Forum - View topicREVIEW: Wolf Children BD+DVD
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Penguin_Factory
 Posts: 732 Location: Ireland |
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My assessment of this movie was much more unreservedly positive than Hope's- I fell head over heels in love with it, in fact- but this review points out some valid criticisms.
Wow, totally didn't notice any of that. Good catch. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 23812 |
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I loved this movie a ton and found the ending bittersweet. It has an interesting construction in that for a good chunk of it, it is about a single mother raising two kids but it gradually transitions to being about two kids deciding what path they will take as adults.
The bittersweet part comes in because, like many viewers, my thought was, spoiler["aw, do you have to choose one nature over another - can't you be both?" The film's answer is: no. Following one path inherently means other paths have to be abandoned.] Anyway, it is a beautiful film on many levels and I recommend it in the strongest possible terms. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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I don't know what you're trying to say here. "Wolf-dad" isn't important but the film lingers on him for a while. What for? |
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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I don't think the "message" of the film was necessarily spoiler["be either a wolf or a human"] but more that our specific wolf children they realised that for them spoiler[one nature was more central to their identity and one that they felt they wanted to follow]. Maybe it's the same thing, but I got a much more positive message. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Yuki does spoiler[swear never to transform into a wolf ever again, only to go back on that to trust that one boy with her secret.] |
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trilaan
 Posts: 1055 Location: Texas |
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To serve the story, to get it going. |
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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Hana thought he was a decent enough guy to be the father of her children, so what is wrong with a little love story when the movie is about a young mother? |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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All it needed was a couple lines of dialogue to give us a little insight about their relationship. "He was sitting there in class taking notes, lookin' shaggy, so I had his kids" is how it plays out in the film. |
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FenixFiesta
Posts: 2581 |
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ALL relationships be they important or frivolous are things of chance, and the movie went a little further than just "I saw him in class, now I want his kids". |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Aw, come on, man, that's weak sauce. 
"All relationships develop purely by chance," (not true,) "so we don't need to see this develop, we just know they were in love" is what you just said. If that's the case, there shouldn't have been so much continued emphasis on their relationship. Which there was, despite the fact the only meaningful conversation they ever share is Wolfman's "Gee it'd be nice to live in a house and not alone in the woods," followed by Hana's "I'LL BE YOUR HOME!" essentially. That's not much to build a relationship on. What was she attracted to in him? How did this affect other relationships in her life? Did she not have any other friends or family? Why not? We just need a little, but we're given basically nothing. It seems like Hana was dropped into Japan from heaven above, and that's not great for a character piece, which the movie very clearly is meant to be. Here's Ye Olde RedLetterMedia test: describe Hana's character without describing what she looks like, how old she is, or that she's a college student or mother. (Aka surface description.) See how long you can type without repeating yourself. Last edited by JacobC on Fri Dec 06, 2013 6:16 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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I am pretty sure that the criticism isn't that the story was improperly or inadequately told from the daughter's perspective. It seems that the criticism is more about the VERY FACT that it was told from the daughter's perspective, and that that style of storytelling diminished Hana and made her into a non-character, even though she is the central person. |
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roseversailles
 Posts: 236 Location: Washington, U.S. |
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I really loved Wolf Children when I first saw it. It got many tears, let me put it that way
 (Not to mention I have the same name as the protagonist, but I digress).
I can see where Ms. Chapman is coming from. It is true that the narrative is supposed to be nostalgic and limited in scope since it's from Yuki, explaining the lack of perspective on Hana, but that does take away some much needed exposition on Hana. As I see it, she's a tough, bright, and deeply good-hearted woman. She had trials that she bounced back from. Good, good. Now, of two major events that would really shake a person up, the reactions we get are cut short (spoiler[for instance, her response to the death of her lover was really brushed over and not explored enough, which could've alleviated some of the complaints about "Super Mom who handles everything with tenacity"]) and while I know more about Hana after the film has ended (as in, I can describe what she's done and been through, etc.), I feel I can state more about Yuki. If I were to analyze Hana in an academic essay AS A CHARACTER, most of it would either be projection or inferences, as Hosoda has not given us solid characterization on her. So, I don't think this review should be bashed as "you completely read this movie wrong." The point of art is that anyone can be critical of it and see something someone else doesn't. If anything, her review has taken the complaints I've been hearing lately by other reviewers (ie Hana is a poor portrayal of perfect femininity and motherhood, not a character with agency) and actually backed them up with a clear enough argument that I can agree with to an extent. Plus, it gives me another reason to revisit the movie~ |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 23812 |
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I disagree. The film was pretty emphatic spoiler[about why their father died. If you live in a city you have to embrace your human nature. Trying to be a wolf in that environment is a recipe for disaster.] Personally, I still don't fully understand why spoiler[the kids couldn't integrate both sides of their nature but the film was pretty clear that neither was ultimately interested in attempting that.] If your interpretation of that is, "well, that was just the choice of those two particular characters - two different characters might have come to a different conclusion," that's fine, but I don't buy it for a second. Films don't tend to work that way. They strive for universal themes rather than, "so here's a story where x did y and z did a, but hey that's just particular to those two specific individuals and please don't assume we are trying to draw any larger conclusions from their decisions." |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2247 |
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I'm gonna' agree with JesuOtaku on this one. I watched this with my anime club over the summer, and it was interesting to see how mixed our reactions were. Some people absolutely loved it, but a few people, myself included, were just a little "meh" about it all. Personally, I found Hana's characterization a little bland, especially when compared to the much more vibrant female characters of Summer Wars. Those women all felt like people I would meet on the street (or heck, even in my own family!), while Hana was a little bit too...not quite perfect maybe, but too calm about everything.
I actually really liked the build-up to spoiler[when Yuki gets poisoned] because I felt like something really interesting was happening to Hana at that point; she'd usually handled things with such tranquility, it was nice to see some conflict arise (as I found the spoiler[immunization subplot] to be weak and fleeting in general. The spoiler[fight between Ame and Yuki ] was good as well. But I definitely felt the films flaws more keenly in the latter part, especially after the time skip. While I really liked Yuki's arc (though I had some issues with the way Yuki chose to follow her particular path), I felt extremely cut off from Ame. We were never really shown (at least as far as I can recall) what he was actually doing with his master (I can only remember them running around in a field together--and I think this is because it's from Yuki's POV), or why succeeding his master was so vital to the survival of the forest. I just wanted some context there, not some kind of abstract idea. I would have also reeeeally LOVED to been inside Hana's thoughts at that time; she certainly looked very conflicted about Ame's choices, but we never really got to emphasize with her, only sympathize with her. I actually found her reaction to Ame's choices early on to be odd, considering how totally fine she was with the whole idea of wolves in the first place. I mean, in hindsight it's obvious why parents feel conflicted about letting their children grow, but in Hana, I just found it jarring considering how supportive she'd been of Ame in the past. TL;DR: All in all, I thought it was okay. Not "intense" enough to be a good film about motherhood, and (to me) it favored Yuki over Ame, so it wasn't really a great movie about the children finding their own way either. But it's not bad, just not my fav out of his other works. |
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trilaan
Posts: 1055 Location: Texas |
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It's another difference in how we each watch and interpret works of fiction. I did not think she was a in any way a diminished or non-character. She simply was who she was to me. This is why I make an absolutely horrid critic. |
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