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EP. REVIEW: Wolf's Rain

Putting anything about Wolf's Rain in the same breath as George Lucas's ham-fisted writing is...dude, just no. This series obviously never clicked with you, but to sell it as painfully short as you have is unfathomable to me. I know I'm going to sound like a complete dick, and I'm sorry, but at this point I genuinely wish that another reviewer had been assigned to it.

I totally get the frustration, its one of my favorite shows too (I even re-watched it about a year ago), and it makes me sad that these reviews are the most in-depth coverage the show has or probably will ever get on ANN. But I do think James went into it excited with a completely open mind. Sometimes a show just doesn't work for you. I've always thought (and said in previous comments) that Wolf's Rain is a show full of dichotomies that seemingly shouldn't work together on paper. Obviously for me, they really do work well, and that's partially why I love it so much. But at the same time, I can't be that surprised that a show like that lends itself to pretty polarizing responses.

The contradictions seem to dogpile on from there, as Wolf's Rain indulges risky choices that could alienate brainiacs and bleeding hearts alike. This is an elaborate fantasy world that refuses to indulge in exposition; nobody ever stops to explain what the government's like or how technology works, nobody breaks down the history of the world or even their own backstory in any way that would crack the veneer of the show's persistently naturalistic dialogue. That's right, characters not only refuse to explain their world, they refuse to even explain themselves. ... It's the kind of show where it's possible to watch all the way through without ever realizing that one of the main characters is blind (no one ever says that Cheza's big expressive eyes don't actually work), the kind of show where the impact of one character's tragic backstory is supposed to come from never actually revealing that backstory, only its horrific present-day consequences. And yet, despite these risks, Wolf's Rain still stands as one of the most critically acclaimed and memorable TV anime ever made. Even if you're not a fan, it's an extremely difficult experience to forget.

Blue and Hige have gone off on their own, because they're in love for no particular reason

And it's not like this is just my wistful nostalgia for a series I saw 15 years ago as an anime neophyte. I rewatched it last year for the first time in a long while and fell completely in love with it all over again. If anything, the passage of time only improved it in my eyes, since I now had a far broader knowledge base of the medium and could better appreciate what it did so well.

I hope when he's done reviewing this series James reads Jacob's review so that he can understand what he just watched, because it's pretty clear that a lot has gone right over his head because he was looking down the whole time.

I get all of that

I have to say, though, that the spirit of what BONES was doing with RahXephon and Wolf's Rain has carried on into the Fafner franchise in recent years to some extent. It's still saddled with Hisashi Hirai character designs that can give the wrong impression, but starting with Fafner Exodus (and now it seems the ongoing The Beyond season), that franchise is really an ambitious prestige franchise that has largely gone unnoticed outside of Japan. .

If Wolf’s Rain had compressed its ideas and motifs into just twelve episodes, or maybe even a single film, it might have been a stronger and more cohesive work of art.

Cheza's body is consumed with what are either rotting veins, wild roots, or both, and they twist and break her form in a horrifyingly beautiful way.