Mamoru Hosoda, illustrated by Yu (Original character designs by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto)
Translation by Jocelyne Allen, lettering by Tania Biswas & Lys Blakeslee
ISBN: 9780316401654
Hardcover Manga compilation of the original manga series companion to the Wolf Children film.
Read April 3, 2016
Our April read was also our first manga for the book club. Attendance was slight, and I wonder if people either didn't want to try a different format, or if there is just not much overlap between traditional comics/graphic novels and with manga. (or more likely, it was still the tail end of Spring Break, so people could have been out enjoying the lovely weather.)
Regardless, it was a cute story, and another nice light read after February's War Story, and the upcoming Civil War (the comic, not the movie - I'm honestly not looking forward to slogging through the comic series again, but it is what it is.) March's Hawkeye Vol. 1 was likewise beautiful, and the full review is upcoming, although I did a short teaser review in September.
Back to Wolf Children. The story is simple and bittersweet (as are most shoujo anime/manga) and focuses on the very brief childhood of two siblings raised by a very young, but determined widowed mother. The children's father is a brief and mythological figure in the very beginning of the story, who dies tragically trying to provide for his infant children.
After his death the story has roughly two parts - the first section focuses on the mother, Hana, as she tries to keep her children's changeable natures hidden from society while living in the middle of a big city, and navigating health scares and poverty.
Once she realizes she can no longer keep the children hidden and protected in the city, the story moves to a property in the countryside and the focus shifts to the two children and their developing personalities and natures. Yuki, the eldest, begins by being fierce and adventuresome, but after an incident at school, she begins to despise and fear her wolf nature. Her younger brother Ame starts life as a weak and sickly boy, but after an accident in the woods, he associates nature with strength and challenge, and becomes enamored of the wilderness and of his own innate wildness.
The story finishes as the children reach the wolf equivalent of adulthood - still very young by modern American standards. As to be expected by shoujo manga, there are no real inversions of tropes, and the plot is predictable and minor - the real focus is the beautiful line-work of the art, and of the focus on individual moments in character interactions: the harried and frantic mother with a sick child that she can't take to the hospital, two wolf-toddlers tussling in an apartment, feelings of alienation at school and in the woods, interactions with neighbors and friends. All these are sweetly and truly drawn, and make the slight story worthwhile and lovely.
While I haven't seen the movie yet, if it covers the same ground as the manga, it would be a delightful way to introduce very young or very sensitive children to anime - before they're old enough to enjoy Ponyo or Kiki's Delivery Service for example.
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