked myself, "why not apply it to my favorite anime?" and so I am going to do this here.

I will divide my review into four sections; plot, characters, setting, and story. Plot, characters, and setting are self-explanatory, but the way I will use story in this review is how the characters interact with the plot, setting and the other characters, so essentially it ties all three other categories into one which will be the deciding factor for the final score of my review because it's the most important factor of the four categories.

First I will talk about the plot, when it comes down to it, can be shortened to "guy and girl go on an adventure to somewhere special to one of them" but after taking a deeper look, the plot is a lot more complicated than it might seem. The plot attacks Lawrence's and Holo's whole personality down to it's core by showing you their strengths, weaknesses, and everything in between (more about this in the characters section) and it doesn't straight up tell you, that's one of the many things that make this anime so wonderful. Bottom line is that the plot of Spice and Wolf is so simple, yet so complex at the same time, meaning that it's an adventure anime, and the entire plot revolves around their relationship. This is going to be one of the weaker sections since the plot heavily ties into the characters,

Next I will talk about the characters and the significance of them.
One of the flaws of this anime is that the side characters are irrelevant, heck, even as my favorite anime, I still have trouble thinking of the names of most of the side characters in this anime apart from two or three, but the side-characters aren't the point of this anime and for that reason it makes this anime much more enjoyable / respectable. Getting deeper into the characters, When it comes to love triangles in anime, I absolutely HATE them, because 9 times out of 10, you're gonna see your favorite get 2nd place, and no one wants to see that, right? well since there's only two characters to worry about, you can tell exactly what they're feeling at any given time. Another thing I love about this anime is that (for me at least) I connected with the characters so much to the point that I could tell what they were thinking without them even saying anything, for example, I could tell that,

(spoiler here for Holo's and Lawrence's character traits / relationship, if you haven't watched it DON'T LOOK)

Third I will talk about the setting. Spice and Wolf takes place in medieval europe, and one doesn't even need to be told this, becuase they can just see for themselves and come to the same conclusion. From lush the forests, to the endless wheat fields that stretch out as far as the eye can see, to the rolling hills, to the golden sunset that catches your eye as you're walking down the streets of a town you're passing by, and some of the simpler things, like Lawrence and Holo lazily moving along in their horse drawn carriage, and at any given time when there are scenes on the carriage, it always seems like they're in a new place filled with all the amazing things this world has to offer.

Here are some examples of the scenery that I could find

(ik this one isn't directly from the anime but you get the picture)

so when it comes to scenery, i don't think there's another medieval anime that can top Spice and Wolf's amazing setting

Finally, I will be talking about the story and the conclusion from the four sections
from the plots and motivations that drive them forward, to the depth of their characters, to the beautiful scenery, Spice and Wolf never ceases to osttake my breath away every time I watch it and when all these categories combine, you get this masterpiece that literally anyone can enjoy. Even the ost is enough to make me feel exactly what I felt when I originally watched it. No seriously, listen to the soundtrack.

Season 1 OST

Spoiler, click to view

OP1 ▶ ED1 ▶ OST1 ▶

Season 2 OST

Spoiler, click to view

OP2 ▶ ED2 ▶ OST2 ▶

and with all the good, eventually comes to the bad. Time to talk about some of the flaws I found when watching this anime. The biggest one is that there's no season 3 to this masterpiece :( (edit: lol the 'biggest flaw' of no season 3 is no more, It was announced like a few months ago as of 5/9/22)

but on a real note the flaws I saw that may lead people off this anime is the slow pacing, and of course, like always, S&W has an excuse for that to maintain it's masterpiece status, the anime only covers Ln's 1-3 and 5, and there about 17 in the main series and 4 or 5 epilogue books, also the side characters

here's the summary for the lazy people

spice and wolf is a masterpiece, and despite it's flaws, they are outshadowed by the amount of depth in everything this anime has to offer.

Thanks for reading if you did