Wolf Children

Two people meet in college and fall in love, and have two kids. And then the husband dies while out on a grocery run, leaving the mother to try and raise the two kids herself. The catch is the husband was a wolf-human hybrid, and so are the kids. They have all sorts of needs and issues their mother, Hana, can't begin to guess how to address.

And that's most of the first half of Wolf Children, Hana trying to figure out how to raise these kids on her own. She can't take them to a doctor, can't leave them with a babysitter and get a job, can't even let them play with other kids at the park. Because Yuki or Ame might shift into their wolf form, and that would cause a lot of issues.

The second half of the film, as Hana finds a place in the countryside they can probably be safe, is about Yuki and Ame growing up and deciding which direction they want to go with their lives. One wants to focus on being a human, the other drifts more and more towards being a wolf. I thought Hana's position on that was presented well. It isn't that she's opposed to either of her children exploring their wolf side, as long as they can watch out for people who might not react well. But she's concerned that they're too young to be running off to live in the woods as a wolf. Because there are things she can't understand.

The movie seems like a good encapsulation of what being a parent is like. There's a lot stress, a lot of guessing at what the right decision is, and a lot of second-guessing. Sometimes there's no best choice, only the least bad choice. You're working with incomplete information, and you can't watch them all the time. I do wonder how she's going to explain the disappearance of one of her kids to the neighbors. They visited her house, they saw her kids, they know there were two of them, and now one of them is just gone.