Spice and Wolf

Spice and Wolf's story revolves around Kraft Lawrence, a 25-year-old traveling merchant who peddles various goods from town to town to make a living in a stylized, fictional world, with a historical setting with European influences.[6] His main goal in life is to gather enough money to start his own shop, and he already has been traveling for seven years while gaining experience in the trade. One night when stopped at the town of Pasloe, he finds in his wagon a wolf-deity named Holo who is over 600 years old. She takes the form of a 15-year-old girl, except for a wolf's tail and ears. She introduces herself as the town's goddess of harvest, who has kept it blessed with good harvests of wheat for many years. Holo has experienced increasing isolation and disillusionment at the townpeople's move away from her protection towards their own methods of increasing the harvest. She is especially hurt at their forgetting of the promise made between her and a farmer when she arrived in the village and their criticism of her as a "fickle god" for needing to replenish the soil with smaller harvests. Because of these changes, she wants to go back to her homeland in the north called Yoitsu; she believes the people have already forsaken her and that she has kept her promise to maintain the good harvests. Holo also wants to travel to see how the world has changed while she has remained in one place for many years. She manages to bargain her way out of the village by making a deal with Lawrence to take her with him. As they travel, her wisdom helps increase his profits, but at the same time, her true nature draws unwanted attention from the Church.

Kraft Lawrence (クラフト・ロレンス, Kurafuto Rorensu)

Voiced by: Jun Fukuyama (Japanese); J. Michael Tatum (English)

Kraft Lawrence, who chiefly goes by 'Lawrence', is a 25-year-old traveling merchant who goes from town to town buying and selling various things in order to make a living. When he was twelve, he became an apprentice to a merchant relative, and set out on his own at eighteen. His goal in life is to gather enough money to start his own shop, and he has already been traveling for seven years while gaining experience in the trade. He meets Holo one night and eventually agrees to her traveling with him. She helps him by providing her wisdom which helps to increase his profits and get him out of jams. As the series progresses, both Lawrence and Holo demonstrate a growing affection toward each other. Although Lawrence rarely shows different facial expressions, he truly cares for Holo. He shows his affection through his actions, such as when Holo gets captured by the Church and Lawrence completely panics.

Holo[7][8][9][lower-alpha 1] (ホロ, Horo)

Voiced by: Ami Koshimizu (Japanese); Brina Palencia (English)

Holo is a wolf harvest deity originally from a place in the north known as Yoitsu, which draws parallels to the legendary land of Hyperborea. She made a promise with inhabitants from a town called Pasloe that she would ensure the town would have good wheat harvests year after year. However, as time went on, the townspeople slowly started to forsake Holo, regarding her as unnecessary, and resented the occasional bad harvests that Holo told Lawrence were necessary to rest the land. As such, Holo escapes from town in Lawrence's wagon and started traveling with him to see how much the world has changed since she has been in Pasloe. Holo has chosen the form of a 15-year old girl,[11] though she still retains her large white-tipped wolf tail, ears, and two sharp fangs. At times she can produce an ear-shattering howl. Her true form is that of a very large wolf which many people feared. In the anime she as a wolf looks to be about 30 feet high from the ground to her shoulders in episode 1, and about 10 feet high in the sewer in episode 6. In the novels she is large enough to carry Lawrence like a horse, and she can easily leap the walls of Ruvinheigen, but is small enough to fit in Hans Remelio's office with Remelio and Lawrence. In human form, she has a peculiar way of speaking, modeled after that of the oiran high-class courtesans.[12] She is able to speak to humans as a wolf. Holo is fond of delicious food and alcohol, but she always loves something new in each novel. In volume 1 it is apples. In volume 2 it is apples preserved in honey. In volume 3 it is eel (i.e. lamprey). She takes pride in her tail and takes special care of it, constantly combing and maintaining it. In the novel, volume 1, page 65, it is described as hanging past the back of her knees. In the anime it is longer and reaches nearly to her ankles.

Holo refers to herself as "Holo the Wise Wolf" (ヨイツの賢狼, Yoitsu no Kenrō, Wise Wolf of Yoitsu). She is typically very haughty and self-sufficient, though due to her isolation for hundreds of years in Pasloe, she gradually feels very lonely, and sometimes shows a more fragile side of herself. She relies on Lawrence for company as she fears loneliness, which is something that Lawrence is very aware of and tries to comfort her in his own way. Holo is also very aware of the different time spans that she and Lawrence have, as a human lifespan is like a blink of an eye for her kind. Holo is quite scared of that fact, but hides it with jokes. Although she jokes about her affections for Lawrence at first, she slowly but surely falls in love with him. At the end of the series, Holo settles down with Lawrence and they have a daughter, Myuri, who inherits her mother's traits and is the main character of the sequel light novel Wolf and Parchment.[13]

Yarei (ヤレイ)

Yarei is a light novel and manga-only character. He is a farmer of Pasloe and has a long history of facilitating deals with Lawrence. On the day Lawrence passes through Pasloe, Yarei "catches the wolf" in the town's yearly harvest festival. Instead Holo escapes to a larger sheaf of wheat in Lawrence's wagon. When they meet again in Pazzio, Yarei certainly knows of the existence of Holo. He subsequently avows his faith in modern methods and seeks to turn her over to the Church for burning.

