Wolf Children (movie recommendation)

 

This post is part of 52 anime challange - I'll be recommending one anime/manga per week that I've recently watched. I won't be writing about stuff that I've watched long time ago and that I don't fully remember.
Also, check out my video about Hosoda's style.

Wolf Children is the third film directed by Hosoda (if you don't count Digimon and One Piece). I wrote about “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” recently. I’m not a fan of his second work - “Summer Wars”. Despite the fact that the setting in the form of a village and a peaceful life overlap to some extent with “Wolf Children”, it’s not (in my opinion) a good movie, hence I skipped reviewing this film.

Wolf Children fixes a lot of the previous production's problems - we don't get the typical monomyth or Hosoda's distinctive style of 2-3 action packed-moments and huge climax that begins in Summer Wars and continues all the way to Belle (not counting Wolf Children, of course). Instead, we get several blocks representing different periods of the characters' lives, which is quite interesting and execution is good.

Without further ado, I invite you to read a story about a perfect mother and her children's personality crisis.

Description (no opinion):

Hana is a student who got interested in an unusual man (Ookami) who attends lectures, but who doesn't own books or turn in his attendance sheet. Over time, the characters get closer - Ookami reveals a secret to her - it turns out that he is half-human, half-wolf.

The result of their relationship turns out to be children who have inherited their father's nature. Soon after the birth of the younger of the two, Ookami tragically dies and leaves Hana and her two children alone. From this point on, the story of a parent who has to deal with raising unusual children on her own begins.

Plot - four segments:

I would divide the film into four main segments - the introduction, parenting children in the city, parenting in the countryside, school life and the personality crisis.

The first segment is the introduction which serves as a story catalyst, but there is no need to dwell on it - it is very good. The first stages of the relationship are shown for a suitably longer time to accurately introduce the viewer to the progress of their relationship. Events between moving in together to the birth of their children are presented without words, in accompaniment of beautiful soundtrack. This part ends with the death of the father of the little wolves, which is the moment when the plot is established and it will be the cause of future events.

The next segments (2, 3) talk mainly about the mother - the movie presents what difficulties come with raising children alone, especially such unusual ones. We see what problems arise from the nature of these children, starting with the inability to get medical insurance and register their existence.

Living in the countryside changes it a bit - the children have much more space to grow up, and the differences in character between Ame and Yuki (Ame - the older sister, Yuki - the younger brother) become very clear.

We will return to the character of the children later. This section of the film focuses on the hardships a young mother must go through - taking care of a huge mansion on her own, growing food she doesn't know how to grow, hiding the children's secret, looking for work, and much more. This part of the movie, between 20 and 60 minutes, is the pedestal on which the image of the ideal mother, praised in Hosoda's production, stands.

The last part (4) is the story about the children, the changes in their characters and choosing their life paths.

About growing up of children:

I have said enough about the mother's sacrifice in the previous section. The second half of the film focuses on the children. Originally, the older Ame is a tomboy - she likes to collect dead animals, play outside, and often stays in her wolf form. Yuki, on the other hand, is a "mama's boy," usually in human form, always hugging his mother and hiding in the house.

With both wolf and human blood in them, they must decide on a path to follow. I think the plot was well executed and I won't go into details not to spoil half the movie - just go watch it.

Art/sound:

Classic Hosoda's style seen in his previous works. This time, however, the visuals are more impressive compared to "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" or "Summer Wars" (not counting the final scenes). Beautiful backgrounds, good animation and dynamic sequences are vivid and interesting.

On top of that, there are three[?] times when Hosoda is playing with image and soundtrack, without dialogues, showing character development without words. Each of them is equally good and deserves a big applause.

OST is at a high level. In the case of voice actors, the trend of previous films continues i.e. the director once again hires amateurs and once again it ends up well.

I don’t think there is anything that I can pick on when it comes to visuals or audio.

Pacing and comparison to Summer Wars (analytical part):

The problem with “Summer Wars” is the very flat emotion axis. In fact, for 20 minutes absolutely nothing happens, we are flooded with characters that have no meaning. A small spike of excitement is provided by a brief fight with the virus, after which we return to insignificant events and a relatively boring plot until about the 40-45th minute of the movie.

It doesn't get any better after that, because the whole movie relies on small emotional hills when anything interesting happens every 10 minutes.

The only thing that saves this film is the spectacular ending, which lacks a proper substructure. Being fed almost exclusively with positive emotions, without going down for a second, the ending simply offers a bigger jump, but why should I care? The plot is established rather late in the story, and becomes relevant even later, only after it becomes clear that the computer virus may be a real problem. Still, the overall tone is kept positive, and it is hard for the movie to change the viewer's emotional attitude and for me to become sad or afraid whether the characters will win, because the whole movie just keeps piling positive emotions.

Moving on to Wolf Children we also have the village setting, the "peaceful" life and so on. However, in the first 20 minutes (the "introduction" described earlier) we are presented with the relationship of two people from beginning to end, their romance, their ups, their downs, the birth of their children and the establishing of plot that we will follow through the entire movie. In such a short time, the viewer gets a variety of emotions, the director is playing with sound, image, you can feel this is the actual life, which consists of both positive and negative feelings and events in people's lives.

Moving on we get the emotional valley after the death of the father. It is hard for a broken family and only occasionally do we get slight sparks of hope in the life of a single mother who is raising unusual kids.

Life in the countryside gives us hills of hope, and valleys in the form of adversities (rundown house, problems with crops, lack of money) - joys and sorrows intertwine repeatedly, showing ordinary life of really unordinary children.

We finally get to the second half (yes, we're only halfway through, and we’ve felt so many different emotions already), where Ame and Yuki's school life begins, and they can taste various aspects of life, both positive and negative. This part keeps amplifying the emotions that grow, swell, push towards the finale and... leave the viewer filled with all these feelings.

I am not saying that every film needs a catharsis, but on the one hand I find it lacking here. On the other - I respect Hosoda's artistic vision and quietly stepping back from these emotions, showing the future of the mother and children and forcing the viewer to accept exactly the same feelings and thoughts that Hana, the mother of unusual children, felt at that moment. It is we as the viewers who must deal with these feelings. No one can free us of them.

So even though I like to find an outlet for negative emotions at the end of a movie or TV series, in the case of Wolf Children, leaving the viewer filled with mixed feelings comes off as a good choice.

Age of audience:

Although it's not necessarily obvious from my post, the movie is accessible to viewers of all ages. I sincerely encourage you to watch it with your children, siblings, younger cousins because it is a story with a message that is really interesting, filled with emotions, and yet understandable to viewers of all ages.

Summary:

I would recommend this movie to anyone. I still consider it Hosoda's best work. It impressed me on the big screen many years ago, it also impressed me watching it years later on the small screen. It plays beautifully on human emotions, shows multiple tastes of life - both positive and negative, pays respect to the perfect mother, and shows the choice of life path that the strange siblings must make.