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Apr 01, 2020Jared_Francis rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki is somewhat unusual for a manga in that it is an adaptation of a film (in Japanese media, it’s typically the other way around). The original work was directed by Mamoru Hosoda, who also directed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and, most recently, 2018’s excellent Mirai. It follows the story of a young woman named Hana who falls in love with a werewolf and has two children with him, Yuki and Ame. But when he unexpectedly dies, she is left to raise two rambunctious werewolf children all on her own. As the children age (the story covers the time from their birth until Yuki, the elder, is twelve), Hana takes something of a back seat to the lives and experiences of Ame and Yuki. By the end of the story, however, she is still the central character, although it eventually becomes clear that Yuki is the narrator. In his focus on Hana’s experiences, Hosoda tells a story that is fundamentally about the trials and joys of being a single parent and, ultimately, learning to let one’s children go into their own lives. The supernatural element serves as a metaphor for personal identity more than a major plot device in its own right, as both Ame and Yuki grapple in different ways with the lupine natures they inherited from their father. Overall, Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki was enjoyable, but it somehow failed to be truly absorbing. Some of this may be due to the art; although the artist, Yu, draws Hosoda’s characters with charm and grace, the manga suffered from looking a little too much like a film—in other words, many pages consisted of only two or three frames, reminiscent of film stills, and left out much of the in-between that might have conveyed more of the richness of situations. A denser, more complex format that made use of a larger number of frames might have better conveyed the emotions of the story. Additionally, although Ame and Yuki felt fully-realized as characters, Hana rarely seemed more than one-dimensional. Her emotions are rarely felt with much depth and her thought processes often seem opaque, but this one-dimensionality seemed most evident in the ease with which she is apparently able to let both of her children (but especially Ame) leave home and be independent by the end of the story. All that said, Wolf Children: Ame & Yuki is still worth reading and will likely be enjoyed by anyone interested in a more thoughtful werewolf story than average.