Review in full: I'll start by saying that this isn't going to be the sort of review that's trying to scorn the movie or "expose" it as being terrible or whatever. Rather it will be an analysis of my own experiences with it, why I had them, what I thought about them, and if you're likely to have similar experiences with it or not.
I won't spoil anything either, though I believe the synopsis at the top of the page does in fact spoil the first third of the movie to a notable degree. Don't read it if you haven't already.
My first viewing of this movie was in a group. As the movie started, me & my friends came to expect something charming yet emotionally serious in large part due to how much the early scenes suggested this. Indeed, the entire movie has a rather calm atmosphere about it (even during more dramatic moments) thanks to the tranquil art style and soundtrack.
However, there is a certain event early on that will likely make or break the movie for you depending on how you look at it. I won’t spoil it here because I believe witnessing it spoiler-free is an integral part of the intended viewing experience, but it’s suffice to say that it’s the first key event in the plot; it’s what allows the rest of the movie to happen at all. If you don't think about it too much you'll likely see it as an unusual yet romantic scene, but if you apply what you've been told so far about werewolves and how they work in this story then it can easily lead to a number of major questions as to how and why it's happening like this.
As the movie goes to the next few scenes, it takes on more of a "slice of life" approach to things, only with time-skips that can jump over a year or more of time. If you've been taken into the movie’s aura of calmness it will flow along smoothly, but if you've already begun asking questions (as my friends and I had been) then two things will become apparent: the answers the movie suggests don't line up with what's actually been said and the "slices" of life are more like rough chunks considering the time-skips. In essence, a visible split between the story and its presentation appears.
At this point the entire group I was in had lost our suspension of disbelief, thanks to our questions and the unfitting answers we found. For a short while the movie's calmness began making people dose as they lost interest, until we started joking at the events & dialogue to follow. We weren't watching Wolf Children anymore, rather it had become Wolf Children Impromptu Abridgment. I had to re-watch the movie later to analyze it seriously, but the damage had been done.
The movie would continue it's slow yet jumpy "chunks of life" approach for much of its remainder, and while the idea was interesting, the execution never brought said idea to its fruition in either of my viewing experiences. Aside from Hana & Yuki (who were flawed, but in an appreciable & human way) the characters didn't receive much development, and some of their reactions to important events were jarring in the sense that they weren't very realistic reactions for the characters involved. The movie doesn’t attempt to explain why a werewolf would decide that the downtown of a major Japanese city is an acceptable hunting ground, or why a child’s claim that they were attacked by a wolf inside a school (what with wolves being extinct in Japan) wouldn’t raise serious questions. Doing so would only point out how poorly thought-out these events are. The result is a sense that everyone is either exceptionally shallow or somewhat crazy.
I wouldn't say it was the story's fault per se, but rather the plot as it was executed. In a story focusing on people growing up and deciding how they feel about the world and their place in it, the plot’s emphasis was not put on the characters but rather the events they found themselves in. There’s a word for this type of plot; melodrama, and while I’d argue that melodrama is simply a tool that has a distinct purpose in storytelling, Wolf Children is a stark example of its overabundance and misuse in the modern day. The beauty of the visuals and the fitting & tranquil music tie into this, and are easy to get lost in, but if you think about it for more than a few moments while it's all happening then the detachment between story and presentation becomes clear, leaving you with something pretty yet bland.
Verdict: If you are the sort of person who can shut off your brain, then this movie will take you away to a whimsical place. If you can't (or refuse to) stop thinking, then you may see this place for the well-painted box it really is, and your questions won't reveal all that much outside of it. As the latter, I can’t say I enjoyed Wolf Children at all, despite the obvious effort made by its producers to be more than a simple box. If you're the former, then you may find much more enjoyment in this piece.
