Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Wolf's Rain
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LightningCount
 Posts: 229 |
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I think this is part of it. As a Gundam fan, I've been watching episodes from different series over the last few months over again from different eras, and there is a lot of difference in the pacing and in the art direction. Sometimes older animation had more artsy shots rather than going for the most utilitarian camera angle and lighting, and sometimes it sort of let the viewer "live" in the world and its conversations, versus just getting on with the meat and potatoes. Wolf's Rain took me a second try to get into--I dropped it when it was on Adult Swim for some reason--but I've watched it twice on DVD and it was a real treat. I particularly love the scifi elements in its fantasy world. And that's the thing, as another poster noted, Wolf's Rain comes down to getting down with the world and emotions and just letting the story take you away. That can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on what you want, and some series can't pull it off. But Wolf's Rain was able to make it work for me. As my memory recalls, the next few episodes are some of my favorites. Confession: I never watched the recap episodes all the way through, because I heard they were made not by choice but necessity due to global health matters. Maybe it's time I checked them out. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4570 |
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What's funny is that I usually love sinking my teeth into series that go all-in on complex world-building and plot developments, but that's not something I've ever really felt the need to do with Wolf's Rain. Maybe part of it is how I discovered the series, during the very first fumbling days of my foray into anime. I started watching at what I later found was just before the end, so I was immediately hit with that wave of raw, wrenching emotion and beauty, and that's what immediately drew me to it. I'm glad you mentioned Haibane Renmei, because that's another show I dearly loved, and you're right that it operates on a similar primarily-emotional wavelength. There are background mysteries in its world, and you can work out at least some of them, but they're not really the focus. |
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MarshalBanana
 Posts: 5312 |
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Does anyone else think that Quent was based on Quint from jaws. they look similar, their names are almost the same, they are both alcoholics and they even act similarly. Like one moment they are both very aggressive and angry and then they are very calm and snarky.
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Top Gun
Posts: 4570 |
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Seeing the Quent and Hubb Show get put down saddens my heart.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11339 |
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Nobumoto seems to be fascinated by faux Native American mysticism. She did the same thing with Laughing Bull in several episodes of Cowboy Bebop.
I'm sorry James doesn't like this more (I've been waiting to see just how hard he'd cringe over these episodes), but reading his take has been very entertaining. 
And again, if you've got time, watching the recaps is interesting. You can ff through stuff you've seen, which is most of it, but there are some small nuggets of new characterization tucked away in there that I think are worth it if you're a fan. ymmv |
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Top Gun
Posts: 4570 |
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I know that everyone approaches pieces of entertainment in their own ways, and what works for one viewer may not always do so for another...but for the life of me I'm not sure I've ever seen someone completely overlook the heart and soul of a series as much as James's reviews have. Like, to suggest that Keiko Nobumoto, easily one of the most talented writers to ever work in anime, is just throwing elements in because she saw them in a Hollywood movie and thought they looked cool is just...I don't know. After reading this I can't even tell what James wants the show to do that it isn't doing. Does he want a more conventional narrative flow, or more direct exposition, or what? He has to realize by this point that this isn't really what this series is going for, and that looking for it is just going to keep frustrating him.
And poor Quent is being done so dirty here. He's a man so broken by what happened to his family and so consumed by revenge that there's nothing else keeping him going. And the tragic part is that he's already been given more than one chance at a small bit of redemption...but he keeps pushing it way and falling deeper into self-loathing and despair, because he can't bring himself to seek that redemption. There's something devastatingly human about that. I truly believe that one of the main reasons he's so dismissive of the idea of this mystical wolf-opened Paradise is because he feels that, even if it were real, he'd never be found worthy of such a place. I know this is hardly constructive criticism and I'm probably not being all that fair, and I'm sorry for that, but it's my honest reaction to the past few weeks. At this point I don't know that I want to keep reading, because I shudder to think of James's take on the climax will be. |
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MysticGon
Posts: 43 |
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I agree with the above poster. I don't think this show was meant for people with sensibilities like his and that is okay. The show is niche for a reason. Not everyone is going to like it.
