Review for Spice & Wolf: Complete Series - Anime Classics

Introduction

You have to love Manga Entertainment bringing cheap and accessible anime to the masses, and now more than ever, they do so in high definition form on the wonderful, futuristic format of Blu-ray. The problem is that the UK audience is smaller than the US and Australian audiences for anime, and where those countries could sell anime in HD easily, that isn’t always the case in the UK. At first it was just the rare title that got an HD release here, but gradually, and in faltering fits and starts, the number of titles released thus has increased. At first, maybe 10% of Manga’s catalogue was in HD. Today, it’s closer to 90% of titles with HD masters accessible to the west. You still get the odd title slipping through the cracks, and I’m still scratching my head as to why Eureka Seven AO missed the HD boat.


It’s all about business of course. Manga are in it to make profit, or they will cease to exist, and only the profitable titles get HD. As a fan of anime, my tastes drift towards the quirky and eclectic, not the mainstream big sellers, and a few years ago when Manga first started dabbling in Blu-ray for anime series, that meant that most of my favourites got overlooked, and some of them like Soul Eater are even mainstream titles. Fortunately, as mentioned Australia and the US have bigger anime fanbases and Region B compatible HD releases did happen in those countries. And so the double dip frenzy applies to anime as well as live action when it comes to Blu-ray.


This time, I’ve gotten around to upgrading Spice and Wolf, which was originally released as two series by Funimation on DVD and on Blu-ray. Both series were then collected as a DVD/Blu-ray combo in 2012, and then earlier this spring it moved to the Anime Classics label, again as a DVD/Blu-ray combo (essentially a change of artwork and a slight lowering of RRP). When it comes to the show’s content, expect a fair bit of cut and paste in the review, and the odd referral to my earlier reviews of the two UK DVD releases of the show. This review is focussed more on whether a double dip to Blu-ray is worthwhile. And that really is a pertinent question in the case of Spice and Wolf Season 1, which got a rather contentious Blu-ray release.


A small village has traditionally invested its hopes in an ancient wolf goddess when it comes to the wheat harvest. Somewhere along the line, anything to do with the wheat would be attributed to the whims of the wolf, and the local harvest festival would even involve one of the girls being cast in the role. Of course this being the modern day, the prosperity of the village and the quality of the wheat harvest is now down to the investment from the local land owner, and modern agricultural techniques, and the wolf legend is little more than a tradition. But when peddler Kraft Lawrence passes through the village, he learns that some legends are born from truth, as he picks up an unlikely passenger. Holo is the town’s wolf deity, who feels that her bargain with the villagers is now complete. She wants to go home, back up to the Northern lands where she was born, and she makes a deal with Lawrence to accompany him. As they travel, Lawrence finds her ancient wisdom helps his profits no end, but having a wolf deity at his side also attracts some unwanted attention. And in season 2, Kraft and Holo’s journey north continues, but when they hear unsettling rumours about Holo’s home, it threatens to drive a rift between them.


Both seasons of Spice and Wolf are presented here across 4 Blu-ray discs coded Region AB and repeated on 4 DVD discs locked to Region 1. The episode distribution on dual and single layer Blu-rays is as follows (The DVD episode split will be 7-6-7-6).

Season 1

Disc 1
1. Wolf and Best Clothes
2. Wolf and the Distant Past
3. Wolf and Business Talent
4. Wolf and Her Helpless Partner
5. Wolf and Lovers’ Quarrel
6. Wolf and Silent Farewell
7. Wolf and a Tail of Happiness
8. Wolf and Virtuous Scales
9. Wolf and Shepherd’s Lamb

Disc 2
10. Wolf and the Swirling Plot
11. Wolf and the Biggest Secret Scheme
12. Wolf and a Group of Youngsters
13. Wolf and a New Beginning


Season 2

Disc 3
00. Wolf and Amber Melancholy
01. Wolf and the Inadvertent Rift
02. Wolf and the Calm Before the Storm
03. Wolf and the Gap that Cannot be Filled
04. Wolf and the End of Shallow Thinking
05. Wolf, Hope and Despair
06. Wolf and Trustworthy God
07. Wolf and Playful Days
08. Wolf and an Enchanting Traveller

Disc 4
09. Wolf and Reckless Negotiation
10. Wolf and Lonely Smile
11. Wolf and the Decision to Part
12. Wolf and Endless Tears

Picture: Season 1

Here’s the bone of contention. Of all the anime companies that allow the West access to HD anime, Kadokawa is probably the most paranoid, they’re prone to long holdbacks on HD material, making the West wait up to a year after the DVD release, are apt to demand locked subtitles, and fan opinion is that they can give US companies materials deliberately inferior to the Japanese release, and it’s Kadokawa that are the licensors for Spice and Wolf. Spice and Wolf Season 1 was animated for HD, was released that way in Japan, but when it came to Funimation, they got the show up-scaled on Blu-ray from a 480 source. That isn’t exactly incentive to get the show on Blu-ray, and perhaps if Season 2 were still available alone, I would have considered it, were it not for a couple of provisos.


The up-scaled Blu-ray version of Spice and Wolf Season 1 is really quite watchable. The progressive 24 frame per second playback allows for smooth animation, the colour depth of the show is certainly stronger, richer than the DVD equivalent, and even though Spice and Wolf isn’t the most dynamic of animations in the first place, the absence of compression artefacts is still noticeable. All that’s left is a smidge of aliasing and digital banding on a par with the best DVD anime transfers, and the Blu-ray certainly does look better than the same show on the Region 1 DVDs in this package. The second thing is that the Manga Entertainment DVDs of the show, with masters sourced from Madman Entertainment, scale up like a dog. They have the PAL speed up of course, but they only look good on a small screen. On a flat panel display, the image is marred by aliasing, softness and blurred line art to a greater degree. Compared to them, the 480 sourced SD re-master on these Blu-rays is by far the preferable option, although comparing the Blu-rays to the Region 1 DVDs in this collection, there’s less of a difference.

