So the new Spice and Wolf is finally airing and yes, I do have thoughts (what a surprise)

It's one of my two favourites, together with FLCL - of course I'd have thoughts if I was at all capable. I mean I've been struggling with that recently but if there is anything in the world that could on it's own snap me out of that is Holo's talented ears, but IK'm getting ahead of myself.

I've seen it argued that a remake of the original was anywhere from not necesary to out right pointless but I can't in good faith agree with it, as good as it was, it's been over 15 years since it's release, and simlly making a sequel in new style, to tell what was told of the Wise Wolf and her enterprising companion over the years since original released, would be doing both of them a disservice.

It's probably a good time to mention, that alltough I do own the first of Wolf and Partchment books(light novel, I have no idea where to get the manga), I am yet to begin reading it, since I haven't finished the manga yet either. Even with my relatively limited knowledge on them however, I do know there are a few problems between the original series and the original Manga, some of which shared between the two, some not. I'm not here to break those down tho, just pointing out that a re-telling of the original was in orer.

And a retelling it is indeed. The first episode STARTS with Holo quite literally telling Myuri the story from the begining. And I mean if you didn't know who Myuri was you will by the time you see the scene, there is actually no hiding it, nor that it's them talking, alltough it almost feels like they tried to with the scene composition and for lack of a better term - camera work.

Said Camera work, and overall editing is one of the weirder quirks of the new series, often arguably more discracting and confusing than helpful, at least in the first episode, but despite this The narrative seems to actually be better conducted than both the OG and Manga at least so far. I can't quite put my finger to it, but it seems to have to do with there simply being more personal talk and interaction in general, as opposed to going all in on interesting bits medieval economy and intrigue from the get-go. Some bits of that dialogue feel a bit out of place perhaps, but the two of our protagonists finally actually feel like they are getting acquainted in front of us, as opposed to sorta in the background, when we don't see them, and putting those scenes which may be slightly less matching for any given moment generally allows them having a more natural progression through not havoing to do relevant exposition in the moment, the second it becomes relevant. Which brings me back to the ears - Holo braging about being able to hear every minute quirk early on allows Lawrence to notice them shifting when they are being bullshited to. This gives me high hopes for his writting, since previously he was clearly behind on Holo in terms of writing. Like he was lways a well written character but paled in comparison to Holo, who didn't even feel like one - she felt like an actual person. A part of me wishes to excuse it as her being incomprehensibly more complex due to her orders of magnitude larger life experience but nah, my man NEEDS this improvement for a more believable relationship development, which in turn is something I need.

I need you to understand for context exactly why I love Spice and Wolf so much: 1 - it's the realistic depiction of an interpersonal relationship between two honest to God adults; and 2 - it's the honest to God and very accurate depiction of countryside and wilderness.

With this one improvement to the "other" character making that relationship I'm getting an upgrade from a realistic depiction of a developing relationship of two adults to possibly; hopefully - a realistic depiction of a developing relationship between two adult people. And that's a huge leap.

So what about the other thing? The depiction of countryside and wilderness.
Dude. One word. The woods. The og had forests, don't get me wrong, but they ooked like generic depictions. This one tho, you look at it and you're there. And it's not just the woods, they are just very cloase to my heart. The hillsides of varying steepness, the foliage, the FIELDS which were a huge part of it in the OG for me - it all is even more serene than it used to. As of right now it may in fact be the best I've seen.

The wisuals are not all sunshine and rainbows tho, especially not in the first episode. As I sai I was a bit out of it yesterday and I quite possibly still am, but other than the aforementioned editing and camerawork some things just don't move right, especially in the first episode. Some of the shifting in textures felt like AI, but judging by my change in perception of it my second time watching the opening, yea I might've been tripping. What I was not tripping for was the last scene - watching the moving cart from the back. I don't know how they did it, and I don't think it was hand drawn but watching that cart move in straight line forward, with the camera following it directly, the fucking background moved sideways, and considering most of this paragraph refers to similarly loking "fuzzy", or in this case grassy things I don't think it's a coincidence.
It also seems like the video resolution changes between shots somehow, but that might geniuinely be a fuck up on the fan translation team. What is not is the very noticible changes in framerate, and God damn it it's back to the ears. They mooth so smoothly it's uncany. I don't think they used AI for that, since they are often quite small themselves and they could've reasonably animated them separately but man, it's out there.
It's Kinda hard to complain about though, considering how much less atention they had compared to the tail in the original, but it's gonna take time getting used to. HEll for a brief moment I even thought that maybe AI was involved, but I doubt that. Even for those weird shifts in flufs of all non-character sorts I think it's something to do with their internal CGI tools.

Also speaking of fan translations: Having watched the first two episodes, the prospect of fan translators working as fast as they are is making me a bit giddy, I must say. One would imagine that with machine translations available, reliable and officially recognized on the site itself, they'd be the no.1 way and for periods of time the only way of watching the production to arrive locally, and if that's the case right now then I did not have the chance to notice, and seeing as I watched the first two episodes yesterday, I was only off by like one 24-hour period or so for the second one, adjusted for timezone differences maybe, but I'm not doing that kinda math for this post.

Oh right, a few bits of micelenia: The opening seems like a nice homage to the original, but the visuals fit it less. The ending theme is emaculate tho, I dare say it's much better than the OG.
Also the story so far seems to be following the manga more closely, or at least in different ways thatn the original series. That combined wit th fact they seem far more ok with taking shots at the curch I'm expecting the lost storyline that didn't make it to the OG series from manga. Seeing as it was the most confusing part of the journey, one that had me geniuinely double-take and take the wrong tome with me for on-the-field reading as a result - I have great hopes for a re-telling that makes it a bit more clear what the hell the route they are taking actually looks like. Also that story was very cool in itself, very light on trading itself more just the intrigue of it all.

And allat in glorious 1080p. I feel spoiled.

Frankly all this just adds to the already positively overwhelming feeling of "man I whish I didn't have to care about uni so I could care about the cool shit" which I am frankly already all to familiar with, and which my annual "oh boy it's testing period, time to get back into Deltarune and Undertale" thing is not helping either. An aditional bit of determination if you will. But distracting as that state is it does help not being bothered by any related stess, and the more things of this quality that contribute to it the more effective it is at stopping the stress.

More importantly though the hopes I had for the series from the moment I learned of it is slowly paying off, and so long as they keep going the way they are I'm gonna be very, very pleased with the final result once it's all there. And I get to participate this time around. Hell I might get involved in the surrounding discussion on 4chan. I don't think I ever said anythoing on /a/ so far, but with this? Yea, feels like I might.

Also holy fuck, did I mention THE EARS???
So cute.