I’m a bit late getting this post up. Over the weekend I managed to catch coldzilla, and had to entertain siblings while they crashed here for a couple days which happens once or twice a month. So I didn’t have much time to get on here… well I did yesterday but despite the cold backing off in the goo and coughing departments just being alive made my head hurt. -_-; Anyway on to things people actually care about.
Today the apples finally come into play. I mean from the ED theme song of course… Now this marks a first for this show, Horo isn’t nekkid at all during the whole episode. She eats apples, acts moe, slaps Lawrence, learns about money… gets hit on by Lawrence’s friend and massively rips off a merchant. Which is balanced out I suppose by Lawrence getting only slightly ripped off by his acquaintance from an episode back. Again Spice and Wolf does play pretty realistically with the 3-D world… since there was a point in time when places had a bajillion forms of currency of their own in addition to stuff from other places. Used to be every bank had it’s own… So yeah… Lawrence is intentionally mean to Horo when he notices her interest in the apples… he makes her ask for them… and he waited because it amused him to have something someone else wanted… Which sounds all kinds of strange when I word it like that. She gets him back though by not letting him have any of them. Good job Horo.
Later on we meet one of Lawrence’s friends who’s a money changer. Give him x these and get y other things, simple job that disappeared when banks got greedier. Before that you could make a living breaking 20’s for people… a little exaggerated but that’s the gist of it. So anyway yeah… he hits on Horo Lawrence gets upset Horo is amused. But lo and behold the silver in those coins is going down not up… so their information was wtrong and Lawrence realizes he got grifted by some kid using a con he already knew. Which just makes it worse I suppose… so now they’re off to see the merchant Horo ripped off with her super strong martin pelts that smell like fruit’ and they only smelled like fruit because of the apples she’d bought a little while before selling the pelts… she also ate all the apples in that time frame and there were a *lot* of apples… So… the episode ends… and leaves us waiting for the next episode and then the long awaited February Third when the OP-ED Single is supposed to come out.
Well, just got through the second episode of this and I think I’m going to like it. So far there’s been no real conflict or violence aside from a flashback that involved some wolves attacking Lawrence and his buddies from back in the day. I still like the ED theme in all it’s engrish glory as well.
Lawrence and Horo encounter a rainstorm, Horo catches fleas, they lie to a priest… Pretend to be married… make a potential business opportunity in a vineyard owner and run into some other merchant who sports the same style beard as Lawrence. Oh right, Horo makes a suggestion about his beard as well. She also talks awesome. In case you can’t tell Horo talks old school japanese. If it were english she’d be talking like a King James bible… Her moe factor really comes out in this episode. Episode one she was nekkid 90% of the time… but now she’s moe. Choking on potatoes… treating Lawrence like a kid. Comments about wolves eating peoples heads to absorb their knowledge… She even goes so far as to imply that she’s eaten people a few times as well… and not in a good way. I sense a potential love triangle on the way since… whatever her name was from episode one obviously likes Lawrence and he keeps showing signs of liking Horo… and well the fact that the other girls not so little anymore not lost on him. the only hard to imagine part at the moment is Horo falling in love with Lawrence. There’s the obvious age gap… she’s a few hundred years old after all… but yes she’s moe… especially while she explains that she and potatoes have never gotten along. Oh… she’s a lie detector too…. seriously she can differentiate between lies and the truth fairly accurately. I assume it has to do with a wolf’s sense of hearing and smell.
The only thing I don’t really like is the monsterization of wolves. I know it fits to the time periods views but still they’ve got them on there as these outright savage things that are intent on chasing you down and eating you… Even goes so far as to have a pack of them do so in Lawrence’s flashback. Now it’s true that sometimes wolves did attack people, but rarely in packs and usually when they were starved… or rabid. No ‘eating’ jokes? I surprise even myself sometimes.
I fully intend to cover three separate shows in this post.
Rosario + Vampire
(Rosario and Vampire)
I had no idea what was going to happen with this show. Someo one I talk to on a forum a lot said that I should watch this as it would ‘restore my faith in Area Eleven’. I’d been wondering what happened to their spine since they censored Kodomo no Jikan and well Spice and Wolf is ‘censored’ but not the same degree. I’ll agree that it did asI have a screen shot I decided not to post because of what it could be mistaken for. that said here’s the one’s I’m going to show you.
