by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

When I look back on the history of anime from my pre-teen life (aka the early 2000s), I don’t think I quite realized the impact that specific studios and creators made on me until recently. Partially because I wouldn’t realize the same thing about Western media until a bit after that, but also because a few years into high school I drifted away from Japanese media as my main entertainment. I’ve since found my way back, but it’s been really interesting and useful to re-examine all the shows, creators, and studios that were vital to my brain development. (I re-read my favorite manga series at the start of the pandemic and it was enlightening, to say the least.)

As you might have been able to ascertain from the title, today’s pre-teen show of note is Wolf’s Rain. The studio in question is BONES (stylized over time in both all caps and all lower case, depending on the medium you’re looking at). To a more modern anime audience, BONES is the studio behind My Hero Academia, one of the most popular anime series in recent years. To a more classic 2000s audience, though, they’re the studio who made both adaptations of Hiromu Arakawa’s classic manga, Fullmetal Alchemist (which would be Fullmetal Alchemist and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood).

However, before those juggernauts BONES created Wolf’s Rain. It was a show that has, seemingly, slipped from the cultural memory, but it was a smash hit when it aired in North America in 2004. The show, created by BONES’s Studio A, along with writer Keiko Nobumoto and director Tensai Okamura is a series set in a pseudo post-apocalyptic world where wolves were god-like figures, but have since gone extinct. At least, that’s what the humans think. Instead, the wolves who are left have discovered how to disguise themselves as humans and live among them. Our main wolf, Kiba, goes searching for Paradise, the heaven-type place for wolves at the end of the world, a journey that gives him a new pack (Tsume, Toboe, and Hige) and allows him to meet the flower maiden Cheza (a girl literally made from a flower), whose death ultimately brings about Paradise and restarts the world.

Which is to say, of course, that Wolf’s Rain is weird. Not only that, but it slots itself really nicely into a type of successful anime that was being imported into North America at the time: original and depressing. There’s no doubt in my mind, rewatching it as an adult with a fully formed brain (I watched it when it originally aired on Adult Swim at the age of 12) that the team at BONES made something deeply strange but kind of eternal. Like Satoshi Kon’s Paranoia Agent, which I wrote about for last year’s Ani-May, Wolf’s Rain has a lot to say about humanity. Which is kind of remarkable, considering the four leads are all wolves. Like, actually wolves. Not humans who are sometimes wolves, although that’s how we often see them, but like… actually just wolves.

But okay, that brings me to something I find really fascinating about Wolf’s Rain and other anime like it. As a business model in Japan, anime is so completely different from American television—even American animation. Not just with how it’s consumed, and by whom, but particularly with how it’s developed and produced. However, even as a layperson, with no knowledge of how development and production on anime really occurs, there’s something I’ve noticed over time as a fan. Typically, most anime is based off of manga, but there was a time when a fair chunk of anime was actually original. And, by either design or by accident, those were a lot of the anime that were coming over to North America at the time. Not that adaptations weren’t blowing up, of course, but things like Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Wolf’s Rain, Samurai Champloo, Paranoia Agent, and FLCL were all huge hits. Huge enough that all of those had manga adaptations of them come out either right before they aired, during their run, or as a postscript, all as promo for the shows. 

Additionally, all of those original anime have something deeply sad about them. Sure, they can all be fun, but they’re also deep and existential. They yearn for something unattainable, but worthy of dreaming about, and they talk to us about humanity in a way other anime didn’t have a pinpointed interest in doing, especially at the time. It’s telling to me that I couldn’t remember a lot about the strange and intricate, but also not really explained, plot of Wolf’s Rain before my rewatch—but I have always remembered how it made me feel. That, sure, everybody dies, but there’s a supreme sense of hope at the end after all that sadness and sacrifice.

I could, and I likely would, argue that considering the Fullmetal Alchemist and Wolf’s Rain of it all, BONES is probably the single most influential Japanese television animation studio to me. Not, like, ever—but certainly on a personal level. Although, My Hero Academia’s popularity in both Japan and North America might actually make it a pretty modern contender, all things considered. But what BONES has managed to do, over the course of the studio’s nearly 25 year history is create a pretty even split between original and adapted anime. Like, they’re still making original works today, despite that being much less “in demand” than it was in the mid-2000s. (Side note that MAPPA is also doing this and I love them a lot for it!) 

Obviously, it’s great to get an adaptation of your favorite manga, but seeing the minds who bring those images to life (and sometimes truly adapt them, as was the case with BONES’s original adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist, which I do controversially prefer) actually create something from whole cloth? Well… there’s nothing better. Wolf’s Rain is a weird piece of 2000s anime art and I’m always gonna recommend it. The wolves are beautifully animated, the story is interesting even in its strangeness, and maybe it’s the nostalgia kicking in, but I really like the original English dub. Wolf’s Rain rules, and I think you should watch it!