YMMV / The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids

• Angst? What Angst?: As it's a children's fairytale, the baby goats are usually mentally just fine by the end of the story... even though they were literally devoured alive and nearly doomed to suffocate to death in the wolf's stomach before being digested.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Some of the dialogue can become hilarious in a Black Comedy type of way, at least in the opinion of Minako Kotobuki while recording for a version of the story.
• Fridge Logic: In regards to the most common Aesop about not letting strangers in. Strictly speaking, the kids didn't knowingly let a stranger in — the wolf's disguised voice and paws led them to genuinely think it was their mother. Perhaps a better lesson would be "install a peephole."
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The story is very popular in Japan, parts of Asia, Italy, France, Poland, Russia, and the Netherlands. In Japan, the story has gotten a total of 4 anime adaptations, made between the 1970s and 1980s. In the Netherlands, the story was given its own attraction at the Dutch theme park Efteling. In Efteling's version, one of the goat kids is given a name. The goat kid that is hiding in the clock while the other goats get eaten by the wolf is named "Benjamin". Benjamin is also very popular with child guests that visit the park and shows up in various live shows as a puppet. In 1957, an animated feature film was made in Russia based on the tale, with a few creative liberties since it was made during the Soviet era.
  • Japanese disaster prevention awareness foundation "Everyone's disaster prevention + Sonae" formed in 2016, created a 4 minute anime adaptation of the story that was released January 28, 2021 (starring the foundation's two mascots as one of the goat children), to raise awareness on potential disasters to parents and younger children.
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: As simple as the tale is, there is a surprising number of theories about its interpretation:
  • Various psychoanalysts have deduced from Mother Goat's single status that the wolf should be considered the father of the kids.
    • Interestingly, in the much Darker and Edgier Romanian version of folktale he is their godfather.
  • In compliance with the former thesis, the tale has been assumed to be a distant echo of the Greek myth (as told in Hesiod's Theogony) that Kronos ate all his children by Rhea, and only the youngest one, Zeus, escaped that fate and later defeated his father. Note that while Zeus was in hiding from Kronos, he was fed and cared for by a (nymph in the shape of a) goat, Amalthea.
  • The seven kids are the days of the week, and the wolf is night who "swallows" them, but it fails at devouring the last one (Sunday), as the week begins anew and the days are "reborn".
• Tear Jerker: The 1988 adaptation from the 1988 anime Sekai Meisaku Douwa has a few noteworthy examples:
  • In this adaptation, the youngest goat kid and his mother have a very close relationship. When he starts crying after hurting himself after doing jump rope, she quickly rushes to comfort him. When his mother leaves the house, he's constantly worried and missing her, even drawing a picture of his mother alongside his brothers and sisters. After the wolf eats the six goat kids, the youngest of the children starts crying for his mother as he's hiding inside the clock.
  • After the youngest goat kid tells his mother that the wolf has eaten his siblings, the Mother Goat sheds a tear which shows us a brief montage of her children that she believes are dead. As he's giving more details, she drops to her knees and begins crying completely heartbroken. Thankfully, seeing his mother cry motivates him to find a way to get his siblings out of the wolf's stomach.
  • The 1976 musical Mama/Rock'n'Roll Wolf has a scene where Mother Goat (known as "Rada") is singing to her children to open the door. However, her children refuse to open to door thinking it's the Wolf. As she's singing, she slowly starts crying. She decides to stay at a house inhabited by a family of rabbits where the rabbits are seen comforting her as she's weeping.
  • Near the end of Mama/Rock'n'Roll Wolf, the Wolf (named "Titi Suru") is seen crying as he's watching Rada and her children bonding since he never had a family of his own.
• The Woobie:
  • The youngest goat kid that managed to not get eaten is this in some adaptations. Notably the Sekai Meisaku Douwa adaptation where he's the most sensitive of the goat children and constantly worries about his mother. When the wolf leaves their house, he begins crying inside the clock and calls for his mother.
  • The Mother Goat also falls into this, such as the Sekai Meisaku Douwa adaptation where she immediately breaks down after the youngest goat kid tells his mother that the rest of his brothers and sisters have all been eaten by the wolf.

---