In case you can’t tell she’s biting him… she’s a vampire after all. Complete with cute biting sound effect. This show is just, whoa. The base storyline through episode one is our hero Aono Tsukune flunked school or he’d been sent to an all boys school. I’m a little vague on that deal as his mother says one thing but the flashback says another. ether way his father, who is very drunk, whips out a school application that some priest dropped. To make the rest of the story a little shorter he winds up at a bus stop that’s dressed liek a scare crow overlooking a lake of what appears to be blood. Enter Akashiya Moka, our pink haired vampire. She runs into him, literally, on her bike, okay more like with her bike. He winds up bleeding and she goes chomp… then apologizes. The school he’s to be attending now is a school for monsters, as if the name Youkai High school didn’t give that away. So he’s in serious trouble and the vampire performs a panty shot every fourteen second… and well it just improves from there without going for the outright nudity. He’ll be okay for a while though since the students are learning to blend with humans, as such they have to stay in human form and aren’t allowed to tell each other what their true form is. Of course there’s always some orcish brute who doesn’t give a frak about the rules. Oddly enough she refers to herself as a vampire instead of kyuuketsuki…
Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
(Goodbye Mr. Despair Extreme)
Season two of Zetsubou Sensei, just as whacked out as season one. Just as dark, just as hilarious. The beginning starts a good five minutes before the new OP, which is great. (rumba rumba rumba) It has absolutely nothing to do with anything though. In case you get worried they started some new storyline or something.
the actual episode starts with the only normal student in the class trying to force some sort of problem on herself so she fits in. Or more to the point, everyone worries about her. There’s a great joke involving her and Kiri Komori the (cute) hikikomori and Nami the normal girl. The show’s full of name jokes, and for people new to the series the version I picked up has a nice explanation tagged to the end of it. Anyway Komori never leaves and Nami is supposedly always truant, thus a meeting that never should have happened takes place. As per usual the posters around the room (and the chalkboard) are full of random information that changes every shot… nothing important so don’t worry about your plain imploding while you try to read ap age about fuzzy logic.
One to go.
Ookami to Koshinryo
(Wolf and Spice)
Odds are if you find this file it’ll be called Wolf and Spice since well I don’t know apparently fansubbers have decided to translate anime names into english… I’d rather they didn’t it’s hard enough finding stuff for shows when it’s just the romaji version of the name. Regardless, I liked this show despite the ’spandex body suit’ thing they pulled with Horo. She spends most of her screen time in episode one naked. Aside from a tail and fluffy ears, which are attached… There’s a town that worships a wolf spirit named Horo, and she keeps their fields growing… although apparently even she’s not omnipotent and so the soil needs to rest on occasion so they get a few bad crops and start freaking out as humans tend to do.
Enter Lawrence Craft, traveling salesman. He arrives in this village which he’s been to enough times that he has a buisness associate named Chloe living and working there. Of course he shows up justin time for the festival. Just as the last patch of wheat in the field s cut he hears a thump in the back of his cart (which is covered) Lo and behold once he’s out of town he’s got a naked girl in the back… of course with the censorship the way it is she could be clothed… you technically can’t tell. Usually there’d be… details… on the… chest… but not uh further… *points at Elfen Lied* anyway it makes no difference. She claims to be a wolf god and he says prove it. Which cues one f the best liens in episode one and I’m not spoiling it. She turns her into a wolf, her left arm first and Lawrence freaks out slips and falls out of his wagon. Then Horo’s gone. DAN DAN DAAAAAAAAAN… you get to watch the show to find out what happens next. The show’s serious but light hearted enough to be funny at times.
Posted by uthek 
the only hard to imagine part at the moment is Horo falling in love with Lawrence. There’s the obvious age gap… she’s a few hundred years old after all… but yes she’s moe… especially while she explains that she and potatoes have never gotten along. 
Posted by uthek 
Posted by uthek 
