What I’ve watched: Wolf’s Rain

My Grade: C-

Every Sunday, my friend and I get together to watch anime and have dinner.  Over the years, we’ve watched a number of great series, including Fullmetal Alchemist, Cowboy Bebop, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.  We’ve also watched some not-so-great series, such as Bleach and Gilgamesh.  Recently, we finished Wolf’s Rain and, I have to say, it falls into the not-so-great category.

Let me start out by saying that I had high hopes for WR.  I first became aware of it several years ago when I found its closing theme (“Gravity”) used in some YouTube video.  But I promptly forgot about it until last December when the Physicist and I were looking to start a new anime series.  Much to my subsequent embarrassment, I suggested WR.

Like Bleach, WR gets off to a good start.  The whole premise of wolves masquerading as humans in a postapocalyptic, vaguely steampunk world was intriguing.  But it all goes downhill from there.  Most of the characters are so poorly developed that you don’t really care when they meet their Inevitable Tragic End, nor do you care about their inane subplots.  And the ending manages to be both depressing and ludicrous at the same time.

And then there are the recap episodes.  Despite the fact that the series is only thirty episodes long, WR has no less than four consecutive recap episodes in which the story so far is retold from the perspective of four different characters.  Of course they don’t end up being all that different from one another, so it just gets old really fast.  The whole thing just reeks of a production delay.  The only good thing about these recap episodes is that, in the American release at least, they’re all on the same disc, so they’re easy to avoid.

PROS

Nice Artwork

Nice Soundtrack

Cool Premise

CONS

Hamfisted Plotting

Paper-thin Characters

Pointless Recap Episodes