Wolf Children [Blu-ray]

Back in September 2013, Hayao Miyazaki - the king of animation cinema - announced that he was going to retire from making anime films, following the international premiere of what is now his swan-song to cinema, THE WIND RISES (2013). The question that everyone now has on their mind is, who will succeed Miyazaki? Well, it seems we might already have one in Mamoru Hosoda. Beginning his career at Toei Animation, Hosoda won well-deserved acclaim and awards for directing two of the best anime movies of the late-2000's, THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME (2006) and SUMMER WARS (2009).Now, Hosoda has made it a triumphant hat-trick with WOLF CHILDREN (2012), a truly beautiful and heartwarming story about two adorable wolf-children Ame & Yuki and the paths they decide to take. The film got a limited release in UK cinemas in October, and has received great reviews. Even hard-to-please critics of the Film Guardian and science-fiction entertainment magazine, Sci-Fi Now, were very impressed with WOLF CHILDREN. Hosoda takes a concept that could have ended up being unintentionally laughable and handled it very well, showing how a person would go to great lengths to look after her children that are half-wolf.Anybody hoping that WOLF CHILDREN has the same action pace of SUMMER WARS will be disappointed. But Hosoda isn't out to make the same story or anything like it. The story takes it's time, yet thankfully doesn't drag on forever or outstays it's welcome. The animation for this film is wonderful. It just goes to show that this is the type of animation that mainstream cinema should return to. I find it very sad that most of the animated films Hollywood makes these days are very unfunny CGI-animated comedies with mostly talking creatures voiced by famous movie stars, but with no interesting story or any heart. Even Pixar seems now to have become a shadow of their glory days.Yet, the reason WOLF CHILDREN works so well is the story and characters. You care for them, whenever it's Hana, Yuki, Ame and the Wolf Man. And if the film doesn't leave you moved to tears, then there's clearly something wrong with you. The film reunited Hosoda with two of his collaborators from his previous masterpieces, screenwriter Satoko Okudera and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (that's right, the same man who worked on NADIA: THE SECRET OF BLUE WATER [1990-1991] and NEON GENESIS EVANGELION [1995-1996]). WOLF CHILDREN truly is a wonderful film to watch. Most of my family who watched it with me last week also loved it. Recommended for all fans of manga and anime alike.Reviewer: Ben David W

Outside Japan it can sometimes feel like we're over-exposed to Studio Ghibli, and it's easy to think that that's where Family Anime starts and ends. But of course, there are other Anime studios, and this film is from Studio Chizu, one of the studios which, based on this and other recent offerings, may well take the crown, just as Pixar shoved aside Disney in Hollywood.This is a beautifully made film, with a very simple story about a woman who brings up two children who can change at will between human and wolf, having been fathered by a man who could do likewise. The woman, Hana, is entirely human, so when the Wolf Father dies, she struggles to raise these two half wild children in her Tokyo apartment. She therefore takes them to the countryside, where her struggles continue, but are more manageable. The second half of the film then focuses on the children themselves as they mature into adolescence and undertake their own struggles - for them its the struggle to find their places as wolf/human hybrids, and discover themselves. So the second half is very much "coming of age" or "rites of passage".The main character is Yuki, the girl wolf, the narrator. She's a terribly cute little girl, and just as cute as a wolf cub. Her little brother Ame is just as cute, but features very slightly less in the story. The mother Hana is a perfect and devoted mother. The whole family set-up is very sweet and endearing, but not overly-sentimental because the characters are very three dimensional and very engaging. The struggles that the three of them go through are nothing like the struggles that we ourselves might face, and are each very different, but I was drawn into those struggles completely.This is definitely a lovely family film to watch with kids, from age 5 and above, but adults can enjoy it on their own too. With Studio Gibli and Hayao Miyazaki we became accustomed to some quite serious themes in films such as Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and The Wind Rises. This film is not like that at all. It focuses on telling a simple story with engaging characters. It is proper family entertainment.The animations is a little mixed. Most of the nature animation is breath-takingly beautiful, but the animation of the human and animal characters is just plain, simple anime.