Ookami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki

When you belong to two worlds, sometimes it just comes down to what your heart wants most.

My original plan was to wait for the subs before I ventured to watch this film, but eventually I decided that watching an entire movie in Japanese might be a good learning experience. This isn't the first time I've watched something new without subtitles either, though I find that my comprehension has improved considerably since the last time I did this. Occasionally the conversations were a bit difficult to follow, but it wasn't impossible; hurray for the terribly strict Japanese instruction at Cal!

Honestly though, I think anyone could have followed the film and done alright, even without a single word of Japanese under their belt. Like most anime films, this was a simple and beautiful work, and thus rather self-explanatory, though not necessarily Hosoda's best. Personally, I prefer Summer Wars, which I loved, though I feel much the same about this film as I did about his earlier work, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which I thought was quite amazing, though less so than Summer Wars. Ookami Kodomo is pretty, it's emotional, and it has a great story, though I imagine it can be a little hard to empathize with for some.

Normally this type of story would focus on the romance between two people from different worlds, though Ookami Kodomo instead focuses on the life afterwards and the unique challenges facing this half-human, half-wolf family. When Hana's wolf-man husband dies, she finds herself alone with two child-cubs to raise and no one to turn to on how to do it. Things that normal mothers can do, such as rushing their sick children to the hospital or taking them out in public, are impossible for her and her life in the city becomes ever more stressful because of those limitations and the already difficult process of raising children. Hoping to find a better life for herself and her precocious toddlers, she relocates to a village at the base of the mountain where her husband came from. Here there's ample space and privacy for headstrong Yuki and her shy little brother Ame to roam freely, though even here they never seem to quite fit in. Hana has a hard time covering for her children and their misbehavior, and Yuki, who holds great pride in her wolf heritage, is tamed into wanting to become human after realizing that the other children are nothing like her. As she grows older, she becomes ashamed of her other self and suppresses her wolfish instincts in order to become as "normal" as possible.

On the other hand, Ame is more human than wolf as a child. He's easily scared and finds little pleasure in hunting or being wild like his sister. However, his shy personality makes him painfully aware of the fact that people are afraid of wolves, and it also makes it extremely difficult for him to connect with anyone other than his immediate family. His isolation causes him to turn inward to the instincts he never cared for before, and when he finds a teacher in a fox, he's suddenly exposed to what freedom really is for an animal of the mountain, where the wilderness tugs ever harder on his heart.

For me, this juxtaposition of the siblings was the real focus of the film. Both are in-betweens, never quite human and never quite wolf, and it's difficult for them, and for their overwhelmed mother, to be both at once. They can't deny either side fully, but existing without choosing a side to stay on is too uncertain. Yuki, the wild child, has to tame herself in order to fit into human society, which she likes and wants to be part of, whereas Ame can't find a way to integrate himself into the human world and is forced to look elsewhere for a place to belong. Still, Yuki doesn't completely forget about her father's heritage; she's redeemed in her choice by confiding her secret to a single human boy, who in turn accepts her for who she is. Ame, on the other hand, tries to repress his desire to become more and more feral as a favor to his mother. At some point, even her presence isn't enough to stop him and he leaves the house and his family to live in the mountains.

In some ways, I suppose you could call Ame selfish in his decision. Hana worked incredibly hard to raise her children and they were all she really had left. She left her life and studies in the city behind to let them live freely and be themselves, and Ame doesn't even stop to explain to her why he's leaving. He simply walks out of the house during a storm, and while he does save Hana's life after she falls down a cliff, he lets her wander the forest on her own, frantically searching for him. Perhaps that's just a mark of how wild he's become at this point, but maybe he could have been a little gentler about it toward Hana, who after all, lets him go and presumably never sees her son again. It's a sad end to a very tight-knight family that really only ever had each other, but after all, kids do grow up and "leave the nest" someday; Ame, as a wolf, simply awakened to that instinct earlier than other children.

The film was really sad in that sense, but it was also really beautiful. Being a single mother is hard (not that I know personally, though my mother and Hana share plenty of characteristics), but the bond between mother and child is incredibly strong, especially when circumstances force the family closer together like this one did. That relationship was melancholy and touching in and of itself, not to mention the gorgeous art (sometimes I watch anime films just for the surreal and pristine landscapes) and soundtrack. While I didn't find Ookami Kodomo to be among my favorite anime films, it was nevertheless a great film that I'll be revisiting subtitled sometime.