Chloe (クロエ, Kuroe)

Voiced by: Kaori Nazuka (Japanese); Jamie Marchi (English)

Chloe is an anime-original character. She is a villager of Pasloe and has known Lawrence for a long time. In fact, Lawrence taught her how to be a merchant. She had a slight interest in Lawrence, but tries to push the feelings away. Despite still not knowing how she should feel about him, she respects him as her teacher and a good friend. Their friendship is later broken when Chloe allies with the Church to capture Holo and Lawrence. She substitutes for Yarei in the anime both to fill the plothole in which Holo had no knowledge of Yarei but informed Lawrence of him nonetheless, and to deepen the drama when Chloe turned on Lawrence, her former teacher and old friend. In the anime when Chloe leads the sewer attack on Lawrence and Holo, Holo has a chance to kill Chloe, but refrains from doing so.

Nora Arendt (ノーラ・アレント, Nōra Arento)

Voiced by: Mai Nakahara (Japanese); Leah Clark (English)

Nora makes her first appearance in volume two of the novels. She is a skilled shepherd from a church-town named Ruvinheigen. Her companion in this profession is a well-trained sheep dog named Enek (Enekk in the anime). Lawrence entrusts her with a difficult task of gold smuggling after they meet.

After the mission is accomplished, Nora gains enough funds to emancipate herself from the Church.

Fermi Amarti (フェルミ・アマーティ, Ferumi Amāti)

Voiced by: Saeko Chiba (Japanese); Ryan Reynolds (English)

Amarti, who like Lawrence mainly goes by his surname for business, makes his first appearance in volume three of the novels. He is a young man who works as a fish broker. He has a crush on Holo, and proposes to her. Due to Holo's good acting, he believes her to be gentle, kind and a soft spoken, polite young lady.

After listening to Holo's fake story of being Lawrence's traveling companion due to her owing him a (non-existent) huge debt, Amarti attempts to buy her liberty and win Holo over by publicly declaring a contractual deal with Lawrence in the merchant's guild. However, he loses almost everything emotionally and financially after the pyrite's price crash and Holo's dedication to stand by Lawrence. According to Marc, due to the methods in which he built his fortune, Amarti looks down on the connections and acquaintances forged by other merchants, and believes it shameful to make use of such connections to secure a deal.

Dian "Diana" Rubens (ディアン・ルーベンス, Dian Rūbensu)

Voiced by: Akeno Watanabe (Japanese); Colleen Clinkenbeard (English)

Dian, who first appears in volume three of the novels, is a chronicler, living in Kumersun's walled ghetto with other "suspect" persons such as alchemists. She loves to collect Pagan tales and beliefs and has written them into a set of books. Lawrence had come to her to ask for information about Holo's birthplace, Yoitsu. Since Dian sounds like a masculine name, Lawrence at first doesn't recognize her as the chronicler he seeks. Thus, she asks Lawrence to call her Dianna. According to Holo, Dian is not human, but a bird even bigger than Lawrence. She fell in love with a traveling priest and spent a few years helping him build a church, but left because he noticed that she never seemed to grow old and became suspicious. Due to her solemn and noble bearing and somewhat mature appearance, it can be logically assumed that she's possibly much older than Holo.

Her influence appears to be quite vast. As Marc states, she protects the alchemists living in the ghetto; anyone wanting to get to them has to go through her, a task implied to be incredibly difficult. As for the feathers scattered around her shop, it's not known if she transforms often, or simply has a pair of wings kept hidden by her robe, as does Holo with her ears and tail.

Marc Cole (マルク・コール, Maruku Kōru)

Voiced by: Rikiya Koyama (Japanese); Ian Sinclair (English)

An anime-original character, Marc Cole is a town merchant, a wheat seller in Kumersun. He and his apprentice, Eu Landt, assist Lawrence in his contest with Amarti, and provide dialog counterpoint to Lawrence and Holo. Marc is roughly eight to ten years older than Lawrence and very proud of his little shop and his family. He strives to hold onto his good name for their sake, though he clearly goes to great lengths to help Lawrence in any way he can. He's also the first merchant in a long while that Lawrence comes to realize and accept as a true friend and not just a business associate.

Eve Boland (エーブ, Ebu)

Voiced by: Romi Park (Japanese); Stephanie Young (English)

Cloaked and shrouded in mysteries, Eve is a merchant from the port town of Lenos. Due to events in the past, this trader is wary of just about everyone and goes about her trade dressed as a man. Although hard to approach, Eve is talkative under the right circumstances and has a keen eye for people and business alike. She is in fact a fallen noble that was once sold as a bride to another merchant after her family's fall. She slowly laundered money from him and when he died, she started her own business. She organized a secret smuggling operation with the church then left it after she felt that they don't need her cooperation anymore then made a contract with Lawrence. Her real name is Fleir von Eiterzental Mariel Boland.

ASCII Media Works reported that as of November 2009, over 3.5 million copies of the first twelve novels have been sold.[1] The light novel series has ranked three times in Takarajimasha's light novel guide book Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! published yearly: first in 2007, and fifth in both 2008 and 2009; in the 2007 issue, Holo won Best Female Character.[52] The first manga volume of the English release in North America debuted at No. 4 on the New York Times Best Seller Manga list,[53] while the third volume reached at No. 3.[54]

In April 2008, the maid café Cafe with Cat in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan hosted a specially themed event called Cafe with Wolf for a period of three days between April 4 and April 6.[55] The event included three new items on the menu and tied in with the sale of the first anime DVD volume which went on sale on April 2, 2008. People who bought the DVD from the Comic Toranoana Akihabara Honten store (which is on the first floor below Cafe with Cat) and brought the receipt with them into Cafe with Wolf were entered into a lottery to win rare Spice and Wolf goods.[56]

Footnotes

Citations

• Official website (in Japanese)
• 10th anniversary website (in Japanese)
• Spice and Wolf VR official website (in Japanese)
• Spice and Wolf light novels at Yen Press
• Spice and Wolf anime at Crunchyroll
• Spice and Wolf (light novel) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia