Show #109 – Direct Download: 
Break and ED: TBA
We're not quite dead. I think I'll go for a walk!
10:30~ish: Talking about Summer Wars
13:20~ being talking about Wolf Children
15:35 Wolf Children inciting incident, I don't consider this a spoiler because it happens in the first 20 minutes of the film.
25:30 brief mention of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
37:45 ~ mid-film spoilers
39:25 Final 1/3 of the film spoilers
39:50 BEGIN End of film spoilers
40:30 No more spoilers, just some jokes
41:25 Back to spoilers
42:10: Analysis
43:26 END OF WOLF CHILDREN SPOILERS
50:40 From Up on Poppy Hill talking begins
51:00 But first Earthsea and Little Norse Prince
56:20 the real Poppy Hill review begins
1:07:50 mid-film details
1:09:40 Minor Spoilers Begin (mid-film-ish stuff)
1:16:50 Bigger spoilers of the end
~ A lot of good jokes and analysis ~
1:20:55 Some more end of film details, but not exactly a huge spoiler
1:22:42 Serious ass SPOILERS from the end of the film where we read the ending details off Wikipedia.
1:23:22 We speculate about things in the film that are not explicitly stated, but if you think Noah's "theory" is a "spoiler" skip this bit, too.
1:24:20 I don't think what I'm saying is a spoiler here.
1:24:55 The end of major spoilers and beginning of amazingness.
1:26:00 – 1:26:17 Ok I guess that part is a spoiler… kind of? But it's not a romance spoiler
I tend to agree with your thoughts about Wolf Children, and while I am also not a big fan of the overall message of the film I still think it is a fine movie to watch for adults and for children. At least of one time 🙂
Now, about From Up on Poppy Hill. I have seen this twice recently, I also liked it, and with all do respect suggest you to watch it again if you have the chance as you were misremembering some details of the film (that may or may not change your thoughts on it).
I have nothing to add about the renovation plot point. But about the love one – I have a slightly different interpretation. It was the boy (not the girl) who found you that they may share the same father. And he also first brought this topic up with his stepfather. But his stepfather was rather dismissive in the style of “this is history, you are my son now, the past doesn’t matter and doesn’t need to be brought up again at this point”.
And so the boy distanced himself from the girl until they she asked about it and then they had the “are we brother and sister?” discussion. And again, it was the boy who said that we can’t continue our relationship at this point as we are probably brother and sister. We are just friends from now on.
So, now coming to her mother – I think when she realized why her daughter was asking about the boy and how important this was to her then she decided to meet the boy’s stepfather (*not* the ship captain that later cleared up the situation, it was the stepfather) and convince him that the past needed to be cleared up so the new generation can continue with their lives. And thus the stepfather arranged the meeting between the boy and the girl and the ship captain who had served with both of their fathers in the Golf war.
Whether the ship captain told the truth or not – personally think he was telling the truth because he probably would not have lied about the lives (and to the children) of he’s brothers-in-arms at this point. I think his own honor would have been more important to him than love between the two kids. But then again I can agree that this is best left for the interpretation of the audience.
I’d love to know what you guys criticisms of Wolf’s Rain are? It seems that most anime fans have nothing negative to say about it. Like you two, I found it quite average.
Two words: Boring, emo
I don’t know if I found it emo exactly. My main problem with it was the characters. The wolf boys were just so generic and one dimensional. The human characters didn’t seem to serve any purpose in the plot at all. I’ll admit the ending is strong but the rest of it is just so meh.
Thank you for the excellent and insightful reviews. I really appreciate how you approached the works from an angle that has not been well covered elsewhere.
I really don’t want to come off sounding like ‘that person from the internet’ but I thought that it’s important to highlight the other works that Hosoda has directed.
He’s done two shorter movies: Digimon: Our War Game and Digimon Adventure: Born of Koromon. He was also the director for the feature length film One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island which might actually be my personal favourite movie in his filmography. These don’t tend to get the same kind of coverage in Hosoda-centric discussions as they’re franchise properties and as such as regulated to the sidelines but they’ve still got something to say. His One Piece movie, in particular, is very interesting as, according to interviews, the movie is a reflection of his experiences at Studio Ghibli when he was the director of Howl’s Moving Castle and as such it could be seen as being critical of the studio as a whole.
If you’re really going off the Hosoda deep-end there’s also the TV episodes that he’s directed in shows such as Nadja and Digimon which are clearly standout episodes when compared to the series that they are situated in.