anime: Wolf's Rain: ep. 1
Apr. 7th, 2007 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meganbmoorefirst: WHERE'S THE EMBED FUNCTION????? I was going to include the openning and closing themes...
anyway...
Just finished my rewatch of ep 1 of Wolf's Rain, and you know, a lot of the reasons I love this anime are evident in the first episode.
anyway...
Just finished my rewatch of ep 1 of Wolf's Rain, and you know, a lot of the reasons I love this anime are evident in the first episode.
Unlike most anime, where they immediately let us know who the characters are and what their deal is, Wolf's Rain lets us figure it out for ourselves. Not that they throw us in the deep end and we have to make it across half the pool to reach the life preserver like, say, Tsukihime or Revolutionary Girl Utena, it's just that it's one of the few animes that truly practices "show don't tell."
We start off looking at a wounded white wolf in the snow while a young man's voice talks about paradise. In a normal anime, the young man would tell us who he was, or hint at the wol'fs identity(as we later learn, they're one and the same, but the anime let's us realize that for ourselves) We cut from that to a group of bandits robbing a train. There's no reason for us to think anything is special about their leader, Tsume, except that he's a very good fighter...the only thing that that even mildly hints that he's not like the others-his complaining about hating the noise the Noble's ship makes-doesn't even stand out until you KNOW what he is. It's not until a few minutes later in the episode, when he catches Blue's scent(portrayed to us as his catching sight of her) and we see his "fight or flight" instinct take over as he realizes that she'll recognize that he's not a human that it registers this guy is more than just the leader of a gang of thieves.
We're not told what's different about him yet, though, and aren't until his gang finds the white wolf at their hideout. Tsume is the only one who realizes that it's not just a big dog, but warns his men too late, as the wounded wolf reacts to what it perceives as a threat and kills two of his men. Tsume knocks ACK(Annoying Cute Kid, so dubbed bysoutherndave) out of the way just in time, and the wolf stops, recognizing an equal, and we get our first good look at Tsume's eyes and we see that they're almost the same as the wol'fs eyes. Tsume "flees," leading the wolf away from his men and the wolf follows, and once they're alone, Tsume speaks to the wolf, basically telling it that it's being stupid and drawing attention to the rest of them and it should make an effort to blend in, and the wolf replies that it refuses to hide its nature in the voice of the young man from the beginning. During this, the camera pans away from Tsume to the wolf, and then back to where Tsume was, where we now see a grey wolf with the same scar on its chest that Tsume has and, just as quickly, we see human Tsume again. The two fight, but stop when ACK, who was worried about Tsume-interferes, seeing human!Tsume and the large dog fighting. This is also when we learn that the wolf's killing was a defensive action, as he leaves rather than attack ACK.
Later, the wolf is shot by a hunter, Quent, and taken in by the police and sent rto the labs of Cher Degre by her ex-husband, Hubb, who recognizes that it's not a normal dog and wants to find out just what it is. There, we meet an amiable young man named Hige, only to see that he, too, is actually a wolf, and he tells the white wolf the same thing that Tsume did, only much more nicely, and convinces him that he should pass as human for his own good and as the word gets out that the wolf has disappeared, Hige and a limping young man leave the building with none the wiser. On Tsume's front, we see him and his gang on another supplies raid, only this one goes horribly wrong and as Tsume and ACK are fleeing, ACK stumbles and is about to take a long, long fall when Tsume tries to catch him...but, while we and ACK both see his arms reaching for him, what HAPPENS is a wolf's jaws clamping down on the boy's shoulder as it's driven home that the humanity is just an illusion...whoile they LOOK human, they aren't, and they don't shapeshift...even though you THINK you see them hold and move things with their hands, they don't, it's all part of the illusion.
And, finally, at the very end of the episode, we finally learn the name of the wolf we started out with at the beginning: Kiba.
In the first episode, we're introduced to all the principle characters-Kiba, Hige, Tsume, Blue, Quent, Cheza, Hubb, Cher-except for Toboe and Darcia(who show up in episode 2) but, aside from Tsume and Kiba, we aren't told how important they are, or what their eventual roles are. Even in their cases, we more have our attention drawn to them to show how very different they are-the wolf who disdains all trappings of humanity and refuses to be anything BUT a wolf, even for his own good, and the wolf who has tried to separate himself from the wolf and has become as hiuman as a wolf can, yet is still viewed as strange and different by humans. We're introduced to the series and characters, but instead of having the entire concept and basic plot laid out in a tidy package, we're simply told the story, and in a way where we're never lost or overwhelmed, even though the only times the main plotline are addressed are when the bartender reciunts the tale of wolves and paradise that his grandfather told him to Quent, and when Kiba and Hige talk about how the scent of lunar flowers drew them to the city.
Wolf's Rain also possibly has the best soundtrack of any anime(hence my wanting to post the credits...maybe the function will be back tomorrow)
We start off looking at a wounded white wolf in the snow while a young man's voice talks about paradise. In a normal anime, the young man would tell us who he was, or hint at the wol'fs identity(as we later learn, they're one and the same, but the anime let's us realize that for ourselves) We cut from that to a group of bandits robbing a train. There's no reason for us to think anything is special about their leader, Tsume, except that he's a very good fighter...the only thing that that even mildly hints that he's not like the others-his complaining about hating the noise the Noble's ship makes-doesn't even stand out until you KNOW what he is. It's not until a few minutes later in the episode, when he catches Blue's scent(portrayed to us as his catching sight of her) and we see his "fight or flight" instinct take over as he realizes that she'll recognize that he's not a human that it registers this guy is more than just the leader of a gang of thieves.
We're not told what's different about him yet, though, and aren't until his gang finds the white wolf at their hideout. Tsume is the only one who realizes that it's not just a big dog, but warns his men too late, as the wounded wolf reacts to what it perceives as a threat and kills two of his men. Tsume knocks ACK(Annoying Cute Kid, so dubbed by
southerndave) out of the way just in time, and the wolf stops, recognizing an equal, and we get our first good look at Tsume's eyes and we see that they're almost the same as the wol'fs eyes. Tsume "flees," leading the wolf away from his men and the wolf follows, and once they're alone, Tsume speaks to the wolf, basically telling it that it's being stupid and drawing attention to the rest of them and it should make an effort to blend in, and the wolf replies that it refuses to hide its nature in the voice of the young man from the beginning. During this, the camera pans away from Tsume to the wolf, and then back to where Tsume was, where we now see a grey wolf with the same scar on its chest that Tsume has and, just as quickly, we see human Tsume again. The two fight, but stop when ACK, who was worried about Tsume-interferes, seeing human!Tsume and the large dog fighting. This is also when we learn that the wolf's killing was a defensive action, as he leaves rather than attack ACK.Later, the wolf is shot by a hunter, Quent, and taken in by the police and sent rto the labs of Cher Degre by her ex-husband, Hubb, who recognizes that it's not a normal dog and wants to find out just what it is. There, we meet an amiable young man named Hige, only to see that he, too, is actually a wolf, and he tells the white wolf the same thing that Tsume did, only much more nicely, and convinces him that he should pass as human for his own good and as the word gets out that the wolf has disappeared, Hige and a limping young man leave the building with none the wiser. On Tsume's front, we see him and his gang on another supplies raid, only this one goes horribly wrong and as Tsume and ACK are fleeing, ACK stumbles and is about to take a long, long fall when Tsume tries to catch him...but, while we and ACK both see his arms reaching for him, what HAPPENS is a wolf's jaws clamping down on the boy's shoulder as it's driven home that the humanity is just an illusion...whoile they LOOK human, they aren't, and they don't shapeshift...even though you THINK you see them hold and move things with their hands, they don't, it's all part of the illusion.
And, finally, at the very end of the episode, we finally learn the name of the wolf we started out with at the beginning: Kiba.
In the first episode, we're introduced to all the principle characters-Kiba, Hige, Tsume, Blue, Quent, Cheza, Hubb, Cher-except for Toboe and Darcia(who show up in episode 2) but, aside from Tsume and Kiba, we aren't told how important they are, or what their eventual roles are. Even in their cases, we more have our attention drawn to them to show how very different they are-the wolf who disdains all trappings of humanity and refuses to be anything BUT a wolf, even for his own good, and the wolf who has tried to separate himself from the wolf and has become as hiuman as a wolf can, yet is still viewed as strange and different by humans. We're introduced to the series and characters, but instead of having the entire concept and basic plot laid out in a tidy package, we're simply told the story, and in a way where we're never lost or overwhelmed, even though the only times the main plotline are addressed are when the bartender reciunts the tale of wolves and paradise that his grandfather told him to Quent, and when Kiba and Hige talk about how the scent of lunar flowers drew them to the city.
Wolf's Rain also possibly has the best soundtrack of any anime(hence my wanting to post the credits...maybe the function will be back tomorrow)
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-08 04:27 am (UTC)We have posted alot today....why is that?
no subject
Date: 2007-04-08 04:45 am (UTC)And yes, for a 25 minute episode, that was quite a bit...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-08 04:49 am (UTC)very good point.