Picture: Season 2

That all changes with Season 2, which also gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p, but the source material is genuine HD, probably up-scaled from 720 lines of resolution as is the case for high definition anime series. The clarity is miles ahead of season 1, there’s no aliasing, no compression obviously, and digital banding is practically non-existent. This is the reason to get the show on Blu-ray. Of course the annoying niggle will come when a Season 2 episode will flashback to a Season 1 episode, and you can finally see that animation in full HD, and think wistfully of what might have been, if Funimation and Kadokawa could have sorted it out in the beginning.


Spice and Wolf maintains a subtle, autumnal palette of colours which enhances the show’s sedate and measured pace. It’s very much an atmospheric piece, and while the content is wholly different, I was put in mind of shows like Haibane Renmei. There’s also an upgrade in the quality of the animation for the second season, and while the show is still very much a cerebral piece, where dialogue outweighs action, you can see that the animation is more dynamic, and even characters at rest have a subtlety of motion to them.

The images used in this review are from the DVD component of the release, and aren’t representative of the Blu-rays.

Sound

You get the choice between Dolby TrueHD 5.1 English and 2.0 Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. These are some of the earlier Funimation Blu-rays, and suffer a little from a subtitle font that is a little too thin, and easily lost against busy backgrounds. You do get the added clarity and definition of lossless audio, and more significantly the absence of the PAL speedup that the UK DVDs have. I went with the Japanese track, and found it to be more than acceptable, with the important voice cast of the central pairing of Lawrence and Holo just spot on. It isn’t the most dynamic audio when it comes to anime; it is after all a dialogue heavy show, with rare moments of action, but the stereo works just fine. What is notable about Spice and Wolf is the music, with a couple of very agreeable theme songs, and a music score that heavily invokes the pseudo mediaeval period of the story. I watched an episode in English, and while the 5.1 isn’t really needed for the content, the dub does get the main cast right, with a couple of excellent choices for Holo and Lawrence, up there with the Japanese audio. The same can’t be said for the incidental cast however.

In an inconsistency in subtitling, in the second series Kraft Lawrence becomes Craft Lawrence...

Extras

You get the discs in a fat Amaray style brick pack with an O-card slipcover. For once you actually get different front art on the slipcover compared to the sleeve, although the rear art and blurb is identical. The inner sleeve offers a different, portrait image next to the episode listing. You actually get four hinged panels in the case, with two discs held either side of each panel, 4 DVD and 4 Blu-ray, the content repeated across both.


Season 1

The series content is presented with animated menus on the Blu-rays. Disc 1 autoplays with a trailer for Eden of the East Paradise Lost.

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood part 5.

On the disc you’ll find the textless credit sequences, and further trailers for Soul Eater: The Weapon Collection, D-Gray Man Part 2, Rideback, and Spice and Wolf Season 2 in HD, as well as One Piece Collection 1, The Dragon Ball Z Dragon Box 7 (the one that videophiles actually wanted), and Noir in SD.


Season 2

Disc 3 autoplays with a trailer for Eden of the East: Paradise Lost.

Disc 4 autoplays with a trailer for Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, and the on-disc trailers are merely the Disc 2 trailers again, with the exception of the Spice and Wolf trailer, which in this case is for Season 1.

On this disc you get the textless credits, which unlike the UK DVD, actually are textless. You also get the same small animations presented in 1080i.

“Studying” with Holo lasts 2 minutes and offers a little info about the food of this world, as delivered by the delectable Wolf Goddess.


“Stretching” with Holo, Yoitz Style lasts 4 minutes, and we get a short exercise routine that you can try at home, although you probably won’t have as much luck with the tail and ear exercises.

The DVDs present the episodes with the same content when it comes to extras, albeit with a rather useful progressive NTSC 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer, and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround English, and 2.0 Stereo Japanese with subtitles and signs when it comes to the audio options.

Conclusion

My opinion of this charming, delightful series certainly hasn’t changed now that I’ve watched it again, and I point you to my reviews of Season 1 and Season 2 for more detail on the story and the characters. I still remain convinced that this is the best romance in animated form, in a show that doesn’t pander too much to fan service sensibilities, and certainly doesn’t insult the intelligence. It is after all a show about mediaeval economics, so you certainly need to keep your brain in gear for the plot. And when it comes to the central pairing, it’s a romance that develops gradually over the 26 episodes, and it’s based on two people communicating, talking to each other, taking joy in getting to know each other through conversation, through wit, through verbal jousting, and through wordplay. You could say that Spice and Wolf takes a leaf from those Hollywood romantic comedies from when the Hays Code still held sway. It challenges the mind even while it feeds the heart with vicarious emotion. There really is nothing else like it around.


So should you double dip? Funimation don’t make it easy by packaging both seasons together, especially as Season 1 is presented as an SD upscale. If you have the Region 1 DVD of Spice and Wolf Season 1, then you’re not going to see a lot of improvement with the Blu-ray, native progressive playback certainly, an absence of compression artefacts, and lossless audio, but little improvement when it comes to the visuals. However compared to the Region 2 DVD, which scales up pretty poorly to larger screens, it’s nice to have Blu-rays that are watchable. Of course all of that is forgotten when it comes to Season 2, which is a native HD transfer, and the improvement over the DVDs, both Region 1 and 2, is obvious. The thing is, when it comes to exceptional shows which turn out to be fan favourites, you probably want to own them in the best possible quality, and in that regard, the Blu-ray release is recommended. Just don’t expect miracles with Season 1.