Wolf Children
I saw both of Hosoda's previous works that were released by MangaUK and was somewhat impressed, so I thought it worth checking out. A good friend of mine agreed to see it at my local Arts Picture House with me - she saw the film before and said that it left her very emotional, so considering she laughs about Dangan Ronpa, I didn't know what to expect.
I will say this though - this is easily Hosoda's best film. I adored it from beginning to end with a grin across my face throughout. Watching Hana struggling to take care of Ame and Yuki struck a chord, making me think of just how much my Mum had to do for me and my brothers, watching Ame and Yuki as young children was beyond adorable and watching the two children come to terms with the world around them and making their choices, then reflecting on how they were like at the start of the movie, was breath-taking. When the movie wanted my heart to melt, it melted. When it wanted me to feel sad, I felt sad and when it wanted me to grin like an idiot, I grinned.
I have no idea why my friends were upset by the ending - I thought it was bittersweet, but mostly sweet (without going into too much details). I actually left the theatre uplifted and actually somewhat longing for a family of my own...Yuki was just so adorable!
My only complaint about the film is that considering Yuki was 11 and Ame was 10 at the ending of the movie, they both seemed way too mature. I guess that could be due to wolves being adults at the age of ten, but I dunno. Also, Child Protection Services would have most likely followed them to the forest xD.
I recommend this film to absolutely everyone.
9/10
K-ON! The Movie
After the amazing send off the end of season two gave the franchise, did it really need another? Probably not, if I'm perfectly honest. What I do love about the film though, is that it was classic K-ON. No stupid plot that somehow ended up with them having to save the world like many kid's shows do - just usual fluffy stuff.
Saying that though, I think the movie stayed too close to its comfort zone - even during the rough third of the film spent in London, they mostly did things that were either completely Japanese or influenced by Japan. I would have liked to have seen them actually visit some more places related to music too, like Mio was hoping. Even the animation seemed too similar to the usual - usually you expect a movie to have better animation due to a bigger budget.
I did thoroughly enjoy watching certain scenes and thinking "I've been there!" though - am I right in thinking that the music store they were in was in Denmark Street? That store is my older brother's regular haunt xD. The little touches were superb, like them staying at an Ibis, shopping in a Waitrose and the English characters actually sounding English (I watched the dub, will watch the sub tomorrow, but didn't the Japanese production team actually get English actors to record the lines?). It shows that an awful lot of attention was put into making this movie. I just wish that had also been channeled elsewhere into the movie.
This may sound weird, but I feel that there were too many songs in the movie. Their constant series of performances actually really lowered the impact of the song for Azusa at the end and in fact, the ending of the movie did really drag. I would have easily cut out them playing at the Japan Culture Festival and added them visiting more of London - at least the sushi restaurant scene had a hilarious language barrier.
Which brings me to my next point - Sentai's translations are lazy. On the plane, Yui outright says to Azusa to stop speaking Japanese...except that they've been speaking English the entire time in the dub and the various language barrier scenes are left making no sense. This was really jarring with the TV series' and it made me really wish they could have just rewrote the lines into something else, but I imagine that would have been really difficult with this movie - especially the various language barrier scenes. I personally would have simply released this as sub-only. Ritsu referring to the tube as "The subway" was also really irritating.
Also, how the heck is this movie a 12 BBFC? "Moderate innuendo"? What moderate innuendo? Ritsu joking once about Mio sleeping naked or Azusa thinking Yui was in love with her and going to pounce on her in the hotel room? Really? This should have been a U, or at the very least, a PG.
7/10