Wolf’s Rain ★★★★☆

I was watching this with my girlfriend Ellie. I had never heard of it but it was really important to her when she was growing up. She died two months ago when we were a little under half-way through the show. She was looking forward to Blue showing up. I am never really going to be able to emotionally separate the show from her and watching the last few episodes really emotionally destroyed me. The world has ended but we need to keep going.

I do think the show drags a bit in the middle. Even ignoring the SARS production issues-induced recap episodes. Being moody and slow paced is fine but the characters feel very static for much of the show.

One aspect I really love is how they handle the depiction of the wolves with their human and wolf appearances, fluidly moving between showing them as either depending on the what the show needs to communicate at any given time, showing what certain people are seeing or just using the human illusions to let them emote more and punctuating dramatic moments by dropping it.