Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

While still on the subject of Fireflies, I just watched this movie and I can’t peel my eyes off this Studio Ghibli offering from 1988 that I recently downloaded as part of my ongoing effort to view and collect pirated Ghibli animé movies on my iMac computer, yeah, even if this movie was sad as hell. It was just so poignant and so beautifully made, it will definitely make you cry.

I didn’t cry of course but that’s beside the point. The animation of both background, which is to say the Japanese countryside and foreground; the characters themselves including the bombs and planes in the distance was superb! The articulation for both Setsuko and Setai, the two siblings principal in this movie was so well executed, I thought if there ever was an award for Best Acting in Animé, I would give this to the two, particularly Setsuko, the four year old orphan who will definitely melt your heart just by watching her. She’s definitely a thing of unadulterated cuteness set in a backdrop of wartorn WWII Japan and that’s probably what this movie is all about for me. She sort of serves as a kind of counterweight to the heaviness of the story’s subject matter or perhaps a clever device to further heighten the inhumanities of war. Whatever the movie espouses, it works as a vivid reminder of war and its effects on its most important casualties, children abandoned not only by their parents but also of society as a whole.

Facts about the movie: First of all, you have to understand that this is a wartime account of a dead boy struggling to survive daily life with his little sister, also dead. Both become orphaned when their mother gets killed in an air raid shelter and forced to live in an abandoned one themselves when their own aunt, their only living relative mistreats them.

This was directed and co-written by Isao Takahata and based on a popular Japanese novel by Akiyiku Nosaka and his personal account of WWII, the direness of the whole situation and his guilt for not being fully protective of his own sister.

It's a 1988 Animé from famed Studio Ghibli and its genre is Animation, Drama and War so don't go expecting the usual lighthearted fare of cuteness overload typical of many Ghibli animations most notably Miyazaki's Ponyo. It depicts victims of war as dead bodies piled one on top of another and bandaged dying people infested with flies, maggots and bloody. Despite its rather realistic or should I say pointed portrayal of war, it is a standout in animation and you have to see it for yourself if you haven’t seen it yet to fully appreciate the movie, especially if you're a fan or maybe even if you’re just curious. That could be even better!