Good Afternoon, This review isn’t going to be of A LITTLE
BIT SCANDALOUS because the eBook was so full of grammatical errors that I
simply couldn’t finish it. Instead I’m going to review an animated movie with
strong-ish romantic elements called WOLF CHILDREN AME AND YUKI.
This is
a Japanese animated film from 2012 and it’s about a woman named Hana who falls
in love with a wolf shape shifter and a
short time later loses him(not a spoiler, his death is in the trailer), but not
before they have two children together. He died before he could tell her how to
raise half-wolf children, so she has to battle single motherhood and learning
how to raise them herself, random shapeshifting and all. Early on her and her children escape the
prying eyes of the city by moving to a country town right next to a large
forest. The rest of the movie follows the children’s path as they grow from
toddlerhood into wolf adulthood and Hana’s struggles in dealing with that path.
Our
three main characters are Hana, Yuki and Ame. The development is decent, but
not exactly deep. Hana is pretty much a static cheerful and determined widow
who must learn to let her kids go, no matter how unconventional the path. She
loved her kids and protected them to the best of her ability, and you want to cheer
and sympathize for her because of that. One the most heart wrenching scenes is when
highlight to see spoiler:
her husband’s body is found in wolf form and two garbage men just throw him in
the back of their truck.
Hana’s reaction had me wiping away tears, in fact the entire movie captures Hana’s struggle
very well, even if she isn’t developed much as a character.
Yuki is
the older daughter who starts out as an excellent combination of toddler and
wolf. In the beginning, she is the one more in tune with her animal instincts.
Pretty early on she can hunt and, in the most hilarious way possible, she
shifts uncontrollably from human to wolf and back again while throwing a
tantrum. She also collects bones and various reptiles for her “treasure box”.
One thing that didn’t sit well with me when I first watched the movie was that
Yuki’s development consisted of her giving up her wild hobbies in order to be
normal and conform. Now, I realize that in Asian counties it is a sign of
maturity to conform and WOLFCHILDREN is first and foremost a Japanese film.
However, if can’t see past that piece of values dissonance I understand and
this film isn’t for you. If it makes it any better Hana did ask her if she
really wanted to change before she made the character development dress that
Yuki chooses to embrace. When she dons
the dress it symbolizes her turning her back on her wolf side, so make of that
what you will.
The
movie does show that she can’t shed her wolf side so easily though, and at one
point a boy named Sohei, who the movie hints she has a crush on, complains
about her smelling like a dog and keeps bothering her until she gets so nervous
and scared that she accidently morphs wolf and almost pulls his ear off with
her claws. Sohei eventually redeems himself in a rather sweet way that I won’t
spoil and highlight to see spoiler:
accepts Yuki’s wolf side when she intentionally reveals it to him.
When the reveal happens the movie uses white curtains
blowing in over Yuki’s face to show which side of herself she chooses to
embrace.
Ame is
Yuki’s little brother who is shy and hateful of his wolf side in the beginning
when he realizes that wolves are always the villains in children’s story books
and usually killed. He is reluctant to
delve too deeply into his wolf side until he almost drowns one winter while
chasing after a bird. He lives thanks to Yuki, but the situation is eerily
similar to how his dad is implied to have died.
The
winter passes and Ame enters school. In a lovely artistic shot done with
silhouette and a single shot of the school’s hallway viewers are shown that he
never quite fits in with humans and by the time he’s in fourth grade he’s given
up going to school completely. Instead
he takes alternate lessons with the spirit of the forest where he learns how to
be an awesome wolf. By the
end of the movie his Sensei has died and he takes over his teacher’s job,
leaving behind his family and all thin
The cast is rounded off with Sohei and several colorful country folk which are enjoyable to
watch, but all of them serve as plot devices and nothing more. Viewers get a
little bit of Sohei’s backstory and his personality comes off as nice, but
other than that there isn’t much to him except to help Yuki to develop. Despite
how archetypal the characters, the conflict between animal and human instincts
is done very well. At one point Yuki and Ame have gone down such different
paths that they get into an argument that quickly turns into them literally
fighting one another in their wolf form. The scene is heart wrenching,
especially when Yuki becomes human again and is city in the bathtub covered in
scratches and bruises. The fight also damages their relationship beyond repair
and shows that their animal and human sides can’t exist at once. The fight leads
almost directly to the eventual bittersweet ending which I won’t spoil.
To close I just want to say that
the art and animation is gorgeous, the movie is worth a watch, even for just
that. The music fits the film perfectly and makes for a relaxing watch full of
more than enough warm fuzzies to go around (glass of wine, cup of tea and/or
cat optional). I would be more than happy to watch this movie again, despite
the slightly lacking character development and values dissonance, so I’ll give
the movie a 4 out of 5. It can be
viewed for free on Youtube.
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