Wolf Children (2012, Studio Chizu/Madhouse)

I was finally able to get a copy of Wolf Children, a 2012 film by Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars). Wolf Children won the 2013 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year and I had been anticipating it's US Blu-Ray release for a year.

Mamoru Hosoda is certainly the new Hayao Miyazaki. Hosoda's films contain many of the same themes found in Miyazaki's films: rejection of urbanization, celebration of naturalism, character transformation. And all of those themes are present in Wolf Children. Only Hosoda's characters are somewhat more human and relateable.

 ***Spoilers***

The story follows college student Hana who falls in love with a wolfman. They have two children together, daughter Yuki and brother Ame. The wolfman is killed shortly after his children are born and Hana has increasing trouble raising her half wolf children. She is eventually forced to move the family to rural Japan to give her children the space they need to grow-up.The rest of the film follows Hana's children as they grow and are forced to join either the animal or the human world. 

Wolf Children reminds me of 1991's Only Yesterday by Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata. In Only Yesterday Taeko leaves Tokyo to visit the countryside where she falls in love with rural life and rejects Japan's urban living as unfulfilling. Only Wolf Children adds adolescent angst to the mix.

Wolf Children continues Hosoda's mixed media approach to film making. So we once again were treated to amazing CG backgrounds with clunky 2-D characters superimposed over them. It's a look that I find distasteful and I wish would go out of style. But it's still a gorgeous film and worth the price of the Blu-Ray.

Wolf Children is a decent film. But it's not the great film that Summer Wars was for Hosoda in 2009.
Without getting into spoilers, I'll just say that the ending left me unsatisfied.All three main characters had to make life deciding choices but only one of them receives a proper resolution.Thankfully, Hosoda's still early in his career. And even though Wolf Children won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation, he has better films in him than this.   

3/4 stars