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cyborgkiddo
Posts: 18 |
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It's a very weird experience to watch the episodes every week and be like "wow that was really good, I love this story" and then come on and read James rip into it haha. While I dislike Quent, I do understand that he's a man destroyed by revenge. It seems like he's so far gone that he feels like he'd be betraying himself by actually forgiving/trusting the wolves, which is an interesting story to see rather than the expected "wolf was nice to me once so now I'm gonna forget my years of hatred".
Also did James skip a bit in the middle or? He keeps talking about Blue maybe being dead but we straight up see her with Cheza in the middle of ep16? |
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James_Beckett
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 274 Location: USA |
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Anything from Eps 15-18 was skipped over due to those being recap episodes, so if new tidbits or scenes were included there, I've not seen them. I was merely reacting to the line of dialogue about Blue that Hige had, which I felt could be interpreted as him saying/thinking Blue was dead. And FWIW, I'm usually the first person to line up for a dreamlike narrative that doesn't rely on strict realism or a straightforward plot. I just think the way that Wolf's Rain has been approaching that territory has been pretty darned ineffective. Quent is a perfect example of this; maybe all the good scenes of his people keep referring to are coming up in future episodes, but nothing we've gotten from him so far has worked beyond providing a surface level imitation of tropes that have been done much better in other stories. He's neither a well-devolped and nuanced human being nor an interesting, abstract use of an archetype. He's just an aolcoholic in a trenchcoat that grumbles about women for reasons that seem at-odds with the glimpes of his backstory we've gotten, and he wants to kill the wolves really badly. That being said, I *am* enjoying the show so far, and I think my generally positive reviews of the episodes stand by that. It's entertaining, it contains nifty imagery and some solid character moments, and I'm literally *always* down for some Good Wolves Being Friends. It's my job to explain my opinions as clearly and (hopefully) entertainingly as possible, though, and it's often the case that solid-but-overambitious shows get dissected even more thoroughly than straigh-up-bad ones, because there's a lot more that needs to go in to explaining why it isn't working as intended. This is all just my opinion, though! |
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animefan1238
 Posts: 299 Location: Ma |
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Same here but I know at some point I'll cave and rewatch it. |
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trilaan
 Posts: 1054 Location: Texas |
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Cher and Blue make a great pair, I wish they spent more time together.
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MarshalBanana
Posts: 5312 |
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I disagree with Quent, he's a fascinating portrayal of a man who is broken to the core. The scene with him and Blue is amazing and one of the best acted scenes I've ever witnessed in an Anime.
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11339 |
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You don't think that was by design? We didn't get such a flashback because he didn't have any concrete memories, false or otherwise, to flashback on. What we did get was Hige's sense of himself as just a go-with-the-flow (or scent) kind of wolf who wasn't attached to anything in particular and didn't really care much about anything other than getting enough to eat and nosing around things that smelled interesting (and dreaming of getting laid). He could never understand why everyone else was taking everything so seriously when he didn't see anything that could be done to change things, until Cheza came along and gave him and his companions some purpose, and Blue gave him a peer to actually care about. So he was naturally devastated to realize why he'd been so fatalistic and unanchored from everything and everyone around him. That aside, it always did annoy me that everyone was always on Toboe's case for being a pet wolf while no one ever once questioned why Hige was the one wearing a collar. |
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MiiyoSon
Posts: 69 |
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Speak for yourself on that one man. These reviews have been great as it is interesting to see someone else's point of view but I will say that I think you've been WWAAAAAAAAYYYYYY too harsh on a man that's desperately trying to hold on to this one thing that's kept him going all this time. It's not logical obviously but as grief-stricken as Quent is, I understand why he drinks so much and can't help but to feel for the man. He has to numb the pain somehow. |
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KitKat1721
 Posts: 953 |
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Yeah the suddenness of Hige's story never annoyed me because of just how unanchored and go-with-the-flow he always was (usually with twists like this, I feel like the character is more on the brooding side, endlessly searching for their purpose). His devastation about why exactly he couldn't connect as easily with the others over something that's meant to be instinctual and a part of being a wolf makes a lot of sense. Also I never thought about the collar thing, that's a good point. Poor Toboe is just easy to bully. I still do appreciate reading the reviews/some of James' tweets about the show because his take is so vastly different from mine, even if reading them makes me lose motivation to comment as much haha |
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