- Well, now I've seen the saddest cartoon ever made. Isao Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies is a powerful film suffused with sorrow from beginning to end. It also contains moments of great childhood innocence and joy, but those instances only make the film's painful undercurrents and conclusion that much more affecting. If I had to summarize the plot, I would say that a boy named Seita (J. Robert Spencer) and his younger sister Setsuko (Rhoda Chrosite) nearly survive the devastating Allied firebombing of Japan in World War II. The word "nearly" is unfortunately essential.
- Related in flashback by Seita's ghost, the story begins with a bombing that incinerates their home and leads to the eventual death of the children's mother (Veronica Taylor). Their father, currently serving in the Japanese Navy, is often discussed but never seen, and one can guess at his fate from the many unanswered letters sent his way. An aunt (Amy Jones) takes in the two orphans, but she can't spare a single kind word for them. Eventually, the children grow so tired of her constant criticism that they set up camp in a nearby bomb shelter. There, Seita and Setsuko can eat fruit drops whenever they want and play at the beach all day. In other words, they finally have the freedom to live life as they please, even if those lives are cut short by the horrors of war.
- Although I didn't realize this until watching it, Grave of the Fireflies absolutely had to be an animated film. Watching two live children waste away would have been too disturbing, and the firebombing scenes either would have been unconvincing or, worse still, a special effects spectacle. Instead, we get a visually arresting film whose dark color palette is perfectly suited to this especially dreadful moment in human history. Studio Ghibli's work is always superb, but I was particularly impressed with how well the animators rendered the constantly shifting wisps of fire. And of course no live action film could have made its eponymous fireflies so wondrous. They die by the end, just like everyone else in the film, but weren't they great while they lasted?
- Based on a true story written by Akiyuki Nosaka.
