#aniu white wolf

[waeirfaahl]

Balto's unnamed siblings

Although I many times covered the most morbid element of the sequel (also small addition here), I want to pay attention to the aspect most likely nobody ever noticed. The question is simple — does Balto have any siblings? Like, in the sequel's canon, his mother is the white wolf goddess, while his father is an unknown stray mongrel, who mates and then never even knows about possible pups. Since Balto's stray dog father was described by the writer as "He's like a human father, who begets a child and then never even knows it", there's a huge possibility that this stray mongrel impregnated many stray and even domestic female dogs, so Balto most likely has lots of half-siblings, who are pure dogs. While his father is unaware that he had pup with a wolf. A wolf deity...

The sequel states pretty clearly that Balto was the only pup the litter, he has no wolfdog siblings, he was the only half-breed pup Aniu had with this random stray dog. Yes, you can agrue that Balto said "My dad was a husky, who... had pups with a wolf", but this "had pups with" is just a soften and more family-friendly version of "impregnated/begat/mated with". It doesn't confirm that Balto had siblings, because later Balto never mentions his brothers and sisters, he mentions only his wolf mother, i.e. he never had a father and lived only with his mother, there's no siblings, no grandparents, no wolf pack. Plus, if Balto had wolfdog siblings, Aniu could easily ignore Balto and Aleu and make either Balto's brother/sister or already their pup, not Balto's, to be the chosen one from the prophecy (even Nava firstly would discover exactly them, not Balto and/or Aleu as the ones who fit to the prophecy). So, yes, Balto was the only Aniu's pup.

Or not? Well, Balto was the only wolfdog pup Aniu gave birth to. According to the writer of the sequel, in the long past Aniu was a regular grey wolf (i.e. she looked like Balto in the sequel, except of the eye shape and darker ears — big eyes and darker ears Balto inherited from a dog for sure), she had pups and a pack and loved them. That means, as a mortal wolf she had a wolf mate. And only after her death Aniu became the white wolf goddess and a part of the Great Spirit, mated with the random stray dog, gave birth to Balto (as a half-spirit in fact) and raised him alone until he accidentally got lost and was adopted by Boris. Simply saying, Balto also had half-siblings, who are pure wolves.

Yep, Balto is the only half-breed, while his siblings are pure wolves and pure dogs...

At least, he is the only half-spirit. What the irony...

[sketch-shepherd-art]

oops back on my Balto bullshit again so here's my OC who is Balto's father, Haines. Named after the city of Haines, Alaska

For the record yes he exists in my universe where Balto 2 is canon and Balto’s mother Aniu is the white wolf from the first movie

[happyorangehound]

So, after doing her twin, I had the sudden urge to do Aleu herself. I see redesigns of her all over, to the point where there's enough to cobble together something for a "fanon" design.

For Aleu's fanon design, I simply gave her the markings she was born with (because I'm with a lot of y'all on that: why did they change?) and gave her more reddish fur that's more in tune with the colours of the original movie, which I also see a lot of. People also make her look more like her mother which... is a choice, I guess? It would certainly make the whole "looking more wolf-like than her dad" plot point a bit more problematic but, then again, most fans think that it's stupid and write it out anyway. I can't say I blame them. If it's one pup that's gonna be sought after, it's the one that most resembles the town hero.

Meanwhile, I opted to try and make this plot point make sense and have some fun with it. In my version, Aleu is actually the reincarnation of her grandmother, Aniu, which explains where she gets her weird ass magic powers from. I also added more floof. This, combined with her white fur, certainly makes her appear more wolf than Balto, who clearly took after his husky dad more than Aniu so yeah, let's work with that.

Her original design just doesn't look like a wolf, let's be real. Another thing is that no wolf pack would realistically concede to a year old wolfdog and accept her as a leader. A wolfdog that heavily resembles their respected white wolf deity, however? More believable. There we go. Fix'd. lol

[one-with-the-tree]

"the white wolf in Balto 1 is male and not Aniu!"

"the white wolf in Balto 1 is female and IS Aniu!"

have you considered the secret third option "this is left ambiguous and is for everyone to individually decide."

