wolf children / ookami kodomo no ame to yuki (2013)

// second viewing //

Truly a masterpiece! This family saga tells the story of Hana, a woman who falls in love with a wolf-man and has two wolf-children, Yuki and Ame, whom she must raise to self-actualization as a single mother within the confines of a society that does not deal too kindly with the duality of their nature. Her struggle is set alongside the challenges Yuki and Ame face of growing up and longing for acceptance and a place of belonging, and the ways in which the three characters' stories interlace and come apart is heartbreaking, delivered as a slow, devastating unraveling throughout the film. I am left with the image of a tapestry, coming undone with the end of the thread being painstakingly woven back in between the fibers that remain, resulting in an imperfect kind of beauty.

#idyllicAFcountrylife #jkit'sactuallyalotofwork

I love stories about sibling relationships, and this story's older sister/younger brother sibling relationship hit me extremely close to home, and perhaps led me to look closer into their dynamic than the film really intended for. I see a lot of parallels between Yuki and Ame and my own sibling relationship - headstrong Yuki and bashful Ame as children, Yuki's desire to participate in the outside world and having to sacrifice not only her wolf identity, but also begrudgingly take on a female gender identity, in order to survive and fit in. Ame slowly turning inward and discovering that he prefers the forest, and easily finds himself master of that domain, a role that opens up to him without much resistance. Ame becoming stronger and overpowering his sister as they fight violently, unable to come to terms with the fact that they want different things. Yuki finding relief for the complexity of her wolf/human duality only in a boy, while Ame finds freedom by simply deciding to embrace his wolf side. Bold, adventurous Yuki growing into a young woman who is essentially saved by a boy, while quiet Ame retreats during a rainstorm into his own realm, leaving his mother chasing after him in tears. I see this trajectory of these characters' lives and am filled with sadness - by the burdens we place on our daughters and mothers, by the way parents hurt their children by loving them so hard, by the pain that children cause their parents simply because they need to find themselves. This hurt is so universal, and is conveyed by the film so sincerely.

While I doubt this admittedly somber interpretation is the exact one that the writers meant for me to come away with, I think it is a testament to the attention to detail that they placed on character building that makes the characters come to life and elicit a personalized understanding of their story from the viewer. For example, I read another review in which the author talks about being reminded of her experience growing up as an Asian American immigrant, constantly negotiating her place between two worlds, with her parents acting as a sort of balancing force that reminded her that perhaps it was possible to exist in two states at once. I wish the film had explored a bit more the pain that Yuki felt in having to conform to gender norms - my only disappointment. In any case, I imagine there are so many stories of people's lives that this film will resonate with in unexpected ways, and I find that incredibly uplifting.

"omiyage mitsu, tako mitsu!" *bawls like a baby*

I finished this film feeling like I've known these characters for a decade of their lives, which really only ever happens otherwise when I read a book. It was mesmerizing the ways in which time passing was depicted - by the changing flowers in the vase beside the father's picture, by delightful montages of Hana working so hard to build a new life and her kids growing up alongside her toil, and the stylish panning through the school hallways as Yuki and Ame move up one grade level at a time. And oh gosh, the beautiful soundtrack that carries this story along. This film cuts straight to the heart.

a silent voice / koe no katachi (2016)

PLOT: Schoolboy Ishida has a great life until Nishimiya shows up as a new student who is deaf. The ways in which he and different characters react to her deafness causes a social crisis among them, and as a result Ishida becomes a social outcast and Nishimiya transfers schools. Years later, Ishida learns sign language and finds Nishimiya and asks her to be friends, in order to make amends before planning to commit suicide. He finds, however, that the prospect of friendship gives him something to live for. Stuff happens that spans I think seven manga volumes and is all stuffed into a two hour film in a way that is super confusing and tbh kind of boring.

This is a film that had perhaps great intentions but fell exasperatingly short of them. The story with the topics of disability (deafness) and mental health (social ostracization and suicide), but ultimately, because the film tries to do so many things at once and ultimately fails in fleshing out its large character cast, these topics feel more like dramatizing plot points and are not given the attention to detail they deserve.

First, the positive: The romantic undertones in this movie were dealt with a very light touch, which I appreciated. The viewer got the sense that part of the reason Ueno participated in Nishimiya's bullying was that she had feelings for Ishida, and it was clear that this unrequited longing continued to factor into her character's actions five years later. This tension was conveyed without the writers having to spell it out explicitly. The female characters in general were portrayed in a surprisingly and relatively non-gendered way, which is a testament perhaps to the fact that Kyoto Animation was founded by a woman? Idk I just read that somewhere lol.

The negatives, and only the negatives that I have the energy to write about (there were a lot):

Nishimiya is portrayed very statically as a shy, deaf girl who always has a smile on her face, is very quick to say sorry, who just wants to be friends, who wants to be friends with our male protagonist Ishida despite him literally throwing a ball of dirt into her face and called her disgusting when they first met because he ~didn't know how to act upon his confused feelings about her deafness, he realizes years later, so he had decided to react in a most toxically masculine way~. Though we do see her exasperated side when she reciprocates Ishida's violence during their fight at school, she immediately accepts his request for friendship when they reunite five years later, for no reason other than I guess this is what a girl has to do in order to not piss off a guy and possibly give him a reason to blame her for his decision to commit suicide - but of course she has a character showed no sign of this kind of decision-making. Her niceness and ability to forgive Ishida is hailed as the reason he does not go through with his suicide, but her character is in turn given no depth whatsoever. Her deafness is simply a device that lays a path for Ishida to make terrible decisions and then feel bad about them and try to make up for them, while all along she is blindly supportive and uncritical of him. She is, both literally and figuratively, a voiceless victim through which our protag is able to find self-actualization without having to be critical of his process. It's like they didn't even try!

I hope you get better portrayals in future films about deafness my cute honeypie *squishes cheeks bc you're cute but also bc this film convinces me you're just an object :( *

Ishida is quite frankly an idiot who has no social skills, which I guess makes sense because apparently he doesn't even need them because the other characters like him for no apparent reason. He is a flawed character who I imagine garners more sympathy in the manga, in which there is probably room for his character's internal life to be explored more fully. I found him unfathomably thoughtless and lame. There is probably no character trope I loathe more than the male protagonist who is supposed to be heroic simply because he realizes his mistakes and tries to fix them but nonetheless continues to make similar mistakes without consequence. Are our standards for men so low that this is enough? Whatever, I'M OVER IT, I shout into the void. Ishida's suicide was treated too nonchalantly by other characters and by the film, which seems to gloss over the serious mental health burden that accompanies the decision to commit suicide and treats suicide as a singular event. The depiction could have been much worse, but was still disappointing.

Don't really recommend this film, but wanted it ~on record~ that, as much as it pains me to say, this film is worse than Kimi no Na Wa, though I would consider both exceptionally bad. Is the anime film dead as a genre? Was Miyazaki the only good thing to have ever happened to us? I really hope not!!!