A single mother struggles to raise and understand her half-human, half-wolf children.
Creative Staff
Story: Mamoru Hosoda
Translation/Adaptation: Winifred Bird
What They Say
When Hana worked up the courage to speak to the mysterious loner in her college class, she never expected the encounter would blossom into true love-nor that he was secretly a wolf living in human form. Their relationship was far from ordinary, but she wouldn’t have had it any other way. Her joy only grows with the births of Ame and Yuki, who have inherited their father’s unique ability to transform. But life is full of both joy and hardship, and Hana is left to bring up her little wolves on her own. Raising human children is hard enough…but how will she handle their wild side, too?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Please note, I am writing this novel review without having seen the movie it was based on.
Hana is a university sophomore when she encounters the mysterious loner in her college class. As it turns out, the standoffish young man is a werewolf. Even so, Hana embraces him and his secret and soon bears a daughter and son with their father’s ability to transform. But hardship strikes when the werewolf unexpectedly dies, and Hana’s left to raise their children on her own.
Hosoda-sensei tries to give this novel the aura of a fairytale. Aside from the existence of werewolves, Hana has a couple of dream encounters with her lover. The story also never gives his name, which might be some sort of Japanese literary device. (However, as a Western reader, I found it odd because Hana has his driver’s license so he clearly had a name.)
Despite these fantastical elements, the novel did not strike me as romantic or fairytale-like. Even the book’s opener, where Hana falls in love and is at her most carefree, is hardly swoon-worthy material. Hana takes the initiative in the courtship, and the werewolf never gives any professions of love or proposes marriage. He works a blue-collar job, is short on cash, and their dates consist of reading books and walks. Eventually, they move in together, he gets her pregnant so that she has to drop out of university, and shortly after their second child is born, he dies.
Thus, Hana’s true struggles begin in the latter half of Chapter 1. Yet the majority of her challenges have less to do with her children being werewolves and more to do with the fact that she’s an isolated single mother without many resources. Her money worries, her lack of sleep, her neighbor who’s angry about her baby’s crying, her older child’s accidents – those are common to many mothers, and not even just the single ones. Certainly, the need for secrecy is an additional burden, but it seems minor compared to the rest. Rather than a unique journey, Hana’s circumstances feel more like a cautionary tale about what happens when you have kids too early in life.
Continuing on to Chapter 2, Hana moves her family to the mountains. Partly because of the cheap rent, partly because it’s easier to hide her children’s secret where there are fewer people. Although there are moments where the children explore the wilderness, the focus remains on Hana–her efforts to make their rundown house livable, her city slicker struggle to grow vegetables, and her gradual acceptance by the country community.
It’s not until Chapter 3 that the focus really shifts to the children. With their mixed heritage, the identities they ultimately choose are anyone’s guess. As it turns out, those identities get chosen early and abruptly. After a taste of peer interaction with the students at her elementary school. Yuki immediately gives up her wild child behavior to be a girly girl so she can fit in with her friends. Ame’s change is more drastic. After meeting a wild fox who agrees to mentor him, Ame goes from a sickly crybaby who can’t fend off a house cat to a tough wolf disinterested in human society. And for Ame, the decision to ditch his mother’s home to live in the wild comes at the age of ten.
Chapter 4 has Hana confronted with her son’s decision to leave for good against the backdrop of a ferocious downpour. As the storm rages, the focus is not so much Ame’s escape into his new world but Hana’s maternal grief and ultimate acceptance to his departure. After that, the story abruptly comes to a tidy end. Despite all the child protective services activities in Chapter 1, Ame’s disappearance doesn’t raise any questions from neighbors, Hana’ coworkers, or Ame’s school. And Yuki goes with her classmates to live in the junior high dorm, leaving Hana smiling happily alone in her remote home with her lover’s driver’s license.
The story only follows the children until Yuki turns twelve, which doesn’t allow much space for character development. Though brief, Yuki does have a reasonably interesting character arc, mainly because hers includes her relationships at school. Ame’s is less so. Although he clearly becomes enamored of the wilderness, his only relationship is with a fox, and we aren’t privy to those interactions.
Thus, it is predominantly Hana’s journey that takes up the narrative. Although Hosoda-sensei tries to portray her as heroic, I can’t help but see Hana as simply reaping the consequences of poor decision-making. Granted, her lover didn’t abandon her, but he was awfully careless to get himself killed (and not even for anything meaningful). And even if their first pregnancy was an accident, they should’ve known better than to get pregnant again so quickly if money was truly tight. Finally, her smile-through-everything attitude is unrelatable and unrealistic. When Grandpa Nirasaki snaps at her, “Why do you always have that phony smile on your face?” I wholeheartedly agree.
In Summary
Despite the title Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki, this novel is really about their mother Hana. It follows her as she goes from a lovestruck nineteen-year-old to a single mother of two, from struggling to raise her children in the city to toiling to carve a place for them in the country. While Hosoda-sensei romanticizes Hana’s love for her werewolf, the majority of the book is not the least bit romantic. Rather, it’s mostly difficult circumstances and a lot of hard work.
Content Grade: C+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: May 21st, 2019
MSRP: $20.00
