Wolf's Rain

Original title: Urufuzu Rein
Genre: Adventure, Post-Apocalyptic, Supernatural.
Director: Tensai Okamura
Writer: Keiko Nobumoto
Studio: Bones.
Original run: From January 6, 2003 to February 25, 2004.
Lenght: 30 episodes (4 added later).

"There's no such place as paradise...
At the ends of the earth, there's nothing at all.
No matter how far you walk, the same road just keeps going on and on.
But in spite of that...
Why am I so driven to find it?
I hear someone's voice calling to me...
It says: Make your way to Paradise!"

A world flooded in chaos where hope it’s a really rare thing to endure. All the environments are covered in a deep grey or in a bitter white. Cold plus ruins, to emerge such desolate cities. The humans are extremely divided into nobles or commoners and the most powerful nobles are active in their own wars, spreading an oligarchic model where military power grants the lead.
Within this flux, you’ll find Paradise as the ultimate seek for the majority of the characters, main of them: wolves, taken as a far vanished kind, but they somehow lingered on, surviving by taking human form and, through the Flower Maiden, they’ll found themselves the key to achieve that common objective.
This resumes quite well the matrix of Wolf’s Rain. The plot its simple, wolves linked somehow to some curious creatures, the Flower Maiden, and trying to pinpoint them, takes action the greedy human nobles which will seek the success of their own dreams. The interconnection of these 3 king pieces will give you a really nice game of chessboard. In fact, this is for me an uncommon and yet, very refreshing approach.
Deeply, this anime plays much more with the concept of friendship, lifting that as the great conquest of the reunion of such lonely and independent characters, the wolves, uniting their common wish in the same path. Together they’ll become able to face the traps and enemies until some point. Yet, while friendship succeeds, the concept of love can’t manage the same results.
About the technical components of Wolf’s Rain, they are all average for me, never getting lower than 7 and never acquiring more than 8. I rather write about some inner curiosities, like the soundtrack, where you’ll find tracks in several languages such as Portuguese or Italian and being honest, this anime attempts clearly to loom as nearby as possible to the occident, specially pro-American and that also may explain why this anime is so similar in everything in the English version, which is actually some faithful work.

Down point: Right in the middle, around 17th episode you’ll have to be patient with the 4 recap episodes, which seemed a bit unnecessary in my opinion. And probably the path of the wolves, too far and that will decrease a bit the rank of the animation for a while.

High point: The final it’s really, really charming.

Story - 8
Soundtrack - 8
Sound Effects - 7.5
Design - 7.5
Dynamic - 7
Vocal performances - 7
Characters - 7.5
Overall - 7,6