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Wolf Children
おおかみこどもの雨と雪
2012 · Film · 117 min
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident, a woman must find a way to raise the son and daughter that she had with him. However, their inheritance of their father's traits prove to be a challenge for her.
8 positive1 neutralfrom 9 commenters
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13 comments on Hacker News
No, you're right, he definitely belongs in the conversation. Wolf Children is on the same tier as the best Ghibli films. But to reach Miyazaki's level it's not enough to hit a home run, you have to do it at least four times in a row.
Its depicted in Wolf Children animated movie, where newly widowed mum sees a "we pay you to live in this village house" as best for her limited savings and she teams up with 5 fellow mums to commute her kids to school to a town with one.
I strongly recommend Wolf Children. It's on par with Miyazaki's best. A really moving and heartwarming film.
On the flipside of the spectrum, Grave of the Fireflies and In This Corner of the World are excellent but tragic WW2 films told from the Japanese civilian perspective. Grave of the Fireflies in particular is a difficult watch, but worth seeing once.
"A Silent Voice" is the best anime film of the 2010s in my opinion and comes closer to matching Miyazaki than anything else I've seen, in terms of the power of storytelling. Miyazaki is still better, but it's extremely good.
I also enjoyed "Wolf Children" a lot. As others have said, "Your Name" is stellar too, and "5cm/sec" is pretty damn excellent.
In the movies category, it's a total 180 from Patlabor, but I highly recommend Wolf Children by Mamoru Hosoda. It's a masterpiece.
FYI for "The Shinkai films" it's Your Name and 5 Centimeters Per Second.
The first is the second largest domestic box office ever for Japan (after Spirited Away) while also being critically acclaimed.
The latter is quite well received critically, but was less popular (without spoiling anything, the ending is somewhat divisive). Still at a 63 minute runtime it's well worth watching, IMO.
Also, I'll second the Wolf Children recommendation. Everybody in my family liked it, and that's rather rare for a film.
Well, taste is subjective and all that but out of that list, I'd say these are fairly objectively successful and popular if you're willing to take that as a rough proxy for "good": Haikyuu, Yuru Camp, Summer Wars, Wolf Children, Girls und Panzer, K-On, Haruhi, and the Shinkai films
I personally also quite like Hanasaku Iroha, Barakamon, Natsume Yuujinchou, Night is Short and Summer Time Rendering
Kinda depends on what you're looking for, e.g. Haikyuu is very much a sports anime and does a lot with the tropes of that genre. If you just want to watch a single good thing that has a bearing on a locality in Japan and isn't a project in and of itself (cough Haruhi cough) or otherwise cult, I'd say just watch Wolf Children.
I was a huge fan of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children, and started watching everything he made, only to find that he was no longer able to produce movies of that quality. The last 3 - The Boy and the Beast, Mirai, and Belle - have been mediocre at best with stories and characters that were very poorly assembled. I continue to have some hope for future films, but frankly my expectations are very low at this point. Not many directors have produced 3 duds in a row in the prime of their career and then recovered with incredible stories later.
> Satoshi Kon
In particular, Tokyo Godfathers hits in a way that not even Miyazaki can replicate IMO. Satoshi Kon probably wasn't as consistent as Miyazaki. But damn, the good Satoshi Kon movies were just beyond excellent.
Mamoru Hosoda is also pretty good. Wolf Children is one of the most "hits you in the real feels" movie that I've seen, despite its surface-level fantasy premise. A true masterpiece, though other movies from Hosoda aren't quite as good IMO. Still, his Digimon and Summer Wars are fun watches.
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There's that off-branch of Ghibli, Studio Ponac too. I've only seen their collection of 3x short films: Modest Heroes (one about a crab family, one about an egg allergy, and one about an invisible guy), but its extremely "Ghibli-like".
Modest Heroes is that mix of fantasy but very much down-to-earth storytelling that reflects upon life, in a child-friendly storytelling style. "Ghibli-style" as people might say.
Howl's Moving Castle really falls apart at the end, and it's a shame.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky are the most similar in feeling to Princess Mononoke. High fantasy, adventure, against all odds. (This is my favorite batch of Ghibli / Miyazaki / Takahata films.)
Spirited Away is an otherworldly coming of age treasure that cannot be missed. Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service feel similar. Whisper of the Heart is this too, just aimed a little older. (And if you like that, check out Your Name by Shinkai or Wolf Children by Hosoda - not Ghibli films, but very deserving of a watch if you like this sort of film.)
Grave of the Fireflies is a very poignant anti-war film.
FWIW, I bought the old Miramax domain name for Princess Mononoke and kept the website online [1]. It's one of my favorite films. I wish Miyazaki made more films like Mononoke and Nausicaa - they're sublime.
[1] http://princess-mononoke.com
Good animated movies / cartoons can be more deep and existential than live-action, much like how a Picasso painting can more deeply reveal the secrets of shapes than many photographs.
I don't think Kung Fu Panda is particularly deep, but probably is deeper than a lot of other Hollywood films. I'd say the deeper animated films I've seen are Secret of Kells (largely an adventure story, but very in depth with regards to dark-age Irish history/legends/mythology).
There are a lot of in-depth Anime movies, hard to pick anything in particular that stands out. Tokyo Godfathers, and Wolf Children, probably affected me emotionally the most (despite being mostly mundane situations). I think a lot of the more sci-fi / dream / supernatural stuff loses points due to technobabble (Ghost in a Shell, Evangelion, Paprika), but these are also deeper movies than typical.
Tokyo Godfathers / Wolf children manage to be deep about a relatively mundane subject. Homeless people for Tokyo Godfathers, and Wolf Children is basically a simple "raising a young girl / young boy" story, with the wolf-myth just largely representing the uncertainty that all mothers face when raising kids for the first time. Despite being about mundane subjects with only the barest of myth/sci-fi/fantasy in it, these movies seem to discuss the human condition better than many other films (even contrasted to other anime films, like Evangeleon)
Wolf Children is another great non-Miyazaki film done in a similar style: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Children
Must watch anime: Wolf Children (Ookami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki)
It's about a man that is also a wolf who meets a woman and they have kids, and about their struggle to grow up and live with their human and wolf personalities.