Devotees of Miyazaki Hayao will recognise this as his signature motif, present in practically every film that the grand master of Japanese anime has directed for Studio Ghibli. There is a scene near the end of the film where a field of wheat is shown shimmering in the wind. Of course the children’s semi-savage nature is occasionally allowed to manifest itself physically in long-eared lupine form, but even if you abstract away from the mechanics of their (mostly hidden) hybridity, there remains a recognisable, realistic portrait of a single mother’s determined struggle to do the best for her children - including, ultimately, letting them go. It is possible to regard the lycanthropy of Hana’s children as merely their otherness, their fatherlessness and their unruliness, raised as they are on a liminal margin - a realistic yet symbolic space where domestication borders wilderness and nature meets nurture. “Maybe you’ll laugh and say it’s a fairytale, that it’s too preposterous to be true,” declares Yuki (Kuroki Haru) in voiceover at the beginning of Wolf Children, “but it is a true story about my mother.” For all their claims to veridicality, Yuki’s words are in fact accompanied by images of a dream that will recur in variant forms to Hana at key points in the film - which is to say that the truths on offer here are of an allegorical rather than a literal kind. Discovering that he is a werewolf, Hana remains unperturbed, and they become lovers - but he dies shortly after their second child is born, leaving Hana to raise two children alone. The three move out to the country, where Hana sets up house, establishes a working farm (with some help from the local community), and lets spirited Yuki and her frail younger brother Ame decide over time whether they want to live as human or wolf. Review first published by Little White Lies Hana (voiced by Miyazaki Aoi), a good-natured, lonely student in Tokyo, befriends a young man who “didn’t look at all like the other students”.

Wolf children