History TearJerker / WolfChildrenAmeAndYuki

* Bittersweet Ending: The film ends with Hana living alone in the country farmhouse. Yuki at this point is living in a junior high school dorm while Ame lives as an alpha-male wolf in the forest. While the film's ending is bitter in that Hana ends up living alone without her children, it's also sweet because the reason she lives alone without her children is because she raised them to be strong and confident and able to live their own lives. In that way, she's succeeded as a parent. It's ultimately the tragedy of parenthood, that the reward for raising your children the right way is to have them capable of living without you. Yet Hana is content in her life and proud that she's raised her children the right way.

** What makes this ''even more'' heartbreaking is Ame's response to that line. By this point in the film, he's been established as maturing into being a fairly aloof and stoic character. His response to that line is one of being near to tears.
*** It seems he's become so lupine that he won't even speak. He just looks back at his mother regretfully, then runs away into the forest, presumably with no intention to ever return. Then he runs to the top of a mountain and just howls. Fortunately, there's a good chance he was simply ''showing'' Hana that she did plenty for him and the epilogue manga reveals he occasionally comes back to visit. Which is honestly pretty relieving.

** Aside from losing her interests, Yuki's older self spends most of her screentime in a constant state of stress. There's the incident with Souhei, her fight with Ame, and her worrying about Souhei after she overhears that his mother is getting re-married. Seeing the once happy and carefree Yuki becoming so melancholic while still a child is quite sad. [[EarnYourHappyEnding Thankfully, things do get better for her.]]

*** One can only imagine how terrified Yuki must have been in that moment. She started running away very early on in the fight. Ame, the weepy little brother who followed her around all through their childhood, was now aggressively chasing her around the house and nearly tore her throat out at one point. They're on good terms, or at least speaking terms, during the film's final act, but that takes place two years later. Yuki was probably scared of Ame for a while after that night.