martintox said:
Settle in for this.
Spice & Wolf (Ookami to Koushinryou in Japan) is a series of 17 fantasy light novels, upon which a two season anime series and a manga series are based. The story revolves around Kraft Lawrence, a 25 year old travelling merchant who is just trying to make a living on the road, and hopefully earn enough to set up his own shop in a town. Until on night, he has a chance encounter with Holo, a 600+ year old wolf god of the harvest. She has been bound to the region for many years, and wishes to return to her homeland in the north. But before that, she wants to see how placed have changed, so she makes an agreement to travel with Lawrence. On the way, they foster their relationship through banter, financial transactions, and occaisional church persecution.
Admittly, while it is set in a fictionalized version of medieval Europe, it's not fantasy in the sense you would normally associate with the term, focusing on bartering, economics and trading rather than on sword and sorcery. But the characters are interesting, the banter between the two leads in highly amusing, there are parts where they go into discussions about economics, and yet they still manage to remain relatively understandable, the soundtrack is very well done, and the dub isn't half bad (if you like watching dubs). Overall, it's a very well done series. My recommendation is to give it five episodes. If you don't like it after that, odds are good you aren't going to.
