Wolf's Rain Review

The next show I decided to watch was Wolf's Rain. I'd been meaning to watch this show for awhile and my friend Melissa owned the box set so I figured I'd give it a shot. Of course, brief side note, I by accident broke a piece of her case and I felt so terrible about that I had hid the box from myself and stopped watching for about a week. Anyway, she said it was ok, I still feel terrible about it though... The good new is, I got to watch this show in really great quality and it was totally and completely worth it!

The first point I NEED to discuss about this show is it's absolutely gorgeous music. After the first few episodes. I was SCRAMBLING to get the OST. And honestly, if you don't feel like watching the show, you should at LEAST get the OST because it's unbelievable. Though I was severely unimpressed with the opening. For a show with such an amazing music, I wish the opening had been better. The ending grew on me. It took awhile, but then I felt better about it. Some of my favorites from the OST include:

"Friends"
"Hot Dog Wolf"
"Tsume no Suna"

But these are just three of many amazing songs!

This show is also jam-packed with many metaphors. Most of which I don't even think I can identify, (making this a very poor review), but the entire idea of what is paradise and what it means to reach paradise, is one the main themes that is present among the entirety of the show. It's also a show about friendships and how friendships grow and change over time. The show also subtly hints at how important it is to love your friends. There's also a stubbornness that is illustrated in this show. For example, Kiba's stubbornness to make it to paradise, the old man's stubbornness to kill the wolves...there are many examples of how being stubborn can be a good quality and also a bad quality.

Ok, can I just say that one of my favorite parts about this show was the fact that there were wolves?! I know, I know, I sound majorly stupid, but this show was like watching Balto (whose statue, located in Central Park, I just saw for the first time) , for adults. Cartoon dogs/wolves just make me really happy apparently. To be honest, though the art for these wolves was just fantastic. Absolutely beautiful and I loved the animation. I was actually extremely surprised by the animation, because I'd been hearing about Wolf's Rain for awhile now, so I guess I expected the art to have a more "classic" anime look rather than such a clear and crisp modern one. The colors complimented the show nicely as well, because the tones overall were fairly dull, but added to the dark atmosphere of the show.

It's about that time to talk about what I didn't like about this show. This has definitely been higher on the list of shows I've watched this summer (not that I've watched all that many) but, some of my main issues mostly were found in the back story and understanding of the main character Kiba. Kiba was obviously an extremely complex character, yet he was one I found difficult to understand. Though we did know a TINY bit about his past...it was still unclear about WHO he was exactly and why he believed SO strongly in paradise and finding paradise. I just wanted a tiny bit more development from him, though I must say I was very pleased that he was played by Johnny Yong Bosch.

My other "grievance" with this particular series were the extremely extremely (that's two folks) unneccesery filler re-cap episodes. Now all of our favorite shows have THOSE episodes. The ones we all can't stand because its 20-25 minutes of reliving the first part of the series, which you most likely watched in one sitting. Right. But Wolf's Rain...had 4 IN A ROW! That's 4 recap episodes in a row, now there were differences to each re-cap and each one focused on a specific character. But in a show thats only 30 episodes long...it was SO useless and a waste of time, when they could've moved the story along. Sure, the series would've been shorter, or maybe they could've used those episodes to explain something else. But NOT re-cap! Seriously...4...I understand 1 or 2, spread out through a series, especially a longer series like Gundam SEED or something that has multiple season. But for this...it just really didn't work. I think I watched that disc for a total of 5 minutes.

But all anger for the re-capping aside, this show was unbelievably beautiful and it was hard not to fall in love with the complex characters. Although I did discuss my wanting to know more about Kiba, I will admit to also enjoying the mystery of his character. I loved Tsume, Toboe and Hige and watching the bonds and the friendship they discover grow. I don't want to give anything away, but the ending breaks your heart, especially because the viewer embarks on such a harsh and intense journey with these characters and follows them all the way to the very end. I will say that I cried a good three or four times while watching the final four episodes.

All in all, I found this show to be very enjoyable. It was a tad bit deeper than some of the shows that I've been watching recently and so I really enjoyed that it made me think and was a show I could really get involved with and try to comprehend everything that was going on it. I would definitely reccommend this show to others and I'm really happy that I took the time to watch it, I give it 5/6 Appa paws...why only 5? Well get rid of those re-caps and it may have won my full affections. Also sorry for the half-assed review. I still have to write three more of these...oops! I'm falling behind!!!!

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, I've been tooling around on VH (VirtualHollywood.net) doing such shows as Sing It! Act It! Create It! Perform It! ETC. LOL so I've been busy with all of that, I haven't even finished any new shows!! *gasp* besides well, the shows that air weekly, like Angel Beats, Durarara and Working, which will all be getting reviews in this upcoming week.


Sokka: Way to take forever to do everything....


Me: I know... It's a problem...