HOSODA MAMORU: WOLF CHILDREN

Wolf Children made in 2012 is the latest anime by Hosoda Mamoru. It comes after The Girl Who Leapt Through Time 2006 and Summer Wars 2009. At times, it is like watching the 1988 Miyazaki Hayao film, Tottoro. There are the scenes set in the country planting crops, watching plants grow and, of course, the great house cleaning scenes where an abandoned house in the country is brought back to life by refugees from the city. In Tottoro the mother is hospitalised so the father and his two children move to the country to be close to her. In Wolf Children the father is killed and so the mother moves with her children to the country. She has to do this as, like their father, her children are wolf children. They are able to transform themselves like werewolves but unlike most horror films, they have a choice as to whether they live a human life or an animal life. Like many films that focus on a point of difference these children (and their mother) see the way in which this point of difference becomes the basis for discrimination by human beings. The children have to hide their true identities, in order to survive. Being the object of an irrational fear puts them at great risk. Whilst Yuki chooses to go to school and be human her brother Ame struggles to find acceptance and chooses to drop out of school and receive his schooling from a fox in the mountains. One of the highlights in this film is the scene where Sugawara Bunta plays Yamashita, a crusty old villager who begrudgingly helps the young single mother to grow crops so that her family doesn't starve. His character doesn't change and whilst the mother is shown to struggle with the tasks that he sets her at least he shows her the way to survive whereas her children have no choice but to conform or be destroyed like their father.

Interviewed by Ryan Huff on a visit to Australia, in 2014, Hosoda was asked about the story he was trying to tell:

"When I started Wolf Children I wanted to outline parenthood, more specifically the point where the relationship starts and where it ends. For me, I believe that a parent's job is finished when their children become independent. The children then have an opportunity to use what they've learned. Unlike my previous films, where the story unfolds within three days, the passing of time in the story is stretched out over thirteen years. It was necessary to show everything that a parent does for their children. It's not very conventional in that way."