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REVIEW: Wolf Children BD+DVD

I think the story is about a mother told through the eyes of a child. It isn't so much the story about Hana as Hana but as Hana as a mother.

Does that limit Hana's characterization a bit, well yes. But I think narrowing the focus works for a short film. And I think narrowing that focus made the film thematically stronger, at least for me.

Agreed, honestly it seems to me that Hope completely missed the thematic point of the movie.

Hosoda is not a parent.

octopodpie wrote:

Hosoda is not a parent.

~HE IS NOW~! He had a kid like, right after the movie came out.

I found that odd because Yuki-as-narrator doesn't really have that much to say, and Yuki as a character in the film has her high-points with other children (like that one boy) and not her mother. Young Yuki's story is about struggling with the secret that makes her different from others and finally managing to fully trust someone else outside her family. Her mother isn't an important figure at all in this story.

...we can throw this out and just agree that it's a difference of opinion?

Maidenoftheredhand wrote:

This is what happens when reviews are based on only one person's opinions.

So every single review ever written, then.

I had a lot of issues with Wolf Children myself, but most of them boiled down to Hana - she isn't a character, she's SUPERMOM, unflappable in all situations, calm in every crisis, handling everything life throws at her with kindness and patience, which isn't realistic at all and took me right out of the film.

One scene where she didn't react like World's Greatest Mom or maybe made one parenting mistake or lost her temper or something that real people do would've gone a very long way toward humanizing her and giving the film the element of slight realism it desperately needed.

Zac wrote:

So every single review ever written, then.

Right but there is a difference when a series/film grade is based on only ONE review and when you are looking at it from aggregate review sites, that was the point I was making.

The problem is that when Hosada ask us to idolize these peoples the point he is trying to make is meaningless. You can't present something as perfect and tell us thats how we should live. A character whose sole existant is to spout words of wisdom is just a character who exist to prop up another character. The character is nothing more than an accessory for some more interesting person.

So your complaint is that ANN isnt metacritic?

Charred Knight wrote:

The problem is that when Hosada ask us to idolize these peoples the point he is trying to make is meaningless. You can't present something as perfect and tell us thats how we should live. A character whose sole existant is to spout words of wisdom is just a character who exist to prop up another character. The character is nothing more than an accessory for some more interesting person.

There were interesting people in Summer Wars?

One scene where she didn't react like World's Greatest Mom or maybe made one parenting mistake or lost her temper or something that real people do would've gone a very long way toward humanizing her and giving the film the element of slight realism it desperately needed.

I would point out that we do also have a second review of the movie on this site, one that was done last year when the subbed form of the movie was first hitting the convention circuit.