It was a rainy afternoon on a usual weekend of 2016, as I was wandering around the local movie rental.
At the time, I was working for a branding agency right after finishing off the final year exams of my college. Let’s say the gloomy atmosphere was complimenting my less than cheerful life at the time.
Unsure of what to bring home, I came across this blue covered album with cartoon characters in it.
Little did I know a couple of shining discs in between those covers would not only elevate my taste in movies but also add nuance and depth to my perspective about life as a whole.
Mamoru Hosoda’s Wolf Children was the first anime movie I ever saw. And four years later, even after experiencing several more pathbreaking cinematic achievements by the renowned Japanese anime industry, it continues to be among the most impactful pieces of cinema for me.
If anything, the life-changing subsequent years helped me mature both as an individual and a movie lover. As a result, now, when I look at this goldmine of a movie, I can’t help but gravitate towards deeply relatable intricate subtexts hidden under the seemingly fantastical elements.
And the struggles of motherhood is among the primmest subtexts Wolf Children has to offer.
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Let’s Start With a Short Synopsis
The movie introduces us to a young Hana attending her classes at the National University of Tokyo. One of those days, she came across a mysterious young stranger in her class, busy taking notes diligently. She then went on approaching him and striking an unlikely bond with him almost instantly. But there was a surprising revelation waiting for her.
In a starry, breezy evening, the young and mysterious man she was in love with revealed himself as a werewolf.
However, the deep and genuine affection she had for him stayed unchanged.
They got married and gave birth to two children named Yuki and Ame — both half-human and half-wolf children. And then an unexpected tragedy came upon, killing the man in the house.
It left Hana on her own to raise the children. With a determination to give them a fair chance to choose whether to live their lives as humans or wolves, she leaves the town and settles in a village surrounded by nature.
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Hana (Flower) in The Crossroad of Humanity and Nature
YouTuber Ode to Cinema beautifully presented his interpretation of how Wolf Children displays a fascinating fiction of humanity’s relationship with nature.
The three main characters we follow in this fascinating journey of hardship and self-discovery directly represent three distinct natural elements through their names and personalities. Moreover, the movie also explores both the external and internal connections they share with the nature surrounding them.
It is especially true in the case of Hana.
The day I was born, my dad noticed a cosmos flower blooming in the backyard. Nobody had planted it. It just popped up! That’s why he named me Hana because it means flower. He wanted me to smile all the time like the cosmos did. That way, whenever things are tough, I could give life my best and get through it. — Hana, Wolf Children
These lines come pretty early in the movie, gracefully summarising both Hana’s resilient personality and her character arc during the 13 years’ worth of story to come.
The flower becomes a motif of sorts throughout the film, making for a striking image the day her husband dies and Hana’s resilient nature is greatly tasted.
— Ode to Cinema
Being an out and out human, Hana is an outsider to nature, while both her children and husband shared an inherent connection to it purely because of what they are.
As a result, her choice to move to the countryside brought along some inevitable obstacles. However, being the resourceful, persistent spirit she is, she took on the challenge with almost a saint-like calm.
With no job and limited savings, she took on farming as a means to keep her family together.
But there was a tiny little problem.
She didn’t know anything about farming.
Taking advantage of her unique ability to study, Hana instinctively turned to books. She had been doing the same to gather as much information as she could to be a better mother for her wolf children. And Hana had also seen various degrees of success doing so.
But this time, she ended up receiving a harsh lesson: not everything can be learned from the books.
Her endeavor to grow tomatoes on her own mounted to be a disaster. It is only by opening up to the community, and through their welcoming help, she managed to set foot on the newer world, getting in sync with nature and reaping its bounty.
Opening up to nature — the forest, the hills, the river, and the snow, helped her as she brought her children closer to their identities.
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Hana as a Mother
Throughout the movie, we see Hana juggling through the areas she is doesn’t quite understand.
If raising two children as a single mother was not hard enough, she had to care for children who were part wolves.
There is a scene in the movie where Yuki got sick, and Hana had no clue whether to take her to a vet or a hospital. The fact that her children were not entirely human restricted Hana from seeking any medical assistance even when giving birth to them. She and the father did it alone in their apartment. Consequently, after his death, she not only had to keep an insanely low profile, but she also needed to hide them from the authorities.
By moving to the countryside, she sacrificed everything she had built for herself, starting a new life entirely from scratch with nothing but some financial saving the father had earned for the children.
The Ox — H.E. Bates
Hana’s unyielding spirit coupled with her almost superhuman stamina as she keeps multitasking 24*7 reminded me of H. E. Bates’ The Ox. It is a short story I had to study during my college days.
The piece focuses on Mrs. Thurlow, a mother of two sons, relentlessly working every waking hour of her days to put together some fund for her children. Mr. Thurlow, on the other hand, is a martyr with a silver plate operated into his forehead due to a skull fracture. And he is not always in his senses.
Just like Wolf Children, here too, the husband parts. Moreover, he had stolen all her savings before dying, leaving her with nothing. Yet, she had some sense of solace in her mind — it was her children. But in the end, she lost them too to her brother.
She walked with head down, lumbering painfully, as though direction did not matter. Where-as, coming, she had seemed to be pushing forward into the future, she now felt as if she were pushing forward into no-where.
— The Ox
The Ultimate Test
Though not as tragic as The Ox, Wolf Children eventually brings Hana to the ultimate test of parenting.
It was the day she knew would come, and she has been preparing all along. Yet, when it came, it shook her from the core.
Finally, it comes to the hardest lesson Wolf Children has to teach us about the nature of parenting. Children ultimately must make their own decision for which path they will take in life.
— Ode to Cinema
It comes in the movie when Ame, who resembled his father as he grew both by looks and the underlying stoicism, chose to live the wolf life, becoming the new guardian of the jungle.
Though Hana wanted the window of choice for her children, that day, she was afraid of the world out there that killed her husband.
Again I found the same theme echoing from another of my college syllabus text. This time it is a play by John Millington Synge: Riders to the Sea.
Maurya has lost her husband, and five of her sons to the sea. As the play begins Nora and Cathleen receive word from the priest that a body, which may be their brother Michael, has washed up on shore in Donegal, on the Irish mainland north of their home island of Inishmaan.
— Wikipedia
In this play, the mother, Maurya, finally defeats the force of nature (sea for this instant) by accepting the mortality of human beings and refusing to stay grieving and fearful by the end.
Similarly, Hana passes the ultimate test of motherhood only by coming to terms with Ame’s choice.
As it brings nothing but a win for her as she had devoured her life for this moment, allowing her children to embrace the life they belong.
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Is It Really About Motherhood?
As a movie, Wolf Children deals with multiple themes like growing up, nature, society, death, and conservationism. Yet, I would identify it as a tale of motherhood. And I am not even stating this just because the story built itself around a single mother raising two children to the best of her capabilities
I have other pieces of evidence, as well.
In an interview with Otaku Magazine, Hosada himself admitted the fact:
Q: Wolf Children has a rich treatment of nature similar to films like My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke. What inspired the way nature is treated in the film?
Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad freeA: The country town that’s pictured in the film is actually based on my hometown. Because the movie is about a mother who struggles to raise children, I have a strong connection to the place where I grew up. That kind of resonated with me and I wanted to feature that location in the film, to talk about the mother and have that reflect that upon my hometown.
Furthermore, Hana is not the one who is sharing this story from her perspective. Instead, it is Yuki who narrates the story, recounting the hurdles her mother had to face and also expressing her gratitude in the process.
Let’s not forget it’s similarities to the couple of literary works I mentioned earlier that heavily focuses on the struggles and tragic depths of motherhood. If anything, it further solidifies Wolf Children as Hosoda’s love letter to motherhood.
Throughout the movie, we witness the wolf children growing up to the wholesome individuals they ended up being. Yuki chose to live her life as a human, and Ame the other way around.
But we also see the gentle, smiling girl attending her classes turning into a peaceful mother living by herself at the top of the hills, having won her war!
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This post was previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: Visual recreation of the poster of Wolf Children (2012) by Nadya on farau.com