[wildchild-11]

Denali

Balto's father

He's lives in Nome Alaska, once was a sled dog and then met Aniu the white wolf and became mates and had balto

[art-of-tek]

Redbubble

An idea I got in early January and I've been working on it on and off ever since! A fan-poster of one of my favorite movies, Wolf Quest!

ID below the cut because it's a long one.

[ID: A digitally drawn poster featuring various canine characters and a raven against a dark blue cloudy sky with a sea covered in ice sheets in the background. In the front of the bottom is Aleu, a tan-and-cream wolfdog with blue eyes. She is facing forward with a neutral expression. Above her is a flying raven. Above the raven facing left is Nava, an elderly wolf with a pale tan-and-cream coat, brown ears, large bushy gray eyebrows and dull brown eyes. He has a worried expression. To the right and also facing right is Niju, a large near-black wolf with a silver-gray stomach, a large muzzle and chin, distinct whiskers, black patches around his eyes and blue eyes. He has an angry expression and has his teeth bared. Above them in the center is a logo which reads "Balto II: Wolf Quest". On top above the logo is Aniu, a forward-facing near-white wolf with paler patches around her glowing yellow eyes and black inner ears. She has a neutral expression. End ID.]

[hyzenthlayroseart]

Puppy Balto with his mother and father.

Out of the blue I just got the idea for this. As for my headcanons about how his parents met, how they fell in love and what ended up happening to them? Idk. I don't have any. This was mainly done because I wanted to try designing Balto's father (his name is Nanook btw).

For Aniu I used the design of the white wolf from the original instead of the Balto 2 design (and yes I know there's been a lot of debate about wether the white wolf in the first one actually was Aniu or not but I always liked to think it was).

For Nanook, well as you can see he's almost the spitting image of his son. I basically took Balto and redesigned him to be more husky-like.

EDIT: This is no longer my headcanon but I'm still keeping it up cuz I like the drawing

[blackbackedjackal]

Last one I’m doing for the Balto set and by far my favorite, The White Wolf. The wolf has been labeled from various sources as Balto’s father, Balto’s mother (Aniu in Wolf Quest), or a spirit / visualization of Balto’s wolf heritage. I decided to work with the original version who’s design I liked the best. Erik C. Schmidt was the lead animator for the wolf and I was able to get a production drawing from that scene a few years ago. I always loved the design and the scene and, I can honestly say this character was the reason started drawing <3 

[trollart]

A remake of an ancient drawing that I've since removed from the face of internet because it was butt ugly. Shading? Background? Ain't nobody got time for that.

[thezippingeon]

Most powerful scenes in animation history, no contest

[waeirfaahl]

Balto-4 that never happened

Many years fans imagined their own version of Balto 4. Some imagined prequel about Balto's parents, some imagined adventures of other Balto's and Jenna's pups, or love story between Balto's pup and Steele's pup, and how their love stops the hatred between their parents, or the sequel of Aleu's adventures with exploration of those Inuit and Native American myths and spirits and so on. 

The original film's crew never planned to make any sequels, Balto-1 was stand-alone and concluded story (although, Cliff Ruby and Elana Lesser, who wrote the first version of the script of Balto-1, were aired for work on Balto-3). But what about the crew, which worked on Balto-2 and Balto-3? Well, they actually had some ideas. 

Here's the vision of Dev Ross, the writer of Balto-2:

" I would take up in the wild with Aleu. Most likely, I would have her return to her father, because she needed help. Perhaps, because of enviromental issues or that her pack had been captured or run off by humans. I was hoping to do more with [Aniu] in the film, but I wasn’t hired to do another."

Obviously, Dev's movie would expanded and explored not only Aleu's journey with the pack on the new unknown territories, on the new unpredictable land with new danger (humans, other antagonistic animals or forces of nature), and how Balto helps her, we'd obviously learn more about the wolf culture, but also the supernatural elements (spirits and their nature), which had some vague answers in the sequel, but planned to be developed and explained more in the new film and now are mentioned in interview. I think, the series in TLG (The Lion Guard) style and format could fit for her story perfectly. 

For example, how Aniu was a mortal grey wolf, who loved her wolf pups and family (her wolf pack), and how after death (in ancient times obviously) and joining in with the Great Spirit (and becoming a part of this Guardian Spirit) she became the white wolf and now is the Great Mother of all wolves, who symbolizes the call of the wild and helps to find true self. This Great Guardian Spirit was in the cave with Muru, as well as how wolves bow to Aniu as to the goddess on the top of mountain. Maybe we'd learn more about this character also.

In another interview Dev Ross also mentions about how Aleu and the pack travel in the tundra, about pups of Aleu and her wolf mate, and also about conflicts Aleu can encounter — rivalry between males and females for leadership in the pack and how in the wilderness Aleu can feel the awakening of her passive dog side in contrast to her dominant wolf side she was okay with since puppyhood, and how she has to overcome and to be okay with her dog side during interaction with humans in the wild, especially with hunters and poachers etc.

And here's the vision of Phil Weinstein, the director of Balto-2 and Balto-3:

"As far as what I’d like to see, I really like Steele from the original, so I’d like to see something with him. And I thought Aleu was a great character; I’d love to see her come back and help her father in some way. And maybe there’s even some great revenge thing with Steele, and Aleu comes back to save her dad. Or something along those lines. And that’s personally what I’d like to see, if I were in charge of handling the story. And I’d love to tie up all the loose ends, especially between the first two stories."

Here he added a bit more:

"What I really want to see is a Balto 4, Steele returns, out for revenge on Balto for ruining him, and Aleu returns to the rescue. There is something about "A daughter returns to save her father." There is something about the archetype - to me rings true. So I don't know what happened to her, but I would love to see her come back. She saves her dad, but know the dynamic is changed, because Kodi has become the Alpha, and now the sister could potentially threaten that relationship. All of those pieces seem like a good launching point for a fourth movie."

Here we see some ideas for the story, its core, but there is a lot of aspects, which have to be normally explained and have to work. Yes, there's some danger from Steele (who waited three years for revenge, I guess) and potential for intimidating villain and for awesome final battle between Balto and Steele on the mountain (I hope, not only me wanted this in the original film? in the novel Balto fought Steele in the medicine fight scene, so Steele felt fear). However, it's unknown, how Steele planned his revenge. Who'd be his henchmens, if all dogs of Nome know about his evil nature now? Niju? Very unlikely (unless Niju is his son...). And if Balto was in danger, so Aleu (where Kodi, Jenna, other pups and friends?) ran to rescue him, it really needs for Steele to have some allies. 

I hope, his demise wasn't in the Dingo Pictures style. That would be hillarious... So, that's what people, who worked on Balto 2 and 3, had in mind for the story in Balto-4. Maybe someday we will see this.

[sketch-shepherd-art]

So while I DO prefer Balto 2’s canon that Balto’s mother Aniu is the white wolf from the first movie, I also thought it’d be fun to play around with a different AU idea where she isn’t (and yes iirc I’m aware that director Simon Wells said that he originally imagined that Balto’s DAD was the wolf while his mom was the working husky but didn’t confirm such) 

Hell with how Aniu is drawn in Wolf Quest's cheap DTDVD sequel animation they already look like two completely separate characters lol.

But anyway tl dr; Balto AU where Aniu and the White Wolf from the first movie are two different wolves

[thewildpiranha]

𝐖𝐎𝐋𝐅 𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐒

Aniu / The White Wolf (Balto, 1995) Moro (Princess Mononoke, 1997) Eve (Alpha and Omega, 2010) Raksha (The Jungle Book, 2016) Niche (White Fang, 2018) Moll MacTíre (Wolfwalkers, 2020)

[one-with-the-tree]

I sometimes see people struggling with picking daytime colors for Aniu (since her only major appearance is in a scene at sunrise with darkened colors) so here's some daytime Aniu's for you!

The colors vary slightly per scene but that's also the case for characters like Aleu and Nava so it's not that strange by Wolf Quest's standards

(Note that in this post I am solely talking about Wolf Quest's Aniu, not the White Wolf from the first movie. Regardless of whether you believe they're the same character or not their designs and colors are pretty different)

[thegarrisonafterdark]

"why do you want to die? you don't want to live, look at you"

what if .... terror sled dog au

[art-of-tek]

Animation counts as art, right?