Review: Wolf Children

Wolf Children is the type of movie where there’s no expansive world building, no jaw dropping action scenes, no breathtaking visuals, not even waifus. But what it does have is a simple story told in a masterful way that keeps you thinking about it for a long time.

The story is very simple, there’s the main girl, Hana, she falls in love with a guy in her college, but turns out the guy can transform into a wolf at night. Even after knowing that, she marries him and now has two kids. But unfortunately, the guy ends up getting killed by the police while he was in his wolf form.

Now, Hana is left with her two kids, Yuki and Ame, who are still not under full control of their wolf nature. Normally, stories try to keep us engaged with a mystery that needs to be uncovered, but this might be the first time I’ve seen a reverse-mystery be so engaging to watch. Hana is trying so hard to keep her kids secret, without the help of anyone.

The part of the movie that amazed me was how the story was told, the story doesn’t have anything that’s unique and mind-blowing, it’s just told in a very linear way, kinda like a story told by your grandma. But it still felt intriguing. The story has just enough to keep you watching, but not too much to make you think too much about it.

And now, to my favorite part of the story, the characters, Yuki, the energetic sister and Ame, the quite brother, and how their characters transform by the end of the story.
Yuki is hyper active and doesn’t stand still even for a second, as a result, posses the most trouble for Hana, because she might accidentally exposure her wolf side. She seems to enjoy the freedom that comes with the wolf nature more than the comfort of being a human. On the other hand, Ame is quite and calm, and a good boy, he isn’t that outgoing and likes to stay comfortable even if it means hiding the wolf part of him.

By the end of the story, Ame meets someone and develops strong leader-like character for the wild life. He believes that he belongs in the forest, and prepares to abandon anything for the sake of his people. He becomes a Chad, basically.
And Yuki develops into a character who likes to be more like humans, and decides to stay in this human side of the world despite having chance to be a wolf in the forest.

This complete flip of character traits of both these characters at the same time by the end of the movie is executed so well. It managed to flip the characters the other way around very naturally while following the narrative. The character development felt simply flawless and so satisfying.