Overall 8 Story 9 Animation 8 Sound 6 Character 8 Enjoyment 9

A short (47m) but striking old children's anime movie from 1978, _Chirin no Suzu_ is remembered for an unusually serious anti-Disneyfied plot like that of _Grave of the Fireflies_ or _The Dog of Flanders_. I watched this on the recommendation of Justin Sevakis's 'Buried Treasures' column, using the dub which is the only version I could find online as a torrent. The dub is a little overwrought and the music inappropriate (although some reviewers think the over-cutesiness of the sound effects & young-Chirin's voice actor makes the contrast all the more striking), and I suspect the Japanese version is more preferable. The animation is low-resolution and dated since Sanrio/Madhouse could not compete with _Bambi_ in terms of animation extravagance, but still watchable due to the attention lavished on movement, especially as the colors and landscape transition to match the thematic changes.It starts off _Bambi_-style, with our bubbly lamb protagonist bouncing around the meadow encountering all his animal friends and mother, who warns him to never leave the farm lest the Wolf on the mountain devour him. As one can guess, she will be the first to die. Chirin is a good kid and never does leave the farm (the opposite of what one might guess). One dark and stormy night, the Wolf descends, and the Wolf bursts into the fold, defeating the guard dogs, and enters the barn, a wolf among sheep, who can only cower in terror, because as always, 'the strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must'. Chirin's mother throws herself on the half-asleep lamb to save him from the Wolf, who kills her. Shattered by grief, he rages. What reason was there for his mother to die? None. What can he do about it? Nothing. What response can the others offer? Silence. If that is how the world is, then better to be a wolf than a lamb! He follows the Wolf, swearing revenge, but unable to affect the Wolf, who brushes him away with his tail. Chirin continues to follow the Wolf around but is hardpressed to keep up, and realizes the gap between him and the Wolf. The Wolf refuses to train Chirin to be a wolf.While ineptly hunting one day, he sees a snake attacking a mother bird guarding her nest, and lunges in to hunt (but really protect) the snake, and while succeeding in driving off the snake by biting it, the bird is dead and all her eggs shatter. This second blow also shatters Chirin. I am reminded of the Talmudic story of the Other One, the great Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah, who one day witnesses a boy steal a bird's eggs but also kill her without any punishment as promised by Deuteronomy, and witnesses a second boy spare the mother bird but immediately fall and break his neck without receiving the specific reward promised by Deuteronomy; and became a heretic devoted to breaking every law of God - which may sound extreme, but how much evil is required to pose the Problem of Evil? The Wolf preaches to Chirin: all living things live at the expense of other living beings; there is only strength and survival and whether one will choose them or not. There is no god, no celestial judges, no karma, no rights to survival, no law and no nature but red in tooth and claw; the race is not to the swift nor the contest to the strong but time and chance happeneth to them all; one man launches his tech startup and goes bankrupt, another launches it six months later and becomes a billionaire; one man gets a lucky set of genes with 10 extra good variants and lives a happy life while another gets 10 extra bad ones and rots in jail; no amount of exercise can guarantee one will not die of a heart attack, and many contract lung cancer who have never smoked a single cigarette; there are only atoms and the void in the desert of the real. Chirin is converted.Chirin becomes the Wolf's pupil, practicing tree-shattering headbutting and combat, and - montage - grows into a gruff billy goat with the eyes of a killer. This world is hell, the Wolf says, and Chirin replies that he now thinks of the Wolf as his father and will live in that hell. The final lesson: an attack on the original farm on a dark night. Chirin defeats the guard dogs easily and bursts into the barn, where the sheep cower before him, and prepares to kill - but stops helplessly as another lamb is sheltered by its mother. The transformation into a wolf is incomplete. The Wolf naturally tries to finish the job, but Chirin is forced to fight him and, the student having become the master, kills him. His revenge, such as it is, has been gained, and the Wolf dies content: the weak must yield to the strong. Chirin tries to be re-accepted among the sheep, but he is too different and they cannot imagine he was ever once like them, and he returns to the mountain, never again to be seen by the sheep. There, alone, among the rocks where they sparred, he mourns his father. Not truly a wolf, nor yet a sheep, but, he tells his father's memory - he still survives! And in the mountains, the Buddhist bell sounds, reminding men of the impermanence of the world ("Chirin, I hear the sound of your bell, and it reminds me of quiet crying, the sound of all the world’s sorrow").There are not many anime from the 1970s which could be said to be as worth watching now as the day they were made, but _Chirin no Suzu_ manages to be one of them for its unflinching honesty. The plot is surprising and the ending gripping, reminding me of _The End of Evangelion_ in its similar starkness, honesty, refusal to take a cheap easy way out, and sense of despair yet determination. Like Shinji, Chirin has taken a path far from the common herd and cannot return to how things were, and his relatives are dead at his own hands; yet - he still exists.