If you're going to be like that...
Spice and Wolf - 09 (1289x720 H264) - [sudo]
If you're going to be like that...
Spice and Wolf - 09 (1289x720 H264) - [sudo]
When trade doesn't go his way.
[BSS] Spice and Wolf - 10
[Ayako]Spice and Wolf - 10v2
[Ayako] Wolf and Spice - 10v2 HD
hmm, only way I see him getting out of this is either using that sheperdress (for what, I have no idea), or somehow driving the demand for armor up. Maybe they'll bring up the news of the bandits.
The financial side of this series is sometimes hard to follow. I had no idea before this ep that he didn't actually buy the armor, or at least fully. So, in practice he borrowed money to get that amount of armor and now with the price crash the amount he needed to borrow is more than the value of the armor. It had to be quite a crash indeed considering they get the ware for half the normal price in the first place. I guess he didn't have that much spice either, after all. Though it's hard for me to see how the price of armor could drop so much. Back in those times steel itself was very valuable indeed.
Well, other than that I didn't like how Lawrence was led to say that thing to Horo. It was just too cheap (script writing) and not fitting for this series in my opinion. I feel a bit let down by that, even if it was considered necessary for the plot. Sure things are looking grim for him but I didn't expect him to be one that would instantly blame somebody else for his troubles. He didn't seem like that kind of a guy.
Ayako's release slapped on some notes from the light novel about why the price in armor dropped so much, and exactly how Lawrence got screwed. Really helped out, and now it makes perfect sense why he wanted the armor in the first place, and why all those merchants were giving him dirty looks.
Because I had no clue either.
For those who watched BSS's, or didn't wait for the notes, the really short version is that the city usually uses a ton of the armor every spring for some annual ceremonial crusade, but it was canceled this year, and the market got flooded with supplies.
Well, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. An armor was a bloody pricy piece of equipment back when the industrial revolution hadn't happened yet (and of course at that point nobody used them anyway because guns had already made them obsolete). You didn't buy a new suit every year unless you were a king or an emperor or otherwise equally rich and a total armor otaku. They were passed from father to son, or issued by the armed forces of whatever noble was in power to select personnel. So, a long period of peace would drop the prices. However, such a thing would hardly confuse any merchant, so let's say a surprise peace treaty ending a long lasting war or an end of a (real) crusade. Cancellation of a ceremony? Are we talking about ostrich feather hats here or something?
Ideas:Originally Posted by Kraco
Buble on the armor market.
Everybody thought it was the hot item. Too much manufactured, market overflooded.
At some point the price drops a lot, because you have not enough buyers to have it live on, or buyers are waiting for the prices to drop.
Compare it to housing bubble (although in that case it's more a mortgage/credit bubble)
Or you have a company that played evil by producing a lot of amor, stocking them without selling to anyone.
You then have a lack of the product on the market. Prices rise because customers are desperately seeking for those items. All merchants get the feeling the armor is a very hot topic.
At some point, the company (who first or second armor supplier at least) releases armors massively at a greater price thanks to their idea.
For it to work you need merchants that have little communications between them, or the guild they are in got corrupted by the company planing this.
In the end you have lots of merchants, with too much armors at a price too high for amors.
Customers are overflooded with armor choice. In such a case prices drop, always...
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
i don't understand this stuff at all but it still kicks ass! horo is the best ^.^
why did horo start calling lawrence "master" btw?
and why didn't they lent him money? because horo wears all these nice clothes and so on?
Yeah, I guess it has to be something like that, David75. A cancellation of a single ceremony can't be the whole answer.
The episode name included the word conspiracy, so I don't think we yet learned the whole picture in this episode. Normally a merchant would lend money to another if it generates interest with a reasonable risk (all aspect considered, legality, trust, etc) and he has some extra capital to lend. Something tells me this point has been invalidated by something, and it's not simply that they would disapprove of Lawrence travelling alone with a woman yet not being married to her. The first guess would be the church but I don't know why they would resort to such indirect means when they could just snatch Horo from the streets and nobody would complain. So, the church should have no need to make Lawrence hand over Horo. Yet I don't really see any profit for anybody to get Lawrence simply out of the market, financially thinking. He's not a specialized merchant, after all.
Yeah that one merchants response didn't really make sense, but I suspect we're missing something of the story about either the culture of their world or the situation. The church is the looming entity that's always haunting Lawrence and Horo's steps but it hasn't really done anything or revealed it's intentions beyond the suppression of other religions or practices.
The thing that I really don't get from a business perspective is why they'd rather sell Lawrence into slavery, which doesn't sound like it would net them all that much of a return on the loan, as opposed to forcing him to pay back the debt with interest over time by turning over any profits he makes from future business deals to them. If they sell him off it doesn't seem likely that they'd get anywhere near the full return on the loan. It's like a bank foreclosing on a house instead of negotiating a temporary reduction in monthly payments to give the borrowers time to improve their finances.
The only thing I can think of is that they know even if he had a long time to work at it he's not in a good position to make any profitable business deals now and they actually would get more in the long run just selling him off.
Last edited by Yukimura; Fri, 03-07-2008 at 11:21 AM.
So I've been able to watch that ep at last. A detail or 2 weren't mentioned as of yet. Or maybe I'm wrong in my statements:
-The debt transfer is very strange.
Why would a company transfer the debt that way? and why to a company that lost everything on the armor bet?
-The debt transfer was quicker to arrive than Lawrence? How is that possible as he took the quickest path to this town? If I'm not wrong on that one, that means the trap was prepared even before he conclueded the deal that would get him in trouble. Did they use a pigeon for debt transfer? come on...
Then there are these references to God everytime he gets stressful meetings.
The Guild representative said he couldn't help due to the ways of God
The same goes for the guy that was almost ready to help Lawrence.
These two ones were interrested in Horo, not for the same reason though.
So all in all, it's highly probable the church is behind all of this. Merio company representative said they couldn't do anything against the church. In truth, it's the most powerful organisation around it seems. So Lawrence is quite screwed for now.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
The Ayako version answers your first question with extra info from the novels. The company that Lawrence got the armor from was a partner with the company he went to to sell it to. Apparently they gave them the debt to try and help them out.
Lawrence was the only idiot that didn't know the city had canceled their annual pilgrimage. Kraco, think of it more as a Ceremonial short version of the Crusades, every year. Knights, who would be nobility, stock up on supplies and armor and such. However, political unrest in the region they need to pass through disrupted it.
You end up with a lot of merchants (hence, everyone saying how tough a time they were having when Lawrence went begging) with an enormous overstock and no place to unload it to. Lawrence got swindled by people who already knew all the details. He got overconfident.
I agree with you that it is stupid of them to be buying lots of new armor all the time, but I didn't write this stuff. Still, Lawrence only had a half dozen or so sets, so perhaps the amount of armor being bought is far less than both of us are imagining.
Yeah. A very good point. In fact it also makes more sense now that you said it like that. The total number isn't so high, but each piece of pretty expensive. That's why Lawrence got the nasty debt so suddenly and so easily, as well.
I've been searching through the eps this "armor" trouble.
During the negociation after Horo discovers the Table/Scale trick in Ep8, Lawrences asks for Armors as a compensation.
At the time he is over confident, as Horo is.
The merchant reactions can be interpreted as troubles because he was discovered and is shocked of being compelled to obey... Or just "What the heck, armors?"
Of course it's easy to write this after you know about armors, but he didn't talback at the time, didn't try to negociate a bit more even though he was guilty.
I will search Ep6, but I don't think I can find reference to armors there.
Ep7 is probably central to the armor problem, someone Lawrence (that he trusts quite a lot?) did put that idea in his head... That ep probably also is an explanation on why he insists so much on "I trust God after all".
On a side note, I heard Horo use "Nushi/Master (spell?)" refering to Lawrence in ep8.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening. And then: Golf.
I thought the general idea was that episode 7 was about Horo being in heat, but maybe that's just 4chan talking.
Well, finally got around to this ep. All's pretty much discussed. I thought this ep was going to be around that evil looking guy who showed up at the end of episode 9. Btw, is this series 12 eps or 13?
It is 13, but they only had enough episodes timeslotted to air 12.
I think this is actually feasible.
They went the only "open" route that it'd be safe to travel as a merchant (assuming you weren't worried about wolves and witches and whatnot). However, as they took that route, they took it at a pace where they weren't worried about a shepherd as an escort slowing them down.
In fact, if you remember a couple eps back they let that merchant on foot go ahead, because they'd slow him down, not the other way around.
So basically, they went from city to city at about a slow walking pace -- which is why it'd be more dangerous to travel through a place full of mercenaries. If you're dragging a cartload of heavy armor with a single draft horse, you're not going to make nearly as good time as a messenger on horseback, even if he's moving at a relatively leisurely trot. For that matter, a carriage with a team of horses would also make better time.
Think of it like buying a new pimped-out Escalade every year. 'cause you can't possibly be seen rollin' up in a 2 year old car. People would talk! Same deal with that dinged-up dingy rusty armor...
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