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About

Spice and Wolf (狼と香辛料, Ookami to Koushinryou) is a Japanese light visual novels, manga and anime series written by Isuna Hasekura and illustrated by Jū Ayakura. The story follows the traveling merchant Kraft Lawrence and the pagan goddess of harvest Holo as they travel to the snowy land of Yoitsu.

Premise

Kraft Lawrence, a young merchant makes a living by peddling various goods from town to town in a fictionalized fantasy world reminiscent of Medieval Europe. One day Lawrence find a young woman with fox ears and tail in his wagon. She reveals herself as the harvest goddess Holo, the wise wolf. Holo then makes a deal with Lawrence to use her wisdom to help increase his profits in exchange for his service in traveling to her northern land of Yoitsu.

History

Originally appearing as a light novel in 2005, and winning the Dengeki Novel Prize that same year, ^[14] Spice and Wolf began publication on February 10th, 2006, and continued up until July 10th, 2011.^[15] The light novel was later adapted into both a manga as well as an anime series. The manga was published by ASCII Media Works in their manga magazine Dengeki Maoh beginning in November 2007. The anime series, produced by animation studio Imagin, began syndication on January 9th, 2008, and continued until March 26th of that same year. A second season was later in syndication from July 9th and September 24th, 2009. The anime later aired in North America on November 16th, 2010.

Reception

Impact

Online Relevance

On Tumblr the series is tagged under several different tags such as "Spice and Wolf",^[1] "Spice & Wolf",^[2] and "Holo the Wise Wolf".^[3] On MyAnimeList there are pages for each piece of written and animated media.^[4] There is also a fan-made wikia page for the series called the "Spice and Wolf Wiki" with over 130 pages.^[5]

On YouTube the first episode of the English dub by Funimation was uploaded to Funimation's official YouTube channel on December 1, 2009 (shown below, left). The video has nearly 2 million views as of July 2015. On November 13, 2008 the opening for the first season of the Spice and Wolf anime was uploaded by YouTuber Jamezterr (shown below, right). As of July 2015 the video has over 1 million views.

Change.org Petition

In mid to late 2013 Change.org user Shut Down submitted a petition aimed towards Funimation to try and create a third season of Spice and Wolf. The petition gained a total of 18,921 signers out of a goal of 20,000.^[6] However, after two years, in May of 2015, original poster Shut Down had his account terminated for violating the site's ECPA. As a result the petition never reached the amount of signatures required.

Fandom

On Tumblr there are various fan-made blogs dedicated to the franchise, including, Spicy Wolf,^[7] Woof n' Lorns,^[8] Dat Travelin Merchant,^[9] and Ask The Wise Wolf Anything.^[10] On Reddit the most popular fan-made subreddit has over 2,200 readers.^[11] On Fanfiction.net there are 114 fanfiction stories based around Spice and Wolf.^[12]

On YouTube there are various covers for the first opening theme "Tabi no Tochuu".^[13] YouTubers LeeandLie and Saphire have both uploaded their English covers of the song, gaining over 340,000 views and over 65,000 views each, respectively (both shown below).

Related Memes

Puffy Vulva

Puffy Vulva is a catchphrase associated to Spice and Wolf character Holo, and is generally associated with pictures of anime characters getting their cheeks pinched. The phrase is also used as a spamming and shitposting practice.

Search Interest

External References