Anime / Wolf's Rain

A voice calls to me... it says "Search for Paradise"...

Wolf's Rain is an original anime created by Keiko Nobumoto, the screenwriter for Cowboy Bebop. It originally ran for twenty-six episodes from January to July 2003, but budget cuts and the SARS outbreak resulted in four consecutive clip shows (episodes 15 to 18); the broadcast series ends with the wolves foiling a Noble's attempt to enter Paradise, but without a proper conclusion to the story. Four OVA episodes, released a few months later (and listed on DVDs as episodes 27 to 30), brought closure to the story — but also received criticism for their dark and tragic events. The final episode also explains the show's title, as rain had only showed up in the opening titles until that episode. (Some TV networks outside Japan omit the OVAs from the show's broadcast.)

The Earth sits on the edge of death; years of war between greedy Nobles have reduced the world to a handful of high-tech, Giger-esque cities amidst a barren wilderness. Only a single, small hope still remains: an old legend which says that in civilization's last days, wolves will follow the scent of lunar flowers to Paradise. It sounds promising, but no one has seen either a wolf or a lunar flower for centuries... or so they think.

The world's remaining wolves learned how to project illusions that make them look and sound human in order to protect themselves. Four such wolves — Kiba, Tsume, Hige, and Toboe — meet up in one of the decaying domed cities after noticing the scent of lunar flowers in the air. They soon discover the source of that scent: Cheza, a mysterious young girl genetically bred from a lunar flower by a group of Nobles who want to open a gateway to Paradise.

When a Noble by the name of Darcia kidnaps Cheza to use her healing powers to help his ill fianceé, both the wolves and the feuding Nobles behind Cheza's creation chase after him. An obsessive wolf hunter named Quent complicates the feud, as he knows exactly how wolves protect themselves and works tirelessly to kill them at all costs (with the help of his loyal dog, Blue).

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Wolf's Rain contains examples of:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: The wolves' fangs are basically the equivalent of swords for combat damage purposes.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Kiba and Hige spend an ENTIRE night sleeping in one (they also ate some of the sewer rats while they were down there) in Episode 3 and neither of them ends up falling sick. Later in the same episode, the two of them, along with Toboe, trudge through the sewers with no problems at all except that Hige complains that he "doesn't like smelly places".
• Accidental Murder
  • Toboe unintentionally killed his elderly human owner/grandma because he was being too playful.
  • Later he kills a girl's pet hawk by giving over to his hunter instinct.
  • Toboe himself is shot and killed accidentally by Quent.
• Adventure Towns: Most of which are authentically seedy and decaying.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Subverted in Episode 14; Jaguara's soldiers surround Darcia and his wife's corpse and there are images of the keep being destroyed, but Darcia is alive and well, as seen in his return in Episode 25.
• Alchemy Is Magic: The wolves use alchemy to project illusions and perform supernatural feats, Cheza was created from mixing flower and human DNA, and nobles use a form of magic that heavily draws on transmutation circles.
• Alien Among Us: Wolves Among Us
• Alternate Animal Affection: Licking and nuzzling are used to represent kissing for the wolves.
• Animal Talk: The classic "two languages, Human and All Other Animals" version is explicitly in place once you see Toboe having a conversation with a horse. Even before then, Toboe often talks about having heard rumors from other animals, such as cats and crows.
• Anyone Can Die: You'd better believe it.
• Apocalypse How: Class 3A into Class 6. The whole planet is dying, because years of war have wrecked the environment beyond repair (and possibly also because of Darcia the First's attempt to open Paradise), so the world is slowly being enveloped by a nuclear ice age. By the end of the final episode, Kiba is assumed to be the last living creature on the planet, before he dies and resets all of reality.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: The Nobles certainly aren't a very moral bunch, apart from Hamona.
• Artificial Afterlife: Paradise is, according to legend, only supposed to be available to the wolves. Many nobles have tried to figure out how to enter it themselves, while Jaguara, on the other hand, is attempting to create an alternative paradise.
• Attractive Bent Species: All the wolves in their human image are a prime source of this.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Jaguara's elite wolf-hunter soldiers. The armor makes sense, but there's no rational reason they should use those poleaxes and swords instead of guns. The shields make sense, except for the fact that the handle is basically just a handgun grip, which is great for aiming a small weapon but terrible for use with a shield.
• Ax-Crazy: Darcia becomes this in the OVA episodes.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In the finale, Darcia kills them all and his eye corrupts the paradise Cheza's seeds created. May be mitigated by the last few moments when we see Kiba, reincarnated in the modern world, starting to run, implying that the search for Paradise has just begun anew..
• Beta Couple: Hige and Blue.
• Big Bad Ensemble: The three Nobles, Orkham originally has Cheza and his soldiers pursue the wolves for the first part of the series. Darcia steals Cheza and single-handedly keeps her from the wolves. Jaguara has the largest military force and conquers most of the civilization. Orkham is a pretty standard Big Bad Wannabe, Jaguara is killed at the end of the series, leaving Darcia as the last standing Big Bad for the OVA episodes.
• Big Bad Wannabe: While Lord Orkham manages to kidnap Cheza in the beginning, his forces, ambitions and knowledge prove to be inferior towards Jaguera's and Darcia's. Hence why he is quickly killed by Jaguara's Elite Mooks, once she enters the scene. To drive this home, his Mook Lieutenant has more characterization and even made to the poster
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • All the signs in the series are in Russian. And in perfectly correct Russian too.
  • Cheza's lullaby is in Gaelic, as seen here.
    Cheza: Shailoh shailoh yatreet ka
    Shailoh shna otveet ka
    Hahla alah hahlaha
    Shailoh washnee fortee ne
    Shailoh shailoh yatreet ka
    Omen nio nah
• Bittersweet Ending: Many might consider the anime a flat-out Downer Ending since the world ends and all of our main characters have died lonely deaths. However, the epilogue shows us that the wolves have been reincarnated into the modern world and may begin their search for Paradise anew.
  • The manga has a more straightforward one where though Kiba is blinded by the end and they've gone through a lot of hardship, all the main characters live, the sun comes out while the Ice Age finally ends, and it's implied they all end up in Paradise together. The bookend involves two wolf brothers who had been encountered as puppies by the main pack now setting out on their own journey to find Paradise.
• Book Ends: In the very first episode, we see Kiba lying in the snow all alone. In the final episode of the OVA, Kiba lies in the snow as he dies alone.
• Break the Cutie: Cheza, Toboe, Blue and Hige. Like whoa.
• Break the Haughty: The other half of the cast.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: All the characters do this quite often after the credits. When previewing the next episode, for example, Toboe says, "[. . .] [Liara]'s so nice, really nice, eh, oh wait, you don't know me yet, do you? Just watch the next episode, you'll see."
• Canine Confusion: Hige, Toboe, and most of the wolves are browner than any real wolf, and every wolf that has markings is oversimplified—although realistic ones would be hard to animate. The only visually realistic wolves are the pure white Kiba and pure black Blue (who is a wolf-dog). The pure black Darcia would count too, if not for his eyes being different colors.
• Central Theme: Evil will always exist.
• Crapsack World: It seems to be an environmental cold wasteland, with some civilization still left together, but mostly in decaying cities that are few and far between.
• Creation Myth: In-Universe, there is one that states humans were born from the essence of wolves. Additionally, the entire show is one for the modern world.
• Cue the Rain: As noted by the title. At the end of the series, Kiba falls through the ice and drowns, but then he sees rain starting to fall.
• Dead All Along: The owl in the forest and Myu.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Quent is this when he's around Hubb.
  • Tsume occasionally makes dry, cynical remarks and sarcastically calls Hige "Porky" at times.
  • Hige himself has a tendency to get a bit snarky.
  • Hubb, at the mention of his failed marriage with Cher.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Darcia goes through this after the death of Harmona. We get to watch it in all its heartrending glory.
  • Kiba seems to suffer a very painful one at the end of the series. Not only does he die alone after Cheza disintegrates right in front of him, he's the last living thing in the world to die.
• Death of a Child:
  • In the first episode, Tsume is leading a human gang of thieves. During a heist, Gehl, who Hero Worships Tsume, falls. Tsume tries to catch him, but although the illusion makes it seem as if he grabbed him by the shoulder with his hand, he's actually using his teeth. Hurt from the bite, the kid sees through the illusion and panics, falling to his death.
  • Toboe, the youngest, takes a bullet in the OVA.
• Divided We Fall: At first, Kiba and Tsume have this relationship, but over time Tsume comes to believe more in their quest for Paradise and becomes a vital aid.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: An example of where this is played for emotion rather than comedy. The extraordinarily tender scene between Kiba and Cheza in the finale, when they lie dying in each other's arms could be seen as a kind of consummation of their tragic romance. Cheza's speech as she tries to comfort Kiba contains a lot of gasping (in pain), and they're holding on so tightly that Cheza's clothes start to rip and she leaves scratch marks on Kiba's skin. She then arches her back (again, in pain) and crushes his face to her chest, after which the camera cuts to a shot of their blood mingling in the snow.
• Doomed Hometown: Curios, Quent and Blue's hometown.
• Downer Ending: Everyone dies, including Kiba, yet they are all apparently reborn as humans far into the future, and Kiba's search for Paradise seems to start over, making it a Bittersweet Ending in some interpretations.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Lord Orkham is quickly and unceremoniously killed by Jaguara's troops.
• Due to the Dead: Cher is the first person to die in the final episodes, unable to get out of the vehicle fast enough before it falls down the cliff. Hubb and the wolves are able to get down the cliff fast enough for Hubb to spend his final moments with her, before he lays her body into the nearby river and lets it sink into the depths.
• The Dying Walk: Both Darcia and Kiba do this in the last episode. Darcia, poisoned by Cheza's blood and delirious, suddenly breaks away from his fight with Kiba and goes toward the entrance to Paradise, despite knowing that he can't open it, and it promptly vaporizes all of him except his Magic Eye. Kiba, having passed the Despair Event Horizon after the deaths of Cheza and all his friends, walks away from the site of the battle and then finally falls through the ice, apparently the last living being in the world to die.
• Dystopia: Mew's world, the fake Paradise.
  • Jaguara's city is implied to be this.
• Endless Winter: Much of the series takes place in this but it's not said what lead to it, besides the show taking place After the End and that Nobles had something to do with it. However, this seems to be a regional thing, as some of the areas the wolves visit aren't blanketed in snow.
• Elite Mooks: Jaguara's fully armored soldiers take a while to fall into Villain Decay. They retain a threatening air, slaying Lord Orkham, having an immunity to bullets and wolf bites, and conquering pretty much all the other countries. One takes on both Blue and a gun-wielding Cher and holds both back until he's hit with a tank shell. When the Decay finally hits and Kiba tears through them, he's still left with injuries that last the remainder of the series.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Darcia was already very badass as a human. Then he goes all Buick-sized wolf on the heroes.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: In a distressingly systematic fashion, followed by a possible Reincarnation, depending on what you think is actually happening in that very last scene. However, the manga version of the story has the wolves, humans and Cheza survive. The bad news is that Kiba ends up being blinded in the fight with Lord Darcia. The good news is that the clouds part, the sun shines and the Ice Age ends.
• Evil Counterpart: After crossing the Despair Event Horizon, Darcia basically becomes like an evil, crazy version of Kiba.
• Evil Desires Innocence: Lord Darcia zigzags this trope with respect to Cheza. He does seek to possess her, but only because of her Healing Hands. When Harmona is killed, he doesn't hesitate to beat Cheza brutally, having decided to destroy the world and arrange for himself to be the only one to enter Paradise.
• Evil Overlord: Both Orkham and Jagerua qualify. They rule over vast territories, are absolute rulers and let their citizens die in poverty.
• Eye Scream: In the manga, Kiba loses one eye during unexplained circumstances when he's separated from the pack. He loses the other during a fight with Darcia.
• Fainting: Cheza faints all the time! It may be justified, though, since she's supposed to be a flower, and with all the time she spends out of water, most real flowers would wilt.
• Face–Heel Turn: Blue joins forces with Darcia in the manga, something she never did in the anime.
• Fairy Tale Motifs: One of Cheza's outfits is, yes, a red riding hood.
• Fanservice: The opening credits have a very blatant ass shot of Kiba.
• Fantastic Arousal: When Toboe and Hige get petted by Cheza, they become blushing moaning fanatics crying out that it "feels nice".
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The aforementioned ability of the wolves to assume human form is sometimes confusing. Most of the time, they apparently retain their wolf form, only ''appearing'' to be human. They also, for the most part, seem to be incapable of certain human activities such as driving or using firearms. Yet they sometimes appear to be holding objects in their hands. It usually translates to holding things in their mouths, as shown when Tsume grabs Toboe to keep him from falling. The confusion mostly stems from the fact that they also spend a lot of time looking human even while there are no humans around to fool. Possibly, this is a sort of Translation Convention; the audience can identify with the characters better if they look human. It doesn't really get weird until they start chowing down on a dead deer — while in human form.
  • The degree of this is shown to be limited to human-visible spectrums: while they appear human to the human eye and to video camera, when Jaguara's soldiers look at them through heat-vision scopes they are clearly wolves.
• Furries Are Easier to Draw: Inverted. This may be the only series that turns the Animals Are Easier To Draw Trope on its ear. The wolves may spend a questionable amount of time appearing human because it's easier to animate. The artists presumably have much more experience animating the human figure and its movements. It's also a lot easier for the audience to relate to human-like characters than to wolves.
• Gaia's Lament: The planet has taken a huge toll from the constant wars in the backstory and has become a ravaged wasteland. Many animals and plants are extinct or thought to be so. Wolves are one such species, though they're actually hidden among humans. The plot involves some of them looking for paradise to leave the wasteland behind.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: The OST has songs sung in several different languages, including English, Japanese, French, Italian, Portuguese, and even some Native American chanting. And it's all done flawlessly, but then again, this is Yoko Kanno, after all.
• Heaven Seeker: The wolves' quest to find Paradise drives the whole plot.
• Hell Is That Noise: Cheza's scream when she senses spilled wolf blood.
• Here We Go Again!: Subverted. The series opens with Kiba wounded, staggering through the snow after the death of his pack: "A voice calls to me. It says, 'search for Paradise...' " The scene and monologue recur in episode 30, only this time, he's the only character who is still alive. In the last scene of the series, some of the characters appear alive again in a modern city, and Kiba starts running, implying that his search for Paradise started again.
  • It's played straight in the manga, which ends with two wolf brothers starting their own journey to find Paradise.
• Heroic BSoD: Kiba has one after Cheza dies. Then he dies shortly after. Tsume has one at Toboe's death as well, proving himself to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold after crying Manly Tears and going into his Woobieriffic Backstory with his dead, fallen friend.
• Holographic Terminal
• Homing Projectile: The sufficiently advanced lasers.
• Howl of Sorrow: It being that kinda show, this happens often. Especially since most of the main characters are wolves, so there's a lot of literal howling going on anyway.
  • The wolves after finding Toboe's dead body.
  • Toboe does this in remorse after accidentally killing Leara's pet hawk.
• Humans Are Bastards: Played with. This seems to be from the POV of the titular wolves, as a good number of wolves were hunted down for little reason at all besides existing and we see this from Nobles and Quent, however, the latter is only killing wolves to avenge his family.
• Hypno Trinket
• Interspecies Romance: Kiba has two. There's Cheza the Artificial Human, and a female caracal (who may have been dead at the time) from the Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • Toboe and Leara. It didn't last long though, as Toboe accidentally killed her pet hawk, and in the emotion of the moment he dropped his human disguise and let out a mournful howl. She understandably does not take any of this well.
• Jump Cut: This is how we transition between wolves looking like wolves and looking like humans; no morphing, no nothing.
• Just Before the End: Taking place in the future, where there seem to be very few remaining cities and far between, with the weather getting colder and colder.
• Kill the Cutie: Several. Toboe is the most memorable one, though.
• Last of His Kind: The wolves' are attacked while traveling across the sea of drifting ice by a giant Walrus, after Toboe mortally wounds it, he tells them he was the last of his species.
• Licked by the Dog: Early on when Tsume is being a jerkass, Toboe's liking for him is one of the few things (besides his badassery) that makes him likeable. Although being voiced by Crispin Freeman doesn't hurt.
• Lie to the Beholder: The wolves' human forms are merely psychic illusions; they can't fool animals, security cameras, or so on. Or even heat-vision scopes, which Jaguara's soldiers use to tell if people are humans or wolves in disguise.
• Limited Wardrobe: The wolves, in their human form appearance, always seem to be wearing the same clothes. As, actually, is pretty much everybody, for the most part (Hubb and Cher are shown wearing different outfits in Flashback but their clothes don't change much in the actual show).
  • Justified for the wolves, since their clothing is just an illusion, and so they have no reason to change its appearance.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: There's a plant whose pollen puts anyone who comes near it to sleep until they eventually die. Kiba gets caught in it and enters a false paradise, and to hammer the point home, one of the first things seen in it is an actual lotus. This is possibly subverted, depending on your interpretation of the scenes that follow. Myu, the female caracal, was possibly caught in it too prior to the story.
• Love at First Sight: Kiba and Cheza fall for each other the moment they first see one another in Episode 7.
• Magical Native American: Thankfully withheld until the nineteenth episode.
• Manchurian Agent: With a Chekhov's Gun you might easily dismiss.
• Mask Power: Darcia, but all Nobles (Bar Hamona) like masks apparently. Nobles are freaks.
• Mercy Kill: When Hige is fatally wounded by Darcia he asks Tsume to finish him off because he doesn't want to feel any more pain.
• Mind Screw: The ending scene.
• Mr. Fanservice: Kiba and Tsume shoulder the burden more or less equally.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Jaguara does this to her sister openly, albeit offscreen, followed by an If I Can't Have You…, when the beloved doesn't appreciate the deed.
• New Old Flame: Cher and Hubb. They were married once, but divorced when Cher's career and her interest in Cheza (the latter because she was sad that she and Hubb could not have children) became more important to her. Hubb doesn't hide the fact that he still loves her, and while Cher starts out cold and dismissive towards him, she eventually shows signs of still being in love with him as well. Towards the end of the series they reconcile and consider starting over, which is sadly doomed by the "Everybody Dies" Ending.
• Noble Wolf: Wolves are an ancient race chosen by the Lunar Flowers, the only ones allowed to enter Paradise. They are also just as intelligent as humans and have the power to disguise themselves, making them almost like higher beings.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Darcia in the penultimate episode delivers this to pretty much everyone.
  • He does it again in the finale, this time killing everyone but Kiba and Cheza. The only reason why both of them survived was because Darcia got incinerated when he tried to enter Paradise alone. But then Cheza dies...
• Nostalgia Heaven: In episode 29, the dead or dying Toboe has a vision of himself as a pup with his beloved human Granny (whose death he accidentally caused and always felt guilty over).
• Official Couple:
  • Kiba and Cheza. Their romance ends very tragically, however.
  • Darcia and Hamona as well, until the latter became ill.
  • Hige and Blue. What makes this more tearjerking is that Blue is afraid of dying alone, and Hige decides to die by her side, which eases her fear.
• Ominous Owl: That freaky (ghost?) owl, who is implied to be Darcia I, Cheza's creator, (which could explain why she faints in the owl's presence in the forest) who keeps popping up in the dead forest.
• Only Good People May Pass: The entrance to Paradise. Darcia attempts to enter after being fatally poisoned by Cheza's blood and is spectacularly destroyed. Unfortunately, this also prevents Kiba and Cheza from using the portal.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Not explicitly addressed until the very last episodes. And even then, it's up to interpretation.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Used in the manga. Two wolf pups lose their parents, their father to Quent's hunting and their mother due to injuries sustained during a Heroic Sacrifice to keep them from being torn apart by a pack of wolves that had gone mad.
• Polar Opposite Twins: A literal Evil Twin, Jaguara turns out to be Hamona's evil sister; also, Kiba's human form looks a lot like Darcia's, which as it turns out is no coincidence.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Kiba has a chip on his shoulder.
• Psychotic Love Triangle: Jaguara, a Yandere, is in love with Darcia who's a Yandere for her twin sister.
• Raised by Wolves: Inversion. Although this show is about wolves, only two out of the five wolf main characters were actually raised by wolves, Tsume and, presumably, Hige. The rest were raised by humans. Because they are wolves, they tend to lack emotion when they are in their human forms, and can be very awkward when actually conversing with humans. Toboe, Blue, and Hige are all much more comfortable around humans, because they have been around them more. In Toboe's case, his attachment to humans is what ultimately causes his downfall.
• Really 700 Years Old: At least, three of the four named Nobles. And Cheza.
• The Remnant: After Lord Orkham is killed, his Mook Lieutenant gets control over the remaining troops and keeps fighting against Jaguara and her army. They are not as evil as the usual examples and even overlap with La Résistance.
• Reset Button Ending: After Kiba dies, we see the whole world has been reset into modern day Earth, suggesting that Paradise is just the real world where wolves are no longer mystical creatures.
• Roboteching: Beam cannons used by Nobles tend to behave like this.
• Scars Are Forever: Several wolves bear nasty scars, reflecting their harsh lifestyle, the most prominent example being Tsume's x-shaped scar on his chest, which carries over into his human form.
• Scenery Gorn: Quite a few examples, particularly the ruined city in "Scars in the Wilderness".
• Shout-Out:
  • "Julius", the male prostitute from Cowboy Bebop, briefly shows up in one episode. This isn't too surprising as Keiko Nobumoto, the series' creator, was previously the screenwriter for Bebop.
  • Cher's 'funeral' is a nod to Final Fantasy VII.
• Shoot the Dog: Quent makes this his entire life mission after a wolf destroys his home and kills his family. He ends up regretting it after he shoots a wolf who gave up his life trying to save him, causing a My God, What Have I Done? moment just before dying with said wolf.
  • What makes it even more tragic is that this was revealed to ultimately be pointless, as wolves merely scavenged on the remains of his family after they were really killed by Jaguara's forces — either as collateral damage or part of a cover-up, it's not really made clear — in an attempt to capture Darcia, when he had first shifted into his wolf-form years before the series started.
• Solemn Ending Theme: "Gravity", sung in English by Maaya Sakamoto.
  • As is "Tell Me What the Rain Knows", the closing theme from Episode 26 (the last episode in the original broadcast run).
• Star-Crossed Lovers: The most notable example is Kiba and Cheza. Hubb and Cher, Darcia and Hamona, and Hige and Blue (so wait, make that every single couple) qualify as well.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: The wolves' human forms have golden/amber eyes, to reflect their true nature. Kiba and Blue are the only ones with different eye colors.
• Talking to the Dead
• Theme Naming: Kiba = fangs, Tsume = claws, Hige = whiskers, Toboe = howling, Darcia = dark.
• Together in Death: Toboe and Quent, Hige and Blue, and technically Cheza and Kiba, although Cheza's body literally goes to seed before Kiba dies.
• Took a Level in Jerkass:
  • In the manga, Tsume is a lot more aggressive and suspicious of Cheza, not truly warming up to her for a long time, in counter to the anime where he accepts her much sooner.
  • Blue is also much more selfish as well, having more of an It's All About Me attitude, believing Darcia's clear lies that they're The Chosen One who will open Paradise, and is openly an antagonist towards the wolves. Whereas in the anime, they're accepted by them as one of the pack after only being an antagonist in the early episodes and get into a romantic relationship with Hige.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Blue truly ends up being surprised by the fact she's half-wolf. Quent already knew all along and the other wolves seem to have sensed something similar, for they're not surprised when they meet her again.
  • However in the manga, Quent gets the shock of his life when he realizes the "woman" and her two "children" he's been trying to defend from a crazed pack of wolves tearing them apart are actually a mother wolf and her pups. This indirectly allows the pups to survive as their mother shields them from the attack in a Heroic Sacrifice long enough for Quent to kill the rest of the pack.
• Tragic Dream: Hub comforting Cher while they are being held captive by discussing how after this is over they'll live by the sea in a house together, and grow old together. Even if they get out of the situation, the world is an icy wasteland on the verge of a complete nuclear winter, there's really no chance they'll ever get to see this dream come true.
• Train Job: Tsume's gang pull one off in the first episode.
• Translation Convention: All the text in the series appears to be in the Cyrillic, i.e. Russian, alphabet. The Russian seems to be genuine - e.g. Kniga Luny, The Book of the Moon.
• True Companions: Kiba's pack always stick together till the end to protect Cheza.
• Uncanny Valley: Darcia's expressions in his wolf form, because it is clear he is forcing human expression onto a wolf's face. This makes his grin especially disturbing.

• Ventriloquist Animal: The wolves only physically move their mouths to talk while under the guise of their human form illusions.
• Walking the Earth: Justified as they're actually looking for something.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Inverted, most humans in the story are important only by their relation to the wolves. The remorseless killing of dozens of human mooks (and even some members of Tsume's gang) by the wolves is never given a second thought.
• White Wolves Are Special: Kiba, the main character, is a white wolf.
• Wound Licking: Toboe once annoys Tsume by licking his wounds while he is asleep.
• Xenofiction: Mostly told from the POV of wolves.
• You Are Worth Hell: Blue has no idea if she counts as a "real" wolf (being a wolfdog), and if she'd be able to get to Paradise at all. Hige is willing to give up paradise if she can't come with him.

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