Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard” is both a pleasure and a pain to watch. The pleasure because of the economic hijinks happening in this episode as Kraft Lawrence does some underhanded dealing to beat Fermi Amati. The pain because he (and us) are constantly reminded about why he’s doing this. All in all though, this is still a fun episode to watch for the economic entertainment value alone, along with the subtle hints of jealousy Kraft is displaying here.

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard”: Details

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF NA key visual.
Alas, Holo doesn’t get much screentime in this episode.

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard” is the 17th episode (you can check out my reviews for Ep. 1, Ep. 2, Ep. 3, Ep. 4, Ep. 5, Ep. 6, Ep. 7, Ep. 8, Ep. 9, Ep. 10, Ep. 11, Ep. 12, Ep. 13, Ep. 14, Ep. 15, and Ep. 16 here) of season 1 (which hopefully won’t be the only one) of this economic fantasy reboot anime series by studio Passione (Citrus, Mieruko-chan, Yuri Is My Job!).

Said anime series is the reboot of the 2008 anime Spice and Wolf by studios Imagin (season 1) and the duo of Brain’s Base and Marvy Jack (season 2). Said original anime series (along with this reboot) are the anime adaptations of the light novel series of the same name by Isuna Hasekura (World End Economica, Magdala de Nemure). Crunchyroll is the company licensing this anime for its NA release.

Production Credits

Satoshi Saga is the director behind Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard”, with Yukito Kizawa as the writer, and Masae Nakayama as the storyboarder. As for the Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF anime as a whole, we do still know that Hijiri Sanpei is the director. Takeo Takahashi is actually returning from the original 2008 anime series as the chief director. Tatsuhiko Urahata is the overall writer, with Kevin Penkin (Made in Abyss, Tower of God, Bye Bye, Earth) as the composer for the music you hear in this reboot anime.

Voice Cast

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard” features the voices of  Jun Fukuyama (J. Michael Tatum in English dub) as Kraft Lawrence and Ami Koshimizu (Brina Palencia in English dub) as Holo the Wise Wolf. Other notable voices in this episode include Saeko Chiba (Ryan Reynolds in English dub) as Fermi Amarti and Rikiya Koyama (Ian Sinclair in English dub) as Marc Cole,

When and Where to Watch

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard” made its airing and streaming (aka. simulcast) debut on July 22, 2024. You can watch this episode only on Crunchyroll. In fact, you can watch this reboot anime as a whole only on Crunchyroll for now. If you want to watch the original 2008 Spice and Wolf anime for comparison, then you can do that on Crunchyroll as well.

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard”: Synopsis

Even when we see Holo, we don’t see her smile at all.

Alas, Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF is still an ongoing anime series. In fact, Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard” only just made its debut two days ago as of this writing. Thus, you will all get the official synopsis from Crunchyroll instead of a spoiler-filled plot summary. You can read that synopsis below:

Lawrence tries to persuade Amati into a special deal. This could determine the outcome of their agreement…

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard”: The Good

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 "Traveling Merchant's Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant's Signboard" episode visual by Jū Ayakura.
Jū Ayakura really knows how to make up for the lack of Holo in this episode.

There’s no doubt that the story of Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard” is what keeps me watching. It’s not the action, because there is none. Instead, it’s the economic dealings Kraft has in this episode that’s what has me on the edge of my seat. It’s the first time we’ve seen him this underhanded, and yet, it’s also for a touching reason too. This whole thing is basically a turning point in his relationship with Holo. This is the start of the beginning of Kraft realizing that he’s in love with Holo, and thus, it’s quite an exciting point in the story, all thanks to Isuna Hasekura.

To complement that story, we have the same quality animation as in the previous episodes. Mostly. Passione have mostly done a great job with the animation in this episode. It’s not quite feature-length anime film levels of quality like Black Butler -Public School Arc-, but for the most part, it’s still pretty good.

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard”: The Bad

Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 "Traveling Merchant's Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant's Signboard" screenshot showing Kraft looking troubled.
Both Kraft’s finest hour and his worst at the same time.

Alas, I do have a complaint about Spice and Wolf: MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF Ep. 17 “Traveling Merchant’s Shallow Thinking and Town Merchant’s Signboard”. While I have been praising it for its animation quality, the one place where the quality is lacking is in the food. Usually, the food in this anime is of good or at least of decent quality. In this episode, there was one case where that was lacking: the fish. There’s a scene where Kraft and Marc were eating some kind of pickled or dried small fish with their beer, and it basically looked like a small child’s drawing of a small, headless fish. No shadow, and the details looked scribbled in. It was so bad that it broke my immersion for a moment. I guess they had to cut the detail somewhere to save on costs, but this was just too much for me to ignore.

Aside from that though, if you’re an action junkie, then this episode isn’t for you. There’s no action in here whatsoever. If you want that, then you might want to check out Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Solo Leveling, Kaiju No. 8, and/or The Elusive Samurai. Those anime series should have more than enough action to satisfy